A Blue View

Student Loan Plan Reveals GOP Uses Free Market / Choice Talk When Truth Is They Just Always Support Business. It's The Health Care Debate In Miniature.

First the good news on student loans, from the NY Times:

The chairman of the House Education Committee [California Dem George Miller] has dismissed a last-ditch plea from the private student loan industry and is throwing his support behind President Obama’s plan to end the role of private banks in the federal education lending systems.

Mr. Obama’s plan remains deeply contentious in Congress, and still faces strong opposition from private banks [and Republicans] that for decades have earned big profits for handling federal student loans ...

[The] private-loan industry ... had urged Congress and the White House to consider its own alternative. But Congressional Democrats, the White House and officials at the federal Education Department have now rejected that plan, contending that it was based on accounting tricks and would pour $15 billion into the banks’ coffers that Mr. Obama would direct to the Pell grant program for low-income students ...

The president’s proposal, first outlined in his initial budget in February, would save the government roughly $87 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office — money that the White House says should be used to aid impoverished students.

The article also offered the typical Republican argument about big government, reducing choice, Obama is a socialist, etc.:

Some Republicans have said that in curtailing the role of private lenders, Democrats are trying to expand government.

Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee and a former federal education secretary, said direct government loans were never meant to monopolize student lending.

“This effort by the Obama administration for a Washington takeover of student loans is just one more example of a long line of Washington takeovers of banks, insurance companies, car companies, health care, that I totally object to,” he said.

Unfortunately for the GOP, the story also mentioned some really important details about the "free market" the government was seeking to "takeover":

The federal government already makes some loans directly to students, but most federal student loans are handled by private firms even though there is virtually no private capital available for financing the loans. The industry argues that it provides competition and better marketing and servicing of loans.

The administration’s view, shared by a number of Democratic lawmakers, is that the private lenders should no longer be paid by taxpayers to operate a virtually risk-free business in which they essentially use taxpayer dollars to originate loans, with repayment guaranteed, and then resell those loans to the Treasury.

So let me get this straight. These private financial companies are making billions using public capital (not their own) in a market place made risk-free (because the government takes on all the risk, including guaranteeing repayment) yet the Republicans still argue Obama wants to take over another "free" market.

The fact that the student loan business is transparently as far from a free market as one can get makes it obvious that it is more important to the GOP for their business supporters to get $87 billion than to send millions of additional kids to college. 

The parallels to the health care debate, where it's more important for the GOP to side with their insurance business supporters than to provide 47 million Americans with health coverage, are also obvious.

Obama's Speech To The Ghanian Parliament

                Read key excerpts or full speech.

The AP's report:

An American president who has "the blood of Africa within me" praised and scolded the continent of his ancestors Saturday, asserting forces of tyranny and corruption must yield if Africa is to achieve its promise.

"Yes you can," Barack Obama declared, dusting off his campaign slogan and adapting it for his foreign audience. Speaking to the Ghanaian Parliament, he called upon African societies to seize opportunities for peace, democracy and prosperity.

"This is a new moment of great promise," he said. "To realize that promise, we must first recognize a fundamental truth that you have given life to in Ghana: Development depends upon good governance. That is the ingredient which has been missing in far too many places, for far too long. That is the change that can unlock Africa's potential." ...

America's first black president spoke with a bluntness that perhaps could only come from a member of Africa's extended family.

"No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves, or if police can be bought off by drug traffickers," he said

"No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top, or the head of the Port Authority is corrupt. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery.

"That is not democracy, that is tyranny, even if occasionally you sprinkle an election in there," he said, "and now is the time for that style of governance to end."

He added: "Africa doesn't need strongmen, it needs strong institutions."

Obama was on a 21-hour visit to the West African nation to highlight that country's democratic tradition and engagement with the West. His visit, his first to sub-Saharan Africa as president, was greeted as a "spiritual reunion" Saturday by Ghanian legislators.

Before the flight home, Obama visited Cape Coast Castle, a seaside fortress converted to the slave trade by the British in the 17th century. In its dungeons, thousands of shackled Africans huddled in squalor before being herded onto ships bound for America ...

The Obama administration sought a wide African audience for the president's speech, inviting people to watch it at embassies and cultural centers across the continent.

The 33-minute address was in part a splash of cold water for Africans who blame colonialism for their problems.

Obama spoke of the indignities visited upon Africans from the era of European rule. He said his grandfather, a cook for the British in Kenya, was called "boy" by his employers for much of his life despite his being a respected village elder. He said it was a time of artificial borders and unfair trade.

But he said the West is not to blame "for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants." Nor for the corruption that is a daily fact of life for many, he said.

"Africa is not the crude caricature of a continent at perpetual war," he said. Yet for "far too many Africans, conflict is a part of life, as constant as the sun. There are wars over land and wars over resources. And it is still far too easy for those without conscience to manipulate whole communities into fighting among faiths and tribes ...

The president pledged America's partnership in Africa's growth. Specifically, he said he would make sure U.S. aid gets to the people who need it most, such as farmers and entrepreneurs, not Western consultants and administrators.

That's why $3.5 billion in food assistance will focus on new methods and technologies for farmers, instead of simply sending U.S. goods to Africa, he said.

Obama flew to Ghana after the G-8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy, approved a new $20 billion food security plan. It aims to help poor nations in Africa and elsewhere to avert mass starvation during the global recession.

Ghana celebrates Obama visit

Civil Rights Group Divided Over Marriage Equality

From the NY Times:

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the 50-year-old civil rights organization founded by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others, is seeking to remove the president of its Los Angeles chapter in response to his support of same-sex marriage in California.

The effort by the Atlanta-based organization is meeting stiff resistance in Los Angeles from both the board of the local chapter, whose chairman is secretary of the state’s Democratic Party, and the City Council president.

During the battle last fall over Proposition 8, an amendment to the State Constitution that banned same-sex marriage, the chapter’s president, the Rev. Eric P. Lee, was ... front and center at an opposition group’s large rally at City Hall and marched in the blazing sun for 15 miles in Fresno. Many other local African-American pastors prepared mailings featuring church leaders in support of the proposition and linking their views to Barack Obama, then the Democratic nominee for president ...

While the Mormon Church raised a great deal of the money in support of the proposition, the role of African-American churches, and their voting parishioners, was not insignificant. The Edison/Mitofsky exit poll in California found that 70 percent of black voters backed the ban, which passed with 52 percent of the vote.

Mr. Lee said that his opposition to Proposition 8 had “created tension in my life I had never experienced with black clergy.”

“But it was clear to me,” he added, “that any time you deny one group of people the same right that other groups have, that is a clear violation of civil rights and I have to speak up on that.”

In April, Mr. Lee attended a board meeting of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Kansas City, Mo., and found himself once again in the minority position among his colleagues on the issue of same-sex marriage ... a month later, Mr. Lee said, he was surprised to receive a call from the National Board of Directors summoning him immediately to Atlanta to explain why he had taken a position on same-sex marriage without the authority of the national board ...

“It’s been our position that the local board hired him,” said Reginald Byron Jones-Sawyer, chairman of the local board and secretary of the California Democratic Party. “And, in fact, we are also the ones that approved his stance on the position of marriage equality. We have asked the national board if we have violated any procedures, and we have not gotten an answer.”

Mr. Lee, the former pastor of In His Steps, an African-American Wesleyan church in Los Angeles that he described as “very conservative,” said he saw failures both in the leadership of the conference (“Dr. King would be turning over in his grave right now,” he said) and the largely white anti-Proposition 8 movement that did not more actively seek the support of church-going African-Americans.

“The black church played a significant role in Proposition 8 passing,” Mr. Lee said. “The failure of the campaign was to presume that African-Americans would see this as a civil rights issue.”

Panetta & The CIA's Lying

House Dems Seek To Increase Marginal Rates For Rich To Pay For Health Plan

From the NY Times:

House Democrats will ask the wealthiest Americans to help pay for overhauling the health care system with a $550 billion income tax increase, the chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee said Friday.

The proposal calls for a surtax on individuals earning at least $280,000 in adjusted gross income and couples earning more than $350,000, said the chairman, Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York.

It would generate about $550 billion over 10 years to pay about half the cost of the legislation, Mr. Rangel said. As the proposal envisions it, the rest of the cost would be covered by lower spending on Medicare, the government health plan for the elderly, and other health care savings.

With the economy still hobbled and Republicans already sharpening their tax-and-spend attack line, the proposal is perhaps the clearest expression yet of the mandate that Democrats believe they won last November, when voters expanded Democratic majorities in Congress and sent Barack Obama to the White House.

