This Is Like Writing About Cheech and Chong But Never Mentioning Weed

The New York Times is a very serious paper whose reporters love nothing more than to really tackle the REAL issues, brows furrowed. More than any other media institution, the Times dictates both what issues get talked about, and how issues get talked about. The importance of how that paper's reporters and editors frame a debate cannot be overstated, which is why I was absolutely thrilled to wake up this morning and see this idiotic headline on the Times' website:

In Debate On Health, It's Coverage vs. Cost

The equally disappointing, yet utterly fitting and unsurprising lede reads:

"As Democrats prepare to take up health care legislation on the floor of the Senate and the House, they are facing tough choices about two competing priorities. They want people to pay affordable prices for health insurance policies, but they want those policies to offer comprehensive health benefits."

There you have it, folks. That's the false dichotomy our country has been presented with. Good Care vs Low Cost. These two outcomes, it would seem to the casual reader of the Times, are mutually exclusive--which is too bad, but we must be Adults and balance these competing forces in ways that are Best For Real Americans.

There is no mention in the article about Physicians for a National Health Program, or any of the many other single-payer system advocates out there. The PNHP lists 3 pages of the government's own studies showing how a single-payer system would almost certainly save money on the state and federal level, and, by definition, offer universal coverage. Yet there is no mention of single payer in the Times' piece, and, in a preposterous sin of omission, the public option isn't mentioned either.

Much of the article focuses on the Senate Finance Committee's bill, which will most likely not include a public option, but to write about soaring costs and individual mandates without describing how both Democratic and Republican congress-people--who have been bought by the health insurance companies--have attempted to torpedo an alternative to the for-profit system is simply absurd. I understand that journalists work under time and space constraints, but what the article claims to be about--the challenges of providing universal, low cost insurance--relates directly, in every way possible, to the life and probable death of a robust public option.

Though I enjoy calling David Brooks a sewage facility as much as the next guy, it is this kind of reporting that does the most damage. Brooks, Thomas Friedman, and all the other Iraq/n war cheerleaders out there would be significantly less powerful without the Judy Millers and Michael Gordons--and now William Broads and David Sangers--of the world establishing the terms of the debate on the so-called "objective" side of the paper. The blood-thirsty elites who make their fortunes by advocating for unending war on the poor of this country or the Brown people of another need "respected journalists" to lay the proper foundations upon which they can build their calls for continued occupation/restricted for-profit care.

The issue with this specific article isn't so much that it suffers from Judy Miller-syndrome--as of right now, there's no evidence that the author is in cahoots with the insurance companies or Max Baucus. The issue is that the Times has an institutional blindspot the size of Europe. The debate, as they understand it, is between these narrow, competing interests in a Senate subcommittee. And, in a way, they are correct, but that kind of limited thinking, repeated over and over on a daily basis, is what creates a society in which the only humane response to the crisis--a single-payer system--is virtually stricken from the public record. To rephrase a saying that I'm familiar with because of The Usual Suspects (but it probably goes back farther than that), "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world a better option didn't exist."

Yeah, You're Here Legally, But, You Know, We're Still Not Gonna HELP You

Republicans in this country have a running joke between each other to see who can be the most cartoonishly evil while still keeping a straight face. It looks like we have a new champion, ladies and gents.

Aaron Serwer at American Prospect passes along this murderous little doozy:

"Last week, Mike Lillis caught a remarkable scene during the Senate Finance Committee debate: Republicans attempting to insert amendments that would bar legal immigrants -- you caught that, legal immigrants -- from accessing health-care exchanges, leaving those very immigrants Republicans say they are not hostile to, those who have "played by the rules" so to speak, without access to a reformed health-care system.
...
That would essentially make being in the country illegally a death sentence for someone who gets seriously ill. Kyl also memorably tried to prevent the federal government from requiring insurance companies to offer maternity care, because he himself "didn't need it.""

So, between that and treating spousal abuse as a pre-existing condition, we should all be pretty happy that the Democrats have been so excited to please Republicans and health insurance companies. It's called centrism, people, and it's the name of the game. See, there are two sides to every health care debate. On the one hand, you can treat health care as a human right that all people deserve, and on the other hand you can try to make a profit by denying care to beaten women and immigrants of all varieties. The Serious person, you see, finds the happy middle ground so as to never ever be called a leftist, which is FAR worse than being a xenophobic misogynist (fiscal conservative).

If there were any justos in el mundo, Sen. Kyl would be beaten mas o menos a la muerte with a sock full of pesos, and then denied "you-got-what-was-coming-to-you-because-you're-an-awful-Senator leave," because most Americans don't need that.

