From Pine View Farm

Shaun Mullen considers what he calls “worst Supreme Court ruling since the Dred Scott decision.”

Everything loose rolls to California.

Via Will Bunch.

As I have mentioned, there has been much gnashing of teeth amongst some Lefties because President Obama hasn’t turned out to be a fierce fighter for things that are politically impossible. (He is subject to wrath which, by rights, belongs to the U. S. Senate, which has turned inertness into an art installation.)

Much of this results from projection. President Obama’s campaign slogan was “change.”

Persons have poured into to that word whatever they wanted without paying attention to what he actually said.

Lefties poured into it, among other things,

• single-payer healthcare (which I support but which he said during the campaign was, in his opinion, a non-starter),
• withdrawal from Iraq (which he promised and is working on),
• closing that symbol of shame, the prison at Guantanamo (which he is working on but which I think he should have just done, and done quickly, so that it was fait accompli),
• withdrawal from Afghanistan (which would be directly counter to what he said during his campaign, desirable though it may have become–I certainly would like to see my son withdrawn).

Righties, deciding he is a scary black man, poured into it from their own paranoia a bunch of stuff which I won’t even attempt to list. In their construct, he is, rather than a slightly to the left of center middle-of-the-road American pol, an amalgam of Abbie Hoffman, Karl Marx, Albert Schweitzer, and Che Guevara from another planet in some kind of parallel universe.

Now, some lefties, because he hasn’t done stuff he didn’t promise and is fighting a calcified Senate to do what he did promise, have been, dumping on him. (Where they get the idea that the way to get stuff done is to dump on their friends is beyond me. Mithras expresses my puzzlement succintly. John Cole dissects the illogic of it deftly.)

Certainly, I did and do support President Obama, but I did and do not delude myself into thinking that we agrees on lots of stuff. I wouldn’t have his job for the world and I’m glad he wanted it.

And given the track record of Republicans (and anyone who thinks that track record would change if they got back in is from LalaLand–I want to gag everytime I hear Republicans fulminate about “fiscal responsibility,” as if they would know a responsible fiscal if it bit them), I would have voted for a dead rat had it headed the Democratic ticket.

And, honestly, what you really rather have President McMaverick and Vice President Beyond the Palin?

Much of the discontent on the left goes back to not blanking listening to Obama the candidate in the first place (and the rest goes back to forgetting that successful progressive change in America has almost always been fiercely and unrelentingly fought by them what has).

Patrick Frank, a Facebook friend and a friend on Facebook, in a comment in a Facebook conversation, described what Obama meant when he talked of change as well as anyone I’ve read (quoted with permission):

“A lot of the change Obama was talking about had to do with ending the bitter partisanship in DC and around the country and bringing people of good will together to solve problems. With the rise of the neo-fascist tea bag movement, as well as some on the left who see compromise as sellout, we see schism actually on the rise, as opposed to receding. (others may disagree with this analysis)…This widening gulf is deeply unsettling to many Americans…That’s my take…More later…”

And, by God, President Obama has tried mightily to accomplish this change, the change of which he spoke. But Republicans have no interest in “bringing people of good will together to solve problems.”

No mistake: the partisanship in Washington comes from the Republican side of the aisle and to the extent it has grown on the Left, it has done so in reaction to the Right.

Governmental dysfunction: it’s a Republican thing.

I’m pretty much a civil liberties abolutist (give to the ACLU here), so I must say that this is wrong.

Delightful, but wrong.

Via TPM.

I toyed with blogging about this and got distracted by the local rally for health care.

Now, Karen has saved me the trouble of thinking about what to say.

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Bill Shein foresees the future:

April 1, 2010 – The Supreme Court has granted corporations the right to marry, noting that marriage is a “fundamental right for all non-gay persons.” Almost immediately, longtime partners Walmart Stores and China Plastic Junk ‘n’ Stuff, Inc. announced plans to wed – and not via a “second-class” merger or stock-swap. Instead, a full-fledged marriage ceremony will be held on a seaside bluff in Carmel, California. Bride Walmart will reportedly wear black.

Follow the link for the rest of the predictions.

More on the Trijicon gun sight fuss:

Last November, the University of Chicago published a study quantifying the blazingly obvious: people tend to create God in their own image, to ascribe to the deity their own opinions, interests and beliefs. But is that really faith, when you reduce God to a bigger version of you?

Mother Teresa’s faith drove her to foreswear material riches and spend half a century working to uplift the wretched poor of Calcutta.

Martin Luther King’s faith drove him to gamble his very life in a dangerous campaign to win human and civil rights for African-American people.

And then there’s Glyn Bindon (founder of Trijicon–ed.), whose faith led him to inscribe coded Bible verses on his gun sights.

From Thoreau at Unqualified Offerings:

Why do they hate America?

Not just in Canada. (In fact, hardly in Canada except for certain elective or non-emergency surgery.)

The state’s (California’s) so-called timely access rules went into effect over the weekend after an eight-year delay during which doctors, health plans and consumer groups quibbled over details.

“It’s a big victory for California consumers. These are groundbreaking consumer protections for them to get the care they need when they need it,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California.