An aide to the House speaker, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, said she and other leaders were supportive of the idea, which they concluded would be their main way to pay for Mr. Obama’s top policy priority: expanding health insurance coverage to virtually all Americans and curtailing the steep rise in the cost of medical care while improving patient outcomes.

But it remains unclear whether the Senate will go along. Most Republicans there, or perhaps all, oppose the idea, along with some centrist Democrats.

Even in the more liberal House, where Democrats have a majority of 255 to 178, the tax proposal will most likely cost a substantial number of Democratic votes. The Blue Dog Coalition, made up of 52 fiscally conservative Democrats, expressed apprehension this week about the unfolding health care legislation, and that was before Mr. Rangel’s announcement Friday.

In recent days, efforts to advance the legislation in both houses of Congress have slowed. That development calls into question whether Democrats will be able to meet their goal of passing the bills before the August recess, reconciling differences between the two versions upon their return and then getting a final measure to Mr. Obama’s desk by October ...

Republicans, who have pummeled the Democrats over the $787 billion economic stimulus, pounced at word of the proposed tax increase, which they said would primarily hurt small-business owners.

“In the middle of a serious recession, with unemployment nearing double digits, the last thing we need is a tax increase on small businesses, which will cost the American economy even more jobs,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for the House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio.

Ahmadinejad Can Deny Anything (#iranelection)

Weekly Radio Address

Recovery and the Jobs of the Future

It's Time To Talk To Americans About The Economy Like Adults

From Paul Krugman:

When there’s an ordinary, garden-variety recession, the job of fighting that recession is assigned to the Federal Reserve. The Fed responds by cutting interest rates in an incremental fashion. Reducing rates a bit at a time, it keeps cutting until the economy turns around. At times it pauses to assess the effects of its work; if the economy is still weak, the cutting resumes.

During the last recession, the Fed repeatedly cut rates as the slump deepened — 11 times over the course of 2001. Then, amid early signs of recovery, it paused, giving the rate cuts time to work. When it became clear that the economy still wasn’t growing fast enough to create jobs, more rate cuts followed.

Normally, then, we expect policy makers to respond to bad job numbers with a combination of patience and resolve. They should give existing policies time to work, but they should also consider making those policies stronger.

And that’s what the Obama administration should be doing right now with its fiscal stimulus. (It’s important to remember that the stimulus was necessary because the Fed, having cut rates all the way to zero, has run out of ammunition to fight this slump.) That is, policy makers should stay calm in the face of disappointing early results, recognizing that the plan will take time to deliver its full benefit. But they should also be prepared to add to the stimulus now that it’s clear that the first round wasn’t big enough.

Unfortunately, the politics of fiscal policy are very different from the politics of monetary policy. For the past 30 years, we’ve been told that government spending is bad, and conservative opposition to fiscal stimulus (which might make people think better of government) has been bitter and unrelenting even in the face of the worst slump since the Great Depression. Predictably, then, Republicans — and some Democrats — have treated any bad news as evidence of failure, rather than as a reason to make the policy stronger.

Hence the danger that the Obama administration will find itself caught in a political-economic trap, in which the very weakness of the economy undermines the administration’s ability to respond effectively.

As I said, I was afraid this would happen. But that’s water under the bridge. The question is what the president and his economic team should do now.

It’s perfectly O.K. for the administration to defend what it’s done so far. It’s fine to have Vice President Joseph Biden touring the country, highlighting the many good things the stimulus money is doing.

It’s also reasonable for administration economists to call for patience, and point out, correctly, that the stimulus was never expected to have its full impact this summer, or even this year.

But there’s a difference between defending what you’ve done so far and being defensive. It was disturbing when President Obama walked back Mr. Biden’s admission that the administration “misread” the economy, declaring that “there’s nothing we would have done differently.” There was a whiff of the Bush infallibility complex in that remark, a hint that the current administration might share some of its predecessor’s inability to admit mistakes. And that’s an attitude neither Mr. Obama nor the country can afford.

What Mr. Obama needs to do is level with the American people. He needs to admit that he may not have done enough on the first try. He needs to remind the country that he’s trying to steer the country through a severe economic storm, and that some course adjustments — including, quite possibly, another round of stimulus — may be necessary.

What he needs, in short, is to do for economic policy what he’s already done for race relations and foreign policy — talk to Americans like adults.

Rachel Maddow & Richard Clarke Discuss The CIA & Pelosi

A very interesting discussion about the failings of the current "Gang of 8" method of Congressional oversight:

CIA Hid Program From Congress For 8 Years

Sorry GOP, Pelosi was right about the CIA lying to Congress.  Here's the Wash Post:

Four months after he was sworn in, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta learned of an intelligence program that had been hidden from Congress since 2001, a revelation that prompted him to immediately cancel the initiative and schedule a pair of closed-door meetings on Capitol Hill.

The next day, June 24, Panetta informed the House and Senate intelligence committees of the program and the action he had taken, according to Democratic and Republican members of the panels.

The incident has reignited a long-running dispute between congressional Democrats and the CIA, with some calling it part of a broader pattern of the agency withholding information from Congress. Some Republicans, meanwhile, privately questioned whether Panetta -- who has stood with CIA officers in a dispute with  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) -- was looking to score points with House Democrats.

The program remains classified, and those knowledgeable about it would describe it only vaguely yesterday. Several current and former administration officials called it an "on-again, off-again" attempt to create a new intelligence capability and said it was related to the collection of information on suspected terrorists that was instituted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Congressional Republicans said no briefing about the program was required because it was not a major tool used against al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. They accused Democrats of using the matter to divert attention away from Pelosi's accusation that CIA officials intentionally misled her in 2002 about the agency's interrogations of suspected terrorists.

But Democrats waved away such claims and said they may open a congressional investigation of the concealment of the program.

"Instructions were given not to brief Congress,"  Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said in an interview.

Small details of the Panetta briefing emerged earlier this week when Democrats from the House intelligence committee leaked letters that had been privately sent to the CIA director and the bipartisan House leadership. The CIA declined to comment yesterday, pointing to the statement it made Wednesday after six Democrats sent their letter to Panetta accusing the CIA of having "concealed significant actions."...

Current and former administration officials familiar with the program said it was not directly related to previously disclosed high-priority programs such as detainee interrogations or the warrantless surveillance of suspected terrorists on U.S. soil. It was a intelligence-collection activity run by the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, officials said. It was not a covert action, which by law would have required a presidential finding and a report to Congress.

"This characterization of something that began in 2001 and continued uninterrupted for eight years is just wrong. Honest men would question that characterization. It was more off and on," said a former top Bush administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the issue.

The official said he was certain that, if the nature of the program could be revealed, it would be seen as "no big deal."

However, another intelligence official said that the program was "sensitive" and should have been briefed to the committees, and that lawmakers had been told they had been fully informed on collection activities.

CIA officials brought the program to Panetta's attention, and when he realized it potentially conflicted with what the committees had been told, he immediately went to Capitol Hill, according to officials who discussed classified material on the condition of anonymity.

Google To Compete With Microsoft

House and Senate Dems Disagree On How To Pay For Health Care

From the NY Times:

House and Senate Democrats appeared on Thursday to be on a collision course over how to pay for a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health care system, with the House planning to propose an income tax increase on the wealthiest Americans, an idea that Senate negotiators have all but dismissed as unworkable.

Paying for the roughly $1 trillion, 10-year cost of the health care legislation is arguably the biggest hurdle confronting lawmakers and the White House as they pursue President Obama’s top policy goal of extending health coverage to all Americans and curtailing the steep rise in the cost of medical care.

Senate negotiators had been eyeing a tax on some employer-provided health benefits but shifted course this week after the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and other top Democrats voiced opposition. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, said Thursday that the House bill would not tax those benefits.

Instead, the House Ways and Means Committee was said to be nearing agreement on an income tax surcharge of 2 percent or more on Americans with the highest incomes — those earning more than $250,000. The surtax would rise for those earning $500,000 and rise again for those earning more than $1 million.

At the same time, aides said that the House was moving away from other ideas, including a proposed sales tax on sodas and other sugary drinks and a new payroll tax of 0.3 percent to be paid by employees and employers.

The White House has not expressed a position on the surtax, but lawmakers said they had heard no objections so far.

The chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who visited the Capitol twice this week to discuss health care proposals with House Democrats, has said Mr. Obama would prefer that money to pay for the legislation come from within the health care system. But unlike a tax on employer-provided benefits, which Mr. Obama opposed during the presidential campaign, a tax on the wealthy would be in keeping with his promise not to raise taxes on Americans earning less than $250,000 a year.