Make Them Talk

Reading this latest report from The Hill, one might think that the health care bill that ends up coming out of the Senate will include a public option. I remain skeptical, to say the least. As I wrote here, we might see the Senate include something called a public option, but as far as a robust, government run insurance plan goes, that still seems like a bridge too far for the rotten Senate to cross.

The conventional wisdom states that the Senate Democrats don't have enough votes to overturn a Republican filibuster, even though they have 60 votes, which is what it takes to overturn a filibuster. But they still can't do it, for fear of being correctly identified by the media as liberals. This phenomenon is called: We Need Better Democrats.

But here's the thing. Which Senate Repub will actually filibuster? Has any one of them actually promised that? I think it's just taken as a given that they'll be dicks, which is true, but still, which ones specifically will be dicks? As Atrios tweeted on Sept. 18th, "wonder whatever happened to phrase "up or down vote" media used to love that one."

Remember when the Dems were the minority party, and the question was whether or not they had the balls to be dicks and filibuster? It was never, ever, EVER taken as a given that the Dems had a backbone. If they threatened to filibuster, the Repubs accused them of Communism for denying an up or down vote to whatever-the-fuck was going on. Liberals would've killed for an assumed Dem-lead auto-filibuster.

Make some awful Republican talk and talk and talk, and then accuse them of being obstructionist when YOU, the Democratic Party, is trying to provide, oh, I don't know, affordable, universal health care to the goddamn public. How can Senate leadership not understand that that's a winning script? But, as we've seen, the Dems just give the GOP the auto-filibuster, and it puts THEM, the party with a super majority, on the defensive again, somehow. It's really quite amazing.

The only explanations for this blistering message failure on the part of Senate leadership is either incompetence or malice. I've been saying that a lot lately, I know, but it's true. If the Democrats can't, or won't, make the GOP play by their own vicious rules, when they--the Dems--have a winning issue on their hands, there's no hope for progress in this country. And yes, the public option is a winning issue.

From Kevin Drum, (via Yglesias):

If Democrats really do lose the House next year (about which more later), this will be why. If they don’t pass a healthcare bill at all, they’ll be viewed as terminally lame. If they pass a bill, but it doesn’t contain popular features that people want — like the public option — they’ll be viewed as terminally lame.

And here's a pretty picture that will convince you the Democrats are The Impotents because literally everyone who isn't a comically rich asshole or a moran(!) who's afraid of the ghost of Stalin wants a public option.

What's In A Name?

FireDogLake is an indispensable resource for anyone looking to stay informed about the health care debate, specifically the life and (sadly) likely death of a robust public option. FDL has remained resolutely optimistic throughout this whole process--a Herculean feat, if ever there was one.

They are currently calling on all interested parties to sign their latest petition (they LOVE petitions at FDL) telling members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus,

"that you will stand with these progressives all the way through conference in their commitment to block the passage of any bill that does not include a strong public option."

That petition, which I signed and encourage anyone who enjoys this blog to sign, can be found here. It takes less than a minute, and although it's easy to poo-poo the significance of a petition, it's probably better to sign this than not to. As Jane Hamsher at FDL writes,

"Maxine Waters. Keith Ellison. Jerrold Nadler. Emanuel Cleaver. Lloyd Doggett. Bob Filner. Chellie Pingree. Lynn Woolsey. John Conyers. These are the names we see over and over again, fighting for health care and the environment and worker's rights and civil liberties. For choice and marriage equality and financial regulation and free speech. They are standing up for what we believe in, resisting the influence of lobbyist money and Rahm Emanuel's thuggery, and if we don't support them when everything is on the line, there is no progressive movement in this country -- we're just going through the motions on the way to inevitable defeat."

Too true.

On a related note, FDL has been reporting on the latest, potentially positive development in the health care debate. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) introduced an amendment to some goddamn version of the bill--I can't keep them straight, and for my point it's not important--that calls for a "basic health plan." Jon Walker writes:

"[W]hat Cantwell's amendment would do is allow states to create a much better exchange for those under 200% of FPL [Federal Poverty Line--JK]. It is an exchange with well-defined minimum benefit package with fixed co-pays, out-of-pocket limits, and deductibles. It would allow real economies of scale to affect negotiations, and mandate a minimum medical loss ratio of 85% for participating insurers. Insurers would be required to meet “specific performance measures and standards,” and their performance would be publicly reported. The basic health program must provide a choice of at least two or more similar plans.

This is closer to a Dutch-, Belgian-, Swiss-style, well-regulated, private system. You get to choose from several similar well-defined plans, knowing all of the plans provide sufficient coverage."