Under the new rules, HMO physicians must see a patient who requests an appointment within 10 days. Specialists have 15 days. Urgent-care patients must be seen within 48 hours.

(snip)

Today, the average wait to see a general practitioner for a physical is 20 days in some of the state’s large cities, according to a report last year by the market research firm Merritt Hawkins and Associates. In Los Angeles, the usual wait was 59 days.

This should be interesting:

Iraq has begun collecting signatures for a class action lawsuit on behalf of people killed or wounded in incidents involving US security firm Blackwater.

It will seek compensation for a number of such cases, the office of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said.

Incidents include the 2007 killing of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square.

Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar in the Philadelphia Shrinquirer. Read the whole thing.

Equally disturbing, however, are the prophets of fear who have taken to the airwaves to tell us that the rule of law is a luxury we can no longer afford. That’s a formula for destroying America to save it.

The struggle against terrorism will take years. We need to set aside partisan scare tactics and think strategically about weakening the terrorists without weakening ourselves by resorting to lawlessness, cruelty, and revenge – which have short-term political appeal but are ultimately self-defeating.

Particularly self-defeating is the assertion that the U.S. justice system isn’t up to handling terrorists, and that ad hoc military commissions in Guantanamo Bay are better for the job. In fact, the reverse is true.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

. . . the biggest nothing.

The cost of silence, the price of speech.

Teacherken.

Rewrite, Republican style (emphasis added):

In the end, though, the brain trust – such as it is – of the Republican party wouldn’t be attempting to re-write recent history if their focus groups and polls didn’t show that truthiness pays political dividends. Shortly after Perino’s comments, polls showed voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on issues of national security and that 63% of voters think that “political correctness” – a refusal to disobey laws prohibiting racial profiling – was the root cause of the failure to prevent one soldier’s attack on his colleagues at Fort Hood.

Republicans have apparently decided that they can improve their standings with Americans if they can convince them, despite all evidence to the contrary, that terrorist attacks only happen when Democrats are in power. Republicans seem perfectly and increasingly happy to slough off all responsibility for the things that happened and that they caused during their watch, as long as it brings them back to power. The question for Americans ought to be what they’ll do with that power when they get it back. Last year, they weren’t so keen on keeping Republicans in power. This year, many of them seemingly know nothing about that.

There has been some light-hearted discussion about what to call the first decade of the 2000’s, since someone apparently decreed that each decade must be called something cutesy-poo.

Their have been a number of votes for the “aughts.”

The Guardian went for “the naughties,” as did, I’m sure, others.

But I think TerranceDC has nailed it with “the Uh-Ohs.”

The police always concentrate on the modus operandi. Frank Rich in the Toimes:

What we don’t know will hurt us, and quite possibly on a more devastating scale than any Qaeda attack. Americans must be told the full story of how Wall Street gamed and inflated the housing bubble, made out like bandits, and then left millions of households in ruin. Without that reckoning, there will be no public clamor for serious reform of a financial system that was as cunningly breached as airline security at the Amsterdam airport. And without reform, another massive attack on our economic security is guaranteed. Now that it can count on government bailouts, Wall Street has more incentive than ever to pump up its risks — secure that it can keep the bonanzas while we get stuck with the losses.

Mysteries are always easier when you read them back-to-front.

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Steve Bell:

It has nothing to do with security, but it makes persons feel good as they leave the airport.

Afterthought:

For those who miss the point, the dirty little secret of security is that, for all the metal detectors in the world, there is no such thing as “perfectly safe.”

Those who demand it are deluded; those who promise it, charlatans; those who believe the promises, fools.

As long as health care is a profit center, as long as care for the sick is considered “losses,” executives’ country club memberships will be more important than patients’ well-being:

About 27,000 people who buy Personal Choice health insurance directly from Independence Blue Cross rather than through an employer are facing steep increases in their premiums in March to maintain similar coverage – for some, greater than 60 percent – or are finding comparable coverage unavailable.

Despite angry complaints from policyholders, Blue Cross says the changes are necessary because of continuing losses in the Personal Choice plans. And the state Insurance Department says there is little it can do, even after it resisted a proposal last spring to raise rates for the plans by amounts ranging from 10 percent to 58 percent.

One reason: Blue Cross sidestepped the issue by withdrawing its proposed increases. Instead, it told state officials it planned to discontinue the trio of Personal Choice plans in question, which it has offered for the last two decades, and give current policyholders two new choices instead – choices many find unattractive.

Nice end run by BCBS. They took their football, went home, and came back with two new, pricier footballs.

H/T Susan for the idea.

The U. S. Chamber of Commerce is beating the drum against unions again.

The last time I looked, no union was asking for multi-million dollar bonuses and country club memberships and crying that their rights were being violated if they didn’t get them. (Living wages and health care maybe, but not multi-million dollar bonuses.)

A snippet from the Bloomberg story (emphasis added):

Companies have added anti-union videos to training programs, required employees to sit through anti-union meetings and hired outside labor-relations consultants as a pre-emptive strike against a union organizing campaign.