Meanwhile, Senate negotiators went back to the drawing board and were looking at an array of options. And they seemed to be narrowing their focus on a plan that would tax only the most generous employer-provided health plans — those worth $25,000 or more a year — as well as a modified limit on tax deductions proposed by Mr. Obama ...

The tax on more generous health insurance plans was projected to generate another $90 billion, and would bring Senate negotiators, led by Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee, more than halfway to the $320 billion in revenue that they had expected from a wider tax on employer-provided benefits.

Lawmakers taking part in the Senate negotiations said Republicans and several moderate Democrats would oppose an income tax surcharge on the wealthy.

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, called the surtax “non-negotiable.” And Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, who is also on the Finance Committee, said it was among the “less viable” options under consideration ...

Senators were also considering a plan to apply the Medicare payroll tax of 1.45 percent to non-wage income like dividends and capital gains.

And in yet another potential obstacle, 40 House Democrats in the fiscally conservative blue-dog coalition voiced opposition to the emerging legislation and apprehension over potential new taxes. House leaders swiftly called a meeting with the blue dogs to begin addressing their concerns.

In addition to the income surtax on the wealthy, House Democrats were considering an array of other ideas. One would bar prescription drug companies from deducting the cost of advertisements as a business expense on their corporate tax returns. Another would end a tax break for health care flexible spending accounts, which can now be used to cover out-of-pocket medical costs.

Palin Recreates Rosie the Riverter & John Paul Johns

What A Competent Government Can Do: GM To Emerge From Bankruptcy In Record Time

From the NY Times:

Automakers’ Swift Bankruptcies Shock Experts

That didn’t take long. In fewer than 45 days each, General Motors and Chrysler swept through government-sponsored sales in bankruptcy court — quick tours that most people in the legal community thought impossible not long ago.

The swift action has riveted bankruptcy lawyers and law professors, who say the cases will be widely studied this fall when law students return, The New York Times’s Micheline Maynard writes.

“It is remarkable,” James J. White, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor, who is planning a three-day seminar on the cases in his bankruptcy class, told The Times.

Judge Robert E. Gerber of United States Bankruptcy Court in New York approved the G.M. sale late Sunday, although he issued a four-day stay that blocks final action until Thursday.

The sales, handled under Section 363 of the federal bankruptcy code, raised the profile of a tactic once used primarily to shed failing plants or unneeded equipment, and was not considered until a few years ago as a substitute for a complete restructuring ...

For businesses that follow similar legal strategies, the G.M. and Chrysler cases could pave the way for a faster trip through court. For creditors, it could mean less time to reach a deal, especially in situations where companies face strict deadlines from lenders, as the two carmakers did with the government.

In such cases where the government plays a major role, lawyers are likely to feel they have less control than in traditional bankruptcies ...

In fact, a government-imposed deadline for concluding the G.M. case by the end of this week helped the court work through 850 objections in three days of hearings last week. Normally, such issues could take weeks ...

Obama administration officials say the legal community need not expect a wholesale shift in bankruptcy law. The G.M. and Chrysler cases were unique situations, they note, in which the president wanted to make sure that a crucial American industry survived.

Under the terms of the deal, G.M. would sell its most desirable assets, including the Chevrolet and Cadillac brands, to a new company owned largely by the American and Canadian governments and a health care trust for the United Automobile Workers union.

Over the last decade, Professor White said, companies already have been shifting toward a broader use of Section 363 sales as a quicker approach for restructuring than the usual Chapter 11 process ....

G.M. and Chrysler sales beat even the government’s aggressive timetable.

The Treasury Department initially said it expected the Chrysler sale, which required 42 days, including an appeal to the Supreme Court, to be approved in 60 days. It said the G.M. sale would require 60 to 90 days of deliberations; as of Monday, the case has been in court for 36 days.

The speed is even more remarkable given that as recently as mid-March, when the Treasury’s auto task force retained bankruptcy counsel, it was not clear the cases would wind up in bankruptcy court, a senior administration official told The Times on Monday.

At that time, G.M. was still resisting a bankruptcy filing and a case did not seem likely at Chrysler, which had Fiat standing by, prepared to assume management control. Fiat officials eventually signed on to the need for a quick bankruptcy filing, which helped Chrysler shed plants, dealers and suppliers.

By mid-April, G.M. came around to the idea of a conventional prepackaged bankruptcy case, which still could have taken months, the official told The Times.

Treasury officials pointedly told G.M. executives that the government, which was financing the company’s stay in bankruptcy, did not have the patience or resources for a long case, and would only provide financing under a Section 363 sale.

The administration official also said that G.M.’s case moved so quickly in part because it had the benefit of an “icebreaker” from Chrysler’s quick tour through bankruptcy.

In his 95-page opinion Sunday, for example, Judge Gerber repeatedly cited the discussion of issues from the opinion by Judge Arthur J. Gonzalez, who approved the Chrysler sale last month.

Professor White said the Supreme Court’s ruling against pensioners from Indiana, who sought to block the Chrysler sale, also was likely to deter similar actions in the G.M. case.

Beat It

Fox News' War Is Peace Jihad Against Obama

As the author of A Blue View, I certainly understand and condone having a political point of view when you cover the news.  But after reading this Media Matters post, and viewing their other examples of Fox News' editing Obama to make him say the exact opposite of what he actually said, I am fuming and wondering how to respond. 

I'm open to suggestions but here's a start: please pass this post on to anyone you know who watches Fox News.

On the July 7 edition of his Fox News show, Sean Hannity deceptively cropped President Obama's answer to a question from Fox News senior White House correspondent Major Garrett about the Cold War to suggest that Obama did not acknowledge the actions of past U.S. presidents in freeing Eastern Europe.

In fact, as part of his answer, Obama stated, "I'm very proud of the traditions of Democratic and Republican presidents to lift the Iron Curtain," a comment Hannity edited out of the clip he aired of Obama's response.

Hannity aired the following clip:

GARRETT: In your speech this morning, you said the Cold War reached its conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years.

Mr. President, are the Russian sensitivities so fragile that you can't say the Cold War was won, the West won it, and it was led by a combination of Democratic and Republican American presidents?

OBAMA: There were a whole bunch of people throughout Eastern Europe who showed enormous courage, and I think that it is very important in this part of the world to acknowledge the degree to which people struggled for their own freedom.

We don't have to diminish other people in order to recognize our role in that history.

From Fox News' transcript of Obama's July 7 interview with Garrett, with the portions of Obama's answer Hannity omitted in bold:

GARRETT: In your speech this morning, you said the Cold War reached its conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years. Mr. President, are the Russian sensitivities so fragile that you can't say the Cold War was won? The West won it? And it was led by a combination of Democratic and Republican American presidents?

OBAMA: Well, listen, the -- I think that you just cut out Lech Walesa and the Poles. You just cut out Havel and the Czechs. There were a whole bunch of people throughout Eastern Europe who showed enormous courage.

And I think that it is very important in this part of the world to acknowledge the degree to which people struggled for their own freedom. I'm very proud of the traditions of Democratic and Republican presidents to lift the Iron Curtain.

But, you know, we don't have to diminish other people in order to recognize our role in that history.

After airing the cropped clip, Hannity said:

HANNITY: Unbelievable. Now, that's interesting, because Lech Walesa, the leader of the Polish Solidarity Movement, said this about the end of the Cold War; he said, quote: "We in Poland took him, Ronald Reagan, so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. Now this can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century."

Mr. President, if I were you, you may want to consider hitting the history books maybe before your next foreign trip.

Media Matters for America has documented a pattern by Hannity and other Fox News personalities of cropping Obama's comments abroad to misrepresent their meaning.

Here's what Hannity aired on July 7:

Massachusetts Challenges Constitutionality Of DOMA

From the Boston Globe:

Massachusetts, the first state to legalize gay marriage, yesterday became the first to challenge the constitutionality of a federal law that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman, contending that Congress intruded into a matter that should be left to states.

The suit filed by state Attorney General Martha Coakley says the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 violates the US Constitution by interfering with the state’s right to define the marital status of residents. The suit also says the law forces the state to discriminate against same-sex married couples - on certain health benefits and burial rights - or risk losing federal funding.

“Congress overstepped its authority, undermined states’ efforts to recognize marriages between same-sex couples, and codified an animus towards gay and lesbian people,’’ said the complaint filed in US District Court in Boston.

More than 16,000 same-sex couples have wed in Massachusetts since gay marriage became legal in the state in 2004, the suit said, “and the security and stability of families has been strengthened in important ways throughout the state.’’

Charles Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department, which defends the government in litigation, issued a two-sentence statement yesterday saying President Obama “supports legislative repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act because it prevents LGBT couples from being granted equal rights and benefits. We will review this case.’’