This is a positive development, with one exception. Cantwell keeps referring to her plan as a "public option," which it is not at all. Her idea, in fact, would benefit tremendously from the creation of a government run insurance program, which would simply act as another option which people could choose. Calling Cantwell's plan itself a public option is both misleading and possibly destructive. Why?

Because Harry Reid--who has not been an advocate for a public option at all--is now saying the final Senate bill will in fact contain a public option. As is the far better Senator (from Iowa!) Tom Harkin. Even Sex Escort Max Baucus loves Cantwell's proposal.

The danger here is that Senate Democrats will now start calling Cantwell's basic health plan a public option, thereby giving Senate Democrats a political "win" in the eyes of their constituents, while excluding a real mechanism to lower costs, which will keep the insurance companies placated. That is to say, they'll pass a "public option" without actually passing a public option.

All that aside, Cantwell's amendment does seem like a positive development, even if it is a bit like applying a tourniquet to a leg wound while the patient has an axe in his skull.

The Lessons We Learn, Which Is To Say, "None"

Last night I attended a discussion at The New York Society for Ethical Culture featuring Matt Taibbi, Nomi Prins, and Daniel Gross that was fascinating and more than a little depressing, which is true about the act of learning things in general. The talk focused on corruption and manipulation of markets big banks and financial institutions engaged in, including a rare but necessary peek behind the curtain thanks to Nomi Prins. She was a Goldman executive before defecting to the Light side of the Force and becoming a whistleblower and journalist. After hearing her speak, I can't recommend her new book, It Takes A Pillage, highly enough. I want her and Wendell Potter (the invaluable heath insurance whistleblower) to get married. That would be a fun wedding.

The talk was too expansive to summarize here, but the two main takeaways for me came from Prins. First, when asked when we would see major reforms--including reinstating the Glass-Steagall act, which separated Depository banks and Investment banks--she responded, "Oh, I don't know. Maybe after the next serious meltdown. We're certainly not going to see it now." The certainty with which she spoke about another coming catastrophe was disturbing in its clarity. We're not out of the shit yet, it seems. Most of those toxic assets are still out there, and it's not clear that they will ever regain any of their "value" in the future--in part because their "value" never really existed in the first place.

Prins also made the extremely important point that as banks fail and are bought by those few banks who have survived the meltdown--thanks to tax-payer funded bailouts--a tragicomic thing has happened. The surviving banks are actually becoming bigger. Those banks now hold more deposits, have more capital, and, therefore, more power. Though Prins didn't say so explicitly, it also seems to me that the fewer, larger institutions will be more likely to be classified as "too big to fail." So...that fucking sucks. What a wonderful lesson for the country to learn.

On a related note, I think there's a parallel to be drawn between banks accruing more power and health insurance companies accruing more power. If the health care bill doesn't include a robust public option, but does include individual mandates, then Insurance companies will profit from that immensely. I have this crazy fear that after The Great Recession (or Depression if you're a minority) and "health care reform," we will actually see the two most destructive industries in this country--financial institutions and insurance companies--consolidate more wealth, access, power, and institutional inertia, thereby making future reform all the more difficult.

So not only does the government step in to save these massive corporations, we're actually taking steps to allow/encourage them to become MORE powerful. If all this proves to be unwarranted doom-saying, I'll push people over to be the first to apologize. Let's wait and see!

The Pigs Got JJ

It seems that 6 Chicagoans were arrested Tuesday night after attempting to burn an Olympic banner after ripping it down from that main Picasso statue downtown. I haven't been able to find much credible reporting about this topic, but one thing that we can be sure of is that Jeremy Sorkin (pictured above) and 5 other protesters were taken into police custody, and today charged with "mob action," according to Chicagobreakingnews.com.

The group isn't believed to be part of No Games Chicago, a group who was also staging a protest that night.

According to Indymedia Chicago, public opinion has turned sharply against hosting the 2016 games. They report:

"The Chicago bid book, which outlines the financial proposal for Chicago's 2016 bid, was written before the recession hit and many of the anticipated funding streams have since dried up. Thus, funding the Olympics could skyrocket into the billions of dollars with the shortfall paid by city residents and from the city's controversial TIF program — an ostensible program to aid development but which has morphed into a mechanism to funnel public funds into unaccountable slush funds controlled by Mayor Daley and approved surrogates."

I haven't been able to find any statements from those arrested, so I don't know what their specific or general goals were. I will say that I went to college with Jeremy, and he's a hell of a good and smart kid. Funny, too. We were in an improv troupe together for a year before he dropped out to travel around Asia. I looked on his facebook page to see if anyone had posted any