“The whole culture that currently allows us to be a low-cost producer while paying top wages would probably be destroyed” by the legislation, Craig Milum, president of Milum Textile Services, a Phoenix-based linen supplier, said in an interview.

The internal contradiction: If they are treating their employees so damn good, what are they afraid of?

Full disclosure: I worked in a heavily unionized industry for many years. Unionized workers are no different from any others, except maybe for the living wage thingee and the health care.

A basic lesson of labor history is this:

Management creates unions.

Sure, it’s a little teeny study, and I am suspicious of making big conclusions from little teeny studies, but . . . .

In a study conducted by University of California researchers, 16 volunteers were given a strictly controlled diet including very high levels of fructose. Another group was given the same diet but with high levels of glucose (regular sugar) replacing the fructose. Over 10 weeks, the volunteers that were given fructose produced new fat cells around their heart, liver and other digestive organs. They also showed signs of food-processing abnormalities linked to diabetes and heart disease. The control group of volunteers on the same diet, but with glucose sugar replacing fructose, did not have these problems.

Via Seeing the Forest, who muses:

All you have to do is look around to see that something has changed in the American diet. Everyone is gaining a lot of weight. It isn’t “personal responsibility” if it is systemic. You can’t blame everyone who is getting fat if everyone is getting fat at the same time.

Everyone is getting fat. Just look around.

And corporate America has never been known to let safety stand in the way of a buck. Just ask Philip Morris.

The EPA, OSHA, and the CPSC were not created as power-grabs. They were created in self-defense.

Maybe the “con” in ConAgra does indeed stand for “con.”

John Cole said this so I didn’t have to.

I stumbled on some of the coverage of yesterday’s attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane (you could tell it was “Northwest” because of the word, “Delta,” on the tail) on CNN (”Coddling Nevous Nellies”). I was channel hopping. None of the major networks was doing wall-to-walleye coverage, but CNN was covering its heart and popping nitroglycerin pills like mad.

I listened to a snippet.

The anchor was interviewing by phone one of the passengers from the plane. I don’t have the conversation verbatim, but it went something like this:

Anchor: Were you scared when it was happening?

Passenger: Not really.

Anchor: How about now, now that you’ve had a chance to think about it?

Passenger: No, not really.

I cut the television off.

The anchor’s disappointment at not being able to foment fear was thick as asphalt on a hot summer day and twice as icky.

I remember a time when Americans weren’t expected to be afraid, be very afraid, all the time.

A historical perspective. Read the whole thing.:

Once upon a time, in the good old days, Americans celebrated Christmas in their public schools. They sang hymns, hung stockings, and decorated trees. And nobody complained.

There’s just one problem with this bleak winter’s tale: It’s not true. Despite what you might hear about our contemporary “War on Christmas,” holiday celebrations have sparked dissent in American public schools for more than a century. By pretending otherwise, we miss an opportunity to teach our children something important about America.

I was in a store yesterday. A check-out clerk routinely said “Merry Christmas” to the customer ahead of me; she, in return said to the clerk, “Thank you for saying, ‘Merry Christmas.’”

I thought, “Fox News viewer,” then silently told me to STFU.

Furrfu.

Return of the Swamp Thang:

A Xe (formerly Blackwater) official told the Commission on Wartime Contracting Friday that the company has contracts for security as well as for training Afghan police and a “drug interdiction unit.” Xe is also in the running for more work in Afghanistan. The comments of Xe Vice President Fred Roitz were first reported by the Virginia Pilot.

The underlying issue is that, after years of “privatizing” military functions, such as policing, quartermastering (?), and the like, the military does not have enough people to do what needs to be done. This produced an appearance of restraint in defense spending, but no savings, as mercenaries, who are loyal to whoever signs their paycheck, took up the slack.

It was also a great strategy for hiding the actual costs of military operations, since expenditures for the mercenaries are hidden in various line items in the budgets for numerous departments, including State and the CIA, while shoveling money out the back door into the swamp, as it were, and saving nothing.

This is another example of bad (Republican) policy leading to disastrous results, with which we are now stuck.

I get mail:

The Senate’s health care bill must be killed.

It is an ungodly mess of errors, loopholes, and massive giveaways. When the American people find out what’s actually in this bill, they will revolt. Congress and President Obama have no choice but to do better for health care than this bill.

It goes on to list all the ways in which the Senate bill is not perfect, and there are many. (The full text of the email is below the fold).

All or nothing never won a battle, and this is just one battle. All or nothing (”unconditional surrender”) has won wars, but not battles.

This is the Senate bill, not the final bill; the conference committee still awaits. The odds are that the final bill won’t be much better, but, if the Senate bill is killed, nothing else will get done for the next 20 years. Killing it won’t lead to improvements; it will lead, instead, to two more decades of nothing.

It is very difficult to disenfranchise folks once they have been enfranchised. If a health care bill passes, it will enfranchise millions of persons with health care, lame though it may be. The next battle will be about improving it, not about junking it.

Ideologues are great for bringing issues forward; they aren’t very good at getting bills passed (at least not progressive ideologues; right-wing ideologues seem to have had a field day the past decade) because they tend to put purity above feasibility–that works great for engineering soap, but it doesn’t mean much in politics.

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