Massachusetts risks losing millions in dollars for MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid program for the poor, and for veterans’ cemeteries overseen by the state Department of Veterans Services, unless it obeys the Defense of Marriage Act. The federal government has told the state that it cannot provide federal funding for MassHealth benefits given to same-sex spouses. It also informed the state it will lose Veterans Affairs funding if it buries the same-sex spouse of a veteran in a cemetery, as the state does for heterosexual spouses of veterans ...

The suit is the second in four months challenging the Defense of Marriage Act in federal court in Boston. On March 3, six same-sex couples and three men whose husbands died brought a claim that said the federal law barred them from getting more than 1,000 marriage-related benefits that heterosexual couples enjoy. The benefits include health insurance for spouses of federal employees and tax deductions for couples who jointly file federal income tax returns.

The Rise of Right Wing Hate

Democrats Say C.I.A. Lied To Congress for Years

From the Wall St Journal:

Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon E. Panetta has told lawmakers that the agency "concealed significant actions" from Congress, according to a letter released Wednesday from seven Democratic lawmakers. The letter also contends that Mr. Panetta said CIA officials have misled Congress since 2001.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes sent a separate letter on Tuesday to the top Republican on his committee saying that Mr. Panetta's appearance led him to conclude that the CIA had "affirmatively lied" to the committee. Mr. Reyes, a Texas Democrat, said the issues Mr. Panetta disclosed to the committee may lead to a full committee investigation.

"I believe that CIA has, in the vast majority of matters, told the truth," Mr. Reyes said in a statement. "But in rare instances, certain officers have not adhered to the high standards held, as a rule, by the CIA with respect to truthfulness in reporting."

Neither letter described the nature of the actions hidden. Both lawmakers and the CIA declined to provide details ... The public tussle nonetheless threatens to further undermine Congressional relations with the CIA. Congress exercises oversight over U.S. intelligence agencies. The House and Senate intelligence panels, created in the late 1970s to prevent a repeat of the Nixon-era domestic-spying abuses, often receive classified briefings in private.

The relationship between the CIA and Congress grew poisonous over the course of the Bush administration after revelations concerning programs such as CIA's coerced interrogations ...

CIA spokesman George Little said, "It is not the policy or practice of the CIA to mislead Congress." Mr. Little said the CIA itself "took the initiative to notify the oversight committees" about the lapses. Mr. Panetta brought the issue to lawmakers' attention on June 24.

Rep. Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat who signed the letter, gave the director "credit for coming up and meeting with us and informing us," adding that Mr. Panetta had learned of the matter the day before the June 24 briefing but said she was deeply disturbed that the CIA actions had been concealed from all lawmakers ...

The Democratic lawmakers' letter, which they sent to Mr. Panetta, asked him to revise his May 15 statement to the intelligence panel, in which he said: "It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and values." Mr. Little said Mr. Panetta stands by that statement.

Rep. Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who chairs a spending subcommittee on intelligence and was among the lawmakers who signed the letter said in an interview that the information that was hidden from Congress was not over a small issue, adding "it's serious stuff."

He added, "Our reason for writing the letter in the first place has to do really with the integrity of Congress and the balance of powers."

Dave's Top Ten Messages On Sarah Palin's Answering Machine

Watch it.

			"Hi, It's George W. Bush. Why didn't anyone tell me resigning was an option?"
			"It's John McCain -- why did I call?"
			"Mark Sanford here. Ever been to Argentina?"
			"I'm calling from Geico to see if you want to renew your dogsled insurance"
			"It's Letterman -- we still cool?"
			"McCain again. Still no idea why I called"
			"Hi, it's the dry cleaner. Having trouble getting caribou blood out of your Prada jacket"
			"Hi, it's Sarah...oops...dialed my own number"
			"Schwarzenegger here. If you want a job, California could use a new governor"
			"Hey, it's McCain. Who would've thought you'd retire before I did?"

Doubts About Obama’s Economic Recovery Plan--And What To Do Next--Increase

From the NY Times:

At his inauguration in January, President Obama warned that times would get tougher before they got better. He has been proved correct.

With unemployment already at 9.5 percent and likely to exceed 10 percent, much higher than White House officials predicted back in February, Mr. Obama has been facing attacks that his $787 billion stimulus program was either too timid or wrong-headed or both. Now, just five months after Congress agreed on the plan, with only a fraction of the money actually out the door, Washington is debating the need for a second round of stimulus amid economic and political crosscurrents.

In Ohio, where unemployment is above 10 percent and where Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will visit on Thursday, Mr. Obama’s popularity has dropped sharply. In a poll by Quinnipiac University earlier this week, 48 percent of respondents said they disapproved of Mr. Obama’s handling of the economy, while 46 percent approved, down 11 percentage points since May ...

For the moment, Mr. Obama and his top economic advisers are fending off calls for more action, combining a message of hard-headed realism about the magnitude of the economy’s problems with more cheerful predictions about an imminent boost as the government spending begins to hit the streets.

“The stimulus is on track,” Lawrence H. Summers, director of the White House National Economic Council, said Wednesday in an interview. “We planned for a program that would stimulate the economy over a two-year period, with a force that increases significantly over calendar year 2009. The implementation is on track to deliver that.”

Administration officials say a job market recovery usually lags behind the economic recovery itself. Indeed, most forecasters had predicted that unemployment was likely to keep rising through the end of 2009 and would not start to edge down until 2010.

“People know that problems of this seriousness cannot be turned around in six months or nine months,” Mr. Summers said ... But political pressures may not give the administration two years to show that its plan is working, especially if Democrats in Congress begin to conclude that continued bad economic news is putting them at risk of losing seats in the 2010 midterm elections ...

Administration officials had predicted that the stimulus program would save or create 600,000 jobs by summer. But the economy has lost more than two million jobs since Mr. Obama took office, and officials now estimate that the program has saved only about 150,000 jobs.

Republicans say that Mr. Obama’s recovery plan is failing and proves that government spending is an inefficient way to help the economy. Some Democrats fret that the program may be either too small or too slow.

Laura Tyson, a former economic adviser to President Bill Clinton, told an investor group in Singapore on Wednesday that the stimulus program was a “bit too small” and that the United States might need a second effort.

A top House Democrat, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, told reporters on Tuesday that policy makers needed to be “open” to the possibility of a second program.

Administration officials acknowledge that their initial forecasts, which anticipated that unemployment would peak at 8.5 percent, were too optimistic, although they were in line with Federal Reserve and most private forecasters ...

The looming political battle is about how to respond, and three camps are forming.

Hitler Finds Out Sarah Palin Resigns

G8 Meeting's Mixed Success On Climate Change

From the Wash Post:

The world's leading industrial nations tentatively agreed Wednesday to try to prevent global temperatures from rising above a fixed level, after a more far-reaching proposal to slash production of greenhouse gases fizzled, according to U.S. and European negotiators.

Leaders meeting here for the Group of Eight summit said they would pledge to keep temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above average levels of more than a century ago, before large-scale industrial pollution occurred.

Temperatures have already risen by nearly half that amount, leaving little wiggle room. It was unclear what mechanisms, if any, would be adopted to enforce the target.

Some environmental groups saw the announcement as a weak nod at the obvious.

"This was such an opportunity," said Tobias Muenchmeyer, a Berlin-based activist with the group Greenpeace. "We are very disappointed that the result is so limited."

For other groups, the best that could be said of Wednesday's declaration was that, although it did not commit countries to specific cuts in greenhouse gases, it appeared to create a moral imperative to do so eventually.

"It may be symbolic now," said David Hamilton of the Sierra Club. But, he added, "if we have a commitment to a temperature goal, then you're actually going to figure out how we're going to get there."

The tentative deal on climate change was one of several agreements to come out of the summit's first day. The leaders also agreed to a statement denouncing Iran for its recent crackdown on election protesters and expressing growing impatience with its nuclear program ...

The leaders also ratified President Obama's proposal to hold a nuclear security summit in Washington next March. The gathering, which administration officials said would involve about 25 nations, would focus on ways to limit the threat of nuclear proliferation.

Has The Storm Passed?

The Price Of Finding Common Ground

Not surprisingly, since Obama's M.O. is to find common ground, he has to trade some horses to get there. This NY Times story explores some of the potential trades:

The deals, trumpeted loudly by the White House, would each help pay for a sweeping overhaul of the health care system.

First, it was a broad consortium of health industry groups — doctors, hospitals, drug makers and insurers, all promising to slow the growth of medical spending by 1.5 percent. Then, it was the big drug makers, promising savings of $80 billion over 10 years, by lowering the cost of medicine for the elderly.

On Wednesday, it will be major hospital associations, pledging to save more than $150 billion over a decade. And a deal with doctors is said to be on tap next.

In each case, the Obama administration hailed the agreements as historic. But what has been little discussed is what the industry groups will be getting in return for their cooperation, whether or not the promised savings ever materialize.

The short-term political benefits are clear. Senior White House officials say the deals are building momentum that will help propel the health care legislation past potential opponents in the private sector and on Capitol Hill.

Rather than running advertisements against the White House, the most influential players in the industry are inside the room negotiating with administration officials and leading lawmakers, like Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee.

“The very groups we have been talking to have been the most vocal opponents of health care reform; they are now becoming the vocal proponents for health care reform,” said Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff.

But some lawmakers said the deals, while seemingly helpful, could raise false expectations by obscuring how much the industry is demanding for its concessions.

“I’m delighted to hear that people are stepping up to help reduce costs,” said Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, who is leading the Senate health committee, “but I want to know what the ask is, and the ask sometimes can exceed the value of your cost savings.”

Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, who could provide a critical swing vote, said she had not signed on to any of the White House deals. “It’s one thing for the president to reach that agreement, but it’s another thing for Congress to reach that agreement,” Ms. Snowe said. “We have yet to evaluate what are the specifics and particulars. So it’s uncertain. It could be helpful. I just don’t know.”

As part of their deal with the White House, pharmaceutical companies say they won an agreement from Mr. Baucus to oppose efforts by House Democrats to sharply reduce what the government pays for drugs for some Medicare recipients previously covered by Medicaid.

The deal with doctors could come at a steep price: a $250 billion fix to a 12-year-old provision in federal law intended to limit the growth of Medicare reimbursements. The American Medical Association and other doctors’ groups have sought to change or repeal the provision, and they are likely to try to extract that as their price for boarding the Obama train, people tracking the negotiations said.

Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private-sector employer, agreed recently to support requiring all big companies to insure their workers. In exchange, Wal-Mart said it wanted a guarantee that the bill would not “create barriers to hiring entry-level employees” — in effect, code words to insist that lawmakers abandon the idea of requiring employers to pay part of the cost for workers covered by Medicaid, the government insurance plan for the poor.

“It’s kind of a give-and-take, quid pro quo kind of environment,” said Tom Daschle, President Obama’s first choice for health secretary, who remains in touch with the White House on health care issues. “I think that the stakeholders wouldn’t do this if they didn’t think there was something in it for them.”

But, Mr. Daschle said, there is something in it for Congress and the White House, too: By getting on board early, groups like the drug makers and hospitals will be “owners of this process, and as owners they have to continue to defend it and support it.”

Both Have Blood On Their Hands

You Can't Always Get What You Want: The Central Issue In Health Care Reform We're Not Debating

Though this Wash Post story uses the emotionally loaded word "rationing" it is a foundational principle of capitalism that not everyone can get what they want or need; just what they can afford.  So how come the notion of a capitalist society putting limits on health care is something so beyond the pale, we can't even discuss rational ways to do it? After all, health care rationing occurs right now, it's just done in a haphazard, unfair way (just ask any of the 47 million uninsured).

The question came from a Colorado neurologist. "Mr. President," he said at a recent forum, "what can you do to convince the American public that there actually are limits to what we can pay for with our American health-care system? And if there are going to be limits, who . . . is going to enforce the rules for a system like that?"

President Obama called it the "right question" -- then failed to answer it. This was not surprising: The query is emerging as the ultimate challenge in reining in health-care costs that now consume $2.5 trillion per year, or 16 percent of the economy. How will tough decisions be made about what to spend money on? In a country where "rationing" is a dirty word, who will say no?

The question permeates all levels of medicine: the use of tests that many argue are unnecessary (U.S. doctors order five times as many MRIs as doctors do in Germany); how early to intervene with common conditions such as heart disease and prostate cancer; how aggressively to treat patients nearing their life's end.

Although Obama and his advisers have held up providers' spending patterns as the crux of the crisis, proposals in Washington go only so far in addressing the thorniest questions about who gets what care. Instead, cost-saving measures are focused on introducing a public insurance option to compete with private insurers, or on general cuts in Medicare and Medicaid payments to hospitals.

The bills being written would put new emphasis on evaluating treatments according to their "comparative effectiveness," or weighing the risks and benefits of different types of treatment for the same illness, but the bills stop short of incorporating cost-benefit analyses into the findings or of requiring that providers abide by conclusions ...

"The questions of who gets what, these difficult choices . . . really are not posed in the current health reform legislation," said Drew E. Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. "The challenge," he said, "is us, the American people: We want the latest and the best, and we want it now."

The Democrats' caution has not kept Republicans from accusing them of embracing rationing. They raise the specter of the British agency, which goes by the acronym NICE, that decides whether that country's nationalized health-care system will pay for items such as costly cancer drugs that extend lives a few months on average.

"You're going to be saying to people, 'We're not going to care for you, because we've decided it's too expensive to care for you,' " said Robert E. Moffit of the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.

Others retort that the United States already has rationing: The uninsured and under-insured do not get the care they need. "We're already doing it," said Stanford University epidemiologist Randall Stafford. "We're just doing it in such way that it doesn't service societal interests."

But reformers are clearly spooked by the notion that they could be accused of denying, for example, hip surgery to an 80-year-old. In recent months, a federal panel has held hearings on how to spend $1.1 billion in economic stimulus money allocated for comparative effectiveness research. At each hearing, representatives of providers, industry and patient groups praised the research -- but then demanded that cost not factor into the eventual findings.

Scott Wallace, a Bush administration official who is now the Batten Fellow at University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, said factoring cost into treatment decisions would create the same backlash that HMOs encountered in the 1990s. "A mother of five with cancer wins against any rationing scheme ever created," he said.

Keith Olbermann On Michael Scheuer Wanting An Al Qaeda Attack While Glenn Beck Nods Idiotically

New Regulations On “Speculative” Energy Trading Coming

From the NY Times (also see New Regulations On Food Safety Coming):

Reacting to the violent swings in oil prices in recent months, federal regulators announced on Tuesday that they were considering new restrictions on “speculative” traders in markets for oil, natural gas and other energy products.

The move is a big departure from the hands-off approach to market regulation of the last two decades. It also highlights a broader shift toward tougher government oversight under President Obama.

Since Mr. Obama took office, the Justice Department has stepped up antitrust enforcement activities, abandoning many legal doctrines adopted by the Bush administration.

The Obama administration is also proposing an overhaul of financial regulation that would include tougher capital requirements for big banks, tighter regulation of hedge funds and a new consumer protection agency with broad power to regulate credit cards, mortgages and other consumer lending.

In the case of oil and gas trading, regulators made it clear that they were willing to move, without waiting for Congress to act on Mr. Obama’s overhaul, invoking their existing powers.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said it would consider imposing volume limits on trading of energy futures by purely financial investors and that it already has adopted tougher information requirements aimed at identifying the role of hedge funds and traders who swap contracts outside of regulated exchanges like the New York Mercantile Exchange ...

Much of Mr. Gensler’s announcement was focused on precise issues well within his agency’s authority, suggesting that he was serious about seeking changes. But his proposals could encounter fierce opposition from big banks and Wall Street firms, which are each big traders in the commodity markets and manage big investment funds focused on commodities ...

“It is the regulatory authority’s business to make sure the markets work,” said Edward L. Morse, head of research at LCM Commodities, a brokerage in New York. “If there’s a lesson of that last few years, it’s that the markets haven’t been functioning as well as they should have been.”

Analysts said regulators face huge challenges in distinguishing normal volatility, which is always high during a chaotic economic period, from speculative swings propelled by investors seeking purely financial gains who end up distorting energy prices.

Mr. Gensler appears focused on two basic goals. The first is to limit the volume of trading by purely financial investors, the “speculators,” as opposed to businesses like airlines or oil companies that consume or produce oil and want to minimize their exposure to big changes in price. But according to data compiled by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, other noncommercial traders accounted for almost one-fifth of the activity in several major oil and gas products for June.

The government already imposes speculative limits on agricultural commodities like corn and wheat. But for energy products, the limits are left to exchanges like the New York Mercantile Exchange. Mr. Gensler said the limits that have been set in the past have never been aimed at reducing speculative excesses, and financial traders often receive exemptions.

The government’s second goal is to shed more light on who the players really are.

The commission also announced that it will pull back part of the veil on the oil and gas markets, publishing much more detailed information about the aggregate activity of hedge funds and tapping into new information about traders who swap energy contracts outside of traditional exchanges.

Mr. Gensler’s proposals are likely to be opposed by the banks and Wall Street firms that arrange swap contracts in the commodity markets and operate funds that invest in commodities.

More Palin Cartoons

 

New Regulations On Food Safety Coming

From the Wash Post (also see New Regulations On “Speculative” Energy Trading Coming):

The Obama administration took its first step yesterday toward overhauling food safety regulations that have been blamed for a steady stream of food recalls and related illnesses.

The new proposals, recommended by a working group that President Obama created in March, emphasize prevention, enforcement and improving the government's response time to such incidents.

"There are few responsibilities more basic or more important for the government than making sure the food our families eat is safe," Vice President Biden said at a White House news conference, where he was joined by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. "American families have enough to worry about today. They should not have [food safety] as a concern."

Fears about food safety have been spurred by outbreaks of salmonella and E. coli illness from products as varied as peanuts, spinach, tomatoes, pistachios, peppers and, most recently, cookie dough.

Fifteen federal agencies oversee food inspections in a complex and sometimes bizarre division of labor: The Food and Drug Administration is responsible for produce, while the Agriculture Department is responsible for meat. Cheese pizzas are inspected by the FDA, while pepperoni pies go to the USDA.

The administration outlined a variety of measures yesterday to prevent the spread of salmonella, a bacterium that causes more than 1 million illnesses each year in the United States.

Among them is a final rule, issued by the FDA, to reduce the contamination in eggs. About 142,000 Americans are infected each year with Salmonella enteritidis from eggs, the result of an infected hen passing along the bacterium. About 30 die.

The FDA will now require that egg producers test regularly for salmonella and buy chicks from suppliers who do the same. Eggs, which must be refrigerated by wholesalers and retail stores, will have to be refrigerated on the farm and during shipment, as well. About half the egg industry is following similar guidelines voluntarily.

The agency said that will help reduce the number of related food-borne illnesses by an estimated 79,000 a year, or about 60 percent. The new requirements will cost producers about $81 million a year, and add about 1 cent to the cost of a dozen eggs, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said. Sebelius said it will save the nation about $1.4 billion a year in medical expenses ... 

Both agencies also announced plans to tackle E. coli. FSIS will step up enforcement at meat processing plants and increase sampling that tests for the pathogen, especially in ground beef. By the end of the month, the FDA, which is responsible for fresh produce, will issue guidance on ways to reduce contamination in the production and distribution of tomatoes, melons and leafy greens ...

On the whole, food safety advocates were pleased with the new initiatives. "We are coming out of a phase, just like in the financial sector, where the government was loath to regulate," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director for the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest. "Tougher controls earlier in the food chain will result in fewer recalls and fewer outbreaks."

Bill Marler, a longtime food safety litigator who writes a blog about the issue, said: "Part of the problem with how we currently deal with food-borne illness cases is we wait until people get sick and die, and then we announce an outbreak. It seems that the focus here is a bit on preventing it before we have sick and dead people, as opposed to counting the bodies after salmonella or E. coli is out of the barn."

Gallup Polls On Obama, Sarah's Future, & Americans Becoming (Sort Of) More Conservative

Before we get to the main poll, here's an interesting one released just today:

Obama Averages 61% Job Approval in June

U.S. President Barack Obama averaged a 61% job approval rating for the month of June, down from his 65% average in May, and one point below his previous monthly low of 62%, recorded in March ...

Republicans account for most of the change in Obama's approval ratings from January through June, with their approval shifting downward from 40% in January to 25% today. Most of the change among Republicans came between January and March; Republicans' assessments of Obama have stayed fairly stable since.

Then, this poll released yesterday tends to bolster the next poll below and shows once again how wrong the CW can be:

Many Americans Still See Political Future for Palin

Four in 10 U.S. voters say they would be very (19%) or somewhat likely (24%) to vote for Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for president in 2012. After her resignation last week, 70% say their views of Palin have not changed and 53% describe media coverage of her as “unfairly negative.” ...

Palin's abrupt resignation with 18 months left in her first term as governor has probably raised more questions than answers about her political future. But the move has apparently not affected Americans' basic opinions of her to a large degree. As political observers eagerly await her next career move, roughly 19% of U.S. voters say they would be very likely to vote for her should she run for president in 2012, and another 24% say they would be somewhat likely to do so. While still the minority of all voters, it is perhaps not a bad start for an election still three years away, and arguably could put Palin in a better starting position than some of the lesser-known GOP candidates who may also seek the party's presidential nomination.

Finally, from the progressive perspective, a somewhat sobering poll released on July 6th (read the whole thing to get the complete, complicated picture):

Ideologically, Where Is the U.S. Moving?

Nearly 4 in 10 Americans say their views have grown more conservative

Despite the results of the 2008 presidential election, Americans, by a 2-to-1 margin, say their political views in recent years have become more conservative rather than more liberal, 39% to 18%, with 42% saying they have not changed. While independents and Democrats most often say their views haven't changed, more members of all three major partisan groups indicate that their views have shifted to the right rather than to the left.

These findings, from a June 14-17 Gallup Poll, somewhat conform to Gallup's annual trends on Americans' self-defined political ideology. Thus far in 2009 (from January through May), 40% of Americans call themselves conservative, up from 37% in 2007 and 2008, and the highest level since 2004.

However, the results are conspicuously incongruous with the results of the 2008 elections, in which the Democratic Party won the White House for the first time in eight years, and increased its majority control in the U.S. House and Senate. Rather than suggesting an upturn in conservatism, the elections, the tattered image of the GOP, depressed identification with the Republican Party, and President Obama's broad popularity have many in and outside of the Republican Party wondering whether the country has outgrown the GOP's largely conservative platform.

Conservatives currently outnumber liberals in the population, and thus, conservatism has a natural advantage on any question asking the public to choose between these standard ideological labels. So that's part of the explanation for the incongruity.

Indeed, in the latest survey, 38% of Americans describe their political views as conservative, and among this group 58% say their views have grown more conservative in recent years. Although a large segment of liberals (42%) say they have become more liberal, far fewer Americans in the poll (18%) describe themselves as liberal -- thus providing little counterweight to the rightward movement of conservatives. At the same time, political moderates are twice as likely to say they have grown more conservative as opposed to more liberal (33% vs. 18%), thus further tipping the scales in favor of conservatism.

Americans' Views, Now vs. 2004

While it is valuable to know how Americans perceive their own ideological development, another means for evaluating such change is to assess how public opinion may have shifted on specific issues over the years.

Uighur Update

China Clamps Down on Uighurs:

Muslim States 'Silent' on Uighurs, from Al Jazeera:

A leading Uighur rights activist has criticised Muslim-majority countries for not speaking out against decades of alleged repression and persecution from the Chinese government.

Speaking in Washington on Monday, Rebiya Kadeer, a businesswoman who was jailed for years in China before being released into exile in the US, hit out at what she said was decades of "brutal suppression" of Muslims in China's western Xinjiang region.

Speaking after a day of unrest in Xinjiang left at least 150 people dead, Kadeer pointed to the lack of response from Muslim countries to the violence and the situation faced by the Uighurs.

"Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and a number of other Muslim countries as well as the central Asian states like Kazakhstan Kurdistan and Uzbekistan - they all deported Uighurs who had fled Chinese persecution for peacefully opposing Chinese rule, for writing something, for speaking something," she said.

"Those sent back to China were either killed or sentenced to life in jail."

She said the lack of action from Muslim countries contrasted with support given by other governments.

"Our only friend is in the West - Western democracies are supporting us and we are very grateful," Kadeeer, who heads the World Uighur Congress, told reporters.

"We certainly hope that more Muslim countries will raise our situation."

Cartoons On Obama's Initiatives

Health Insurance Inc:

Obama's Energy Bill:

 

Bipartisanship:

Health Care Makes Obama's Primary Modus Operandi Clear: Find Common Ground

There are two reasons why I've been paying such close attention to Obama's push for health care reform. The primary one has to do with fundamental rights and fairness: health care is a right and allowing 47 million people to go without is a crime against our nation's founding beliefs (safeguarding one's health is an obvious foundational element to "life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness." After all, being sick jeopardizes all three).

The second reason has to do with what I've been emphasizing in A Blue View as Obama's pragmatic streak, desire to be effectual and belief that perfection is the enemy of the good. I have just finished reading Richard Wolffe's excellent new book Renegade: The Making of a President, and his account of the 2008 campaign has given me a new perspective on Barack Obama.  I now realize that he is not driven so much by pragmatism but by a desire to reach common ground. Pragmatism often implies a willingness to give up on your principles, that the only thing that matters is winning. When you reach common ground with opponents, on the other hand, you don't so much weaken your principles as strengthen the ones you and your opponents share. 

And this is what Obama has done time and again.  Whether it be his recent abortion speech before Notre Dame or his controversial-during-the-campaign willingness to engage with foreign adversaries Barack Obama truly strives to find common ground.

As Chris Crillizza wrote in May:

Obama's governing style provides a sharp contrast to the two men who preceded him. President Bill Clinton spent much of his time in office triangulating -- playing himself off of members of his own party to accomplish his goals. And, President George W. Bush campaigned on his record of bipartisan accomplishments but wound up defined by a sort of cowboy diplomacy that shrugged off doubts and concerns by insisting on the rightness of his positions ...

The strand that runs from Obama's years at Harvard to his work as a community organizer to his time in the state legislature, according to Jim Margolis is "an ability to bridge -- to bridge race, to bridge ideological divides, to bridge partisan politics, to bridge the 'loud voices'."

And this is very evident in his drive to reform health care. First he got cigarette manufacturers to come to the table and cut a deal, then the pharmaceutical lobby, followed by the senior lobby and now, according to the NY Times the Hospital industry is about to find some common ground on reform:

The Obama administration and major hospital associations on Monday evening were nearing a deal for about $150 billion in cost savings to help pay for an overhaul of the nation’s health care system, with an announcement expected at the White House as early as Wednesday, officials said.

If an agreement is finalized, it would be the latest step in an on-going effort by the White House to win concessions from major health industry groups to help pay for legislation aimed at providing health insurance to all Americans. Democrats are hoping to keep the cost of the overhaul at about $1 trillion over 10 years ...

In addition to controlling costs and helping Mr. Obama achieve his goal of providing coverage to more than 40 million uninsured Americans, the administration’s tentative agreements with drug companies and providers, including hospitals and doctors, are also intended to bring pressure on the private health insurance industry ...

And the White House budget director, Peter R. Orszag, had said that $110 billion in savings could be achieved by pressing hospitals to treat patients more effectively, using health information technology and better coordination of care that would reduce the need for expensive specialists.

“Discussions are on-going,” said Jennifer Armstrong Gay, a spokeswoman for the American Hospital Association, one of the groups involved in the talks. “We are continuing to meet with Congress and the White House.”

What Is The Protesting & Bloodshed In China About?

Change Comes To US - Russian Relations

From the Wash Post:

President Obama called for a new relationship between the United States and Russia Tuesday, saying that the frequent rivals could both prosper by joining forces to combat common threats and pursue mutual interests.

The modern scourges of stateless terrorism and nuclear proliferation threaten both the United States and Russia, Obama said, demanding that the two nations shed past suspicions and confront those problems as partners.

"There is the 20th-century view that the United States and Russia are destined to be antagonists, and that a strong Russia or a strong America can only assert themselves in opposition to one another," Obama said. "And there is a 19th-century view that we are destined to vie for spheres of influence, and that great powers must forge competing blocs to balance one another. These assumptions are wrong."

Addressing a graduation ceremony of the New Economic School, an independent graduate school founded in 1992 by Russian economists in collaboration with Western partners, Obama said that in the 21st century, the United States does not benefit from a weak Russia.

"The pursuit of power is no longer a zero-sum game," he said. "Progress must be shared," he said.

But even as Obama called for greater cooperation with Russia, a day after announcing an agreement in principle with Russian President Dimitry A. Medvedev to cut American and Russian nuclear arsenals, the U.S. president raised issues that continue to be sources of friction between Moscow and Washington.

He said the United States is committed to "universal values," including freedom of speech, an independent press, and competitive elections -- values that he said promote peace and stability. They are also values that, many critics say, Russia routinely ignores or suppresses. Obama invoked his own example as the nation's first African American president to underscore his point.

"Competitive elections allow us to change course and hold our leaders accountable. If our democracy did not advance those rights, I -- as a person of African ancestry -- wouldn't be able to address you as an American citizen, much less a president," he said.

Obama also said modern times require countries to respect the sovereignty of other countries. "That is true for Russia, just as it is true for the United States," he said. " Any system that cedes those rights will lead to anarchy. That is why this principle must apply to all nations -- including Georgia and Ukraine."...

Aides described Obama's speech as part of a series of addresses aimed at articulating his foreign policy vision around the world. The others were an April speech in Prague, where Obama set a long-term goal of eliminating nuclear weapons; and a speech in Cairo in June, in which he tried to bridge divisions with the Islamic world. In Ghana on Saturday, Obama is expected to give an address laying out his ideas for the developing world.

Sen. Reid Welcomes Al Franken To The Senate

Here's the NY Times' account:

“I’m ready to get to work, thank you,” Mr. Franken said in a sober monotone on Monday after posing for photographs with Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader. That was about as much of a knee-slapper as Mr. Franken told, at least in public.

“Oh yes, we laughed,” Mr. Reid said in a brief interview after a 20-minute meeting with Mr. Franken, a former “Saturday Night Live” performer and writer. Asked what they laughed about, Mr. Reid drew a blank. “Hmm,” he said, pausing for about 10 seconds. “I don’t really remember. But he’s a funny guy, as you’d expect.”

You would just never see, at least not these days. Mr. Franken, who last week was declared the winner of a marathon recount and legal battle against Norm Coleman, a Republican, has vowed to be a work horse, not a show horse. He is not granting interviews to non-Minnesota news organizations. He is determined, he says, to pull his weight and not seek undue attention.

The “work horse, show horse” vow gets trotted out a lot by new senators, particularly those whose celebrity bona fides precede them. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her Senate staff said it all the time when she was first elected to the Senate in 2000. So did Barack Obama and his staff — at least before he became a thoroughbred presidential candidate.

Mr. Franken had ample time to practice not getting too far ahead of things while he waited out the recount.

Toles Nails It Again

Senate Could Water Down Climate Bill Due To Regional More Than Ideological Diffs

From the Wash Post:

President Obama's climate-change legislation begins a daunting march through the Senate this week, with supporters acknowledging they are as many as 15 votes shy of victory and well aware that deals to attract more votes could erode the bill's environment-friendly objectives.

Senators will weigh a slew of potential compromises -- everything from allowing more offshore drilling for oil and natural gas to increasing funding for nuclear energy -- that they think would inch the package closer to passage. But environmental activists warn that the 1,400-page House version of the bill already includes so many giveaways to corporate America that more horse-trading in the Senate could lead them to oppose the final version ...

The political realities of the Senate, where supermajorities of at least 60 votes are needed for practically any major piece of legislation, are weighing heavily on the chamber's leaders as they push to pass some version of the bill before the end of the year.

"As a legislator, everything is negotiable,"  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in an interview yesterday.

Reid has tasked a handful of committee chairs with completing their portions of the legislation by Sept. 18, at which point he hopes to cobble together the pieces and get the package to the floor late in the fall. As outlined, the bill would create a "cap-and-trade" system placing the first national limit on greenhouse-gas emissions, gradually tightening those limits over the next four decades with a goal of reducing emissions 83 percent by 2050. Major emitters of greenhouse gases -- including any business that burns fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas or coal -- would have to reduce their emissions or buy allowances, which would be traded on markets like commodities.

As of today, Reid can count on the support of about 40 to 45 senators for that basic premise, according to aides and outside activists backing the legislation. Supporters are targeting a pool of roughly two dozen lawmakers -- including about 15 of Reid's Democrats -- who will determine the legislation's fate.

The battle ahead differs from many on Capitol Hill in that ideology is considered to be less influential than geography. Even some of the chamber's most liberal members have resisted signing on as they await the best deal possible for key industries in their states.

Democrats from the Rust Belt states of West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan are pushing for more incentives to help their depressed industries shift to alternative energy sources. The same senators also will likely want more funding for carbon capture and sequestration, a controversial and still-evolving technology described by its developers as "clean coal" but derided by many environmentalists. The technology is already slated for $10 billion in government-funded research in legislation that passed the House. A trio of Democrats from the Dakotas want more funding for wind power.

 Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) won approval in the energy committee last month for the inclusion of new exploration for oil and natural gas as close as 45 miles off of Florida's coast on the Gulf of Mexico. That measure might help attract moderate Democrats and some Republicans, but it would almost certainly lose the vote of  Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who has regularly vowed to help filibuster any bill that brings drilling within the current limit of 125 miles.

Even after making additional compromises to win over wavering Democrats, Reid could find himself a few votes short and desperately searching for Republican support. Maine's moderate Republicans,  Sens. Susan Collins and  Olympia Snowe, are the only likely GOP backers of the legislation at this point, and if Obama needs more Republicans, he may have to authorize Reid to give in for more funding for the construction of the nation's first new nuclear power plants in a generation. The environmental lobby has rigorously opposed any new nuclear plants, but several GOP senators, including  Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) and  John McCain (Ariz.), have made their case that nuclear power is the best for cleaning the skies of carbon emissions.

The narrow 219 to 213 victory on June 26 in the House has given Senate backers some level of hope, despite the concessions they might be forced into accepting. "I am very optimistic. As a legislator and a chairman, I don't deal in hypotheticals, I don't think negatively. I think positively, especially after the House vote,"  Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairman of the environment committee, said yesterday.

Some outside activists supporting the bill are taking a wait-and-see approach, acknowledging that they cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Sarah Palin Political Cartoons

As predicted earlier, there are lots of these out there ...

   

 

 

 

   

"A Case Study Of The Way Government Mandates Can Spur Innovation"

This NY Times report both refutes tired GOP complaints about government mandates and nicely complements my earlier post on the wisdom of compact fluorescent bulbs:

When Congress passed a new energy law two years ago, obituaries were written for the incandescent light bulb. The law set tough efficiency standards, due to take effect in 2012, that no traditional incandescent bulb on the market could meet, and a century-old technology that helped create the modern world seemed to be doomed.

But as it turns out, the obituaries were premature.

Researchers across the country have been racing to breathe new life into Thomas Edison’s light bulb, a pursuit that accelerated with the new legislation. Amid that footrace, one company is already marketing limited quantities of incandescent bulbs that meet the 2012 standard, and researchers are promising a wave of innovative products in the next few years.

Indeed, the incandescent bulb is turning into a case study of the way government mandates can spur innovation.

“There’s a massive misperception that incandescents are going away quickly,” said Chris Calwell, a researcher with Ecos Consulting who studies the bulb market. “There have been more incandescent innovations in the last three years than in the last two decades.”

The first bulbs to emerge from this push, Philips Lighting’s Halogena Energy Savers, are expensive compared with older incandescents. They sell for $5 apiece and more, compared with as little as 25 cents for standard bulbs.

But they are also 30 percent more efficient than older bulbs. Philips says that a 70-watt Halogena Energy Saver gives off the same amount of light as a traditional 100-watt bulb and lasts about three times as long, eventually paying for itself.

The line, for now sold exclusively at Home Depot and on Amazon.com, is not as efficient as compact fluorescent light bulbs, which can use 75 percent less energy than old-style bulbs. But the Energy Saver line is finding favor with consumers who dislike the light from fluorescent bulbs or are bothered by such factors as their slow start-up time and mercury content ...

For lighting researchers involved in trying to save the incandescent bulb, the goal is to come up with one that matches the energy savings of fluorescent bulbs while keeping the qualities that many consumers seem to like in incandescents, like the color of the light and the ease of using them with dimmers.

“Due to the 2007 federal energy bill that phases out inefficient incandescent light bulbs beginning in 2012, we are finally seeing a race” to develop more efficient ones, said Noah Horowitz, senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Some of the leading work is under way at a company called Deposition Sciences here in Santa Rosa. Its technology is a key component of the new Philips bulb line.

Normally, only a small portion of the energy used by an incandescent bulb is converted into light, while the rest is emitted as heat. Deposition Sciences applies special reflective coatings to gas-filled capsules that surround the bulb’s filament. The coatings act as a sort of heat mirror that bounces heat back to the filament, where it is transformed to light.

Sen Grassley Tells Iowan "go work for the federal government" For Affordable Insurance

Sen. Grassley held a town meeting in Waukon Iowa on June 30, 2009. A constituent shared his family's personal struggle with the burden of high health care costs and asked the Senator why he couldn't get quality, affordable health insurance like Senators get. Senator Grassley advised his constituent to "go work for the federal government" if he wanted quality insurance.

This Summer: Obama's Testing Time

From EJ Dione:

As President Obama confronts his testing time this summer, he holds major assets but faces deep tensions within his governing coalition. This will force him to make hard choices earlier than he might have preferred.

His assets include steady affection from a large majority of the country, a political base as solid as the one that allowed Ronald Reagan to govern effectively even through slides in his popularity, and a weak Republican Party whose support is confined to the right end of the political spectrum.

At the same time, Obama will be called upon to manage growing friction within his majority between its large progressive core and its less ideological fringes.

For progressives, the president's long-term political well-being depends on delivering tangible benefits to middle-class voters in areas such as health care, education and financial security, even at the risk of temporarily higher budget deficits.

Many of his moderate supporters worry about those deficits and express more skepticism than progressives do about government's capacity to bring about change. Yet the attitudes toward government held by Obama's middle-of-the-road sympathizers are characterized not by the hostility that animates conservatives but by ambivalence and uncertainty.

On no issue will these tensions be as important, or as difficult, to resolve as on health care.

While moderates in the Senate press for a less robust approach to reform, progressives fear the impact of conceding too much ground. Such accommodations, they believe, would create a health plan that still required politically painful tax increases but delivered too few tangible gains to the middle-income Americans looking to Obama to improve their situations.

The danger is that the political center in Congress -- particularly in the Senate -- is not the same as the political center in the country. For example, while some moderate Democrats express skepticism about including a government option as one choice within a reformed health-care system, many recent polls have shown broad support for such a public plan.

Barack Obama Joins Hall Of Presidents At Disney's Magic Kingdom

Sunday Afternoon Relaxation

New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less

Judis Has Got This Right: "Don’t listen to Obama"

From John Judis:

Hmmm.  North Carolina Democratic Senator Kay Hagan had expressed skepticism about a public option being included in the Democrats’ health insurance proposals.  Then the advocacy group Moveon.org said they would run ads criticizing her over the July fourth weekend. Then Hagan announced that she is supporting the public option. That’s a pretty clear victory for Moveon.org and for a healthcare initiative that President Barack Obama has repeatedly backed.

Yet, Obama is now urging Moveon.org and other liberal advocacy groups to stop attacking Democrats who oppose measures like the public option, or the employee free-choice act that he favors.  He wants them to devote themselves to attacking Republicans.  I have some advice for these groups: don’t listen to Obama.  And I have some advice for the White House: quietly pass the word to these groups that you appreciate what they are doing.

Explicit Anti-Semitism On Iranian TV (#iranelection)

Tom & Jerry Is A Jewish Conspiracy, from a seminar broadcast on Iranian TV on 2/19/2006:

Harry Potter and the Zionist-Hollywood Conspiracy, broadcast on the Iranian News channel on 12/15/08:

Obama’s Youthful Ideals Shaped His Nuclear-Free Vision

The agenda he's going to be pursuing on this trip to Russia this week, has been a long time in the making according to the NY Times:

No previous American president has set out a step-by-step agenda for the eventual elimination of nuclear arms. Mr. Obama is starting relatively small, using a visit to Russia that starts Monday to advance an intense negotiation, with a treaty deadline of the year’s end, to reduce the arsenals of the nuclear superpowers to roughly 1,500 warheads each, from about 2,200. In an interview on Saturday, Mr. Obama, conscious of his critics, stressed that “I’ve made clear that we will retain our deterrent capacity as long as there is a country with nuclear weapons.”

But reducing arsenals, he insisted, would be the first step toward giving the United States and a growing body of allies the power to remake the nuclear world. Among the goals: halting weapons programs in North Korea and Iran, discouraging states from abandoning the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and ending global production of fuel for nuclear arms, a step sure to upset Pakistan, India and Israel.

Even before those battles are joined, opposition is rising. “This is dangerous, wishful thinking,” Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, and Richard Perle, an architect of the Reagan-era nuclear buildup that appalled Mr. Obama as an undergraduate, wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal. They contend that Mr. Obama is, indeed, a naïf for assuming that “the nuclear ambitions of Kim Jong-il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be curtailed or abandoned in response to reductions in the American and Russian deterrent forces.”

In the interview, the president described his agenda as the best way to move forward in a turbulent world.

“It’s naïve for us to think,” he said, “that we can grow our nuclear stockpiles, the Russians continue to grow their nuclear stockpiles, and our allies grow their nuclear stockpiles, and that in that environment we’re going to be able to pressure countries like Iran and North Korea not to pursue nuclear weapons themselves.”

Realist or dreamer, Mr. Obama has an interest in global denuclearization that arises from what can best be described as a lost chapter of his life. Though he has written two memoirs, he has volunteered few details about his two years at Columbia.

“People assume he’s a novice,” said Michael L. Baron, who taught Mr. Obama in a Columbia seminar on international politics and American policy around the time he wrote the Sundial article. “He’s been thinking about these issues for a long time." <Continue reading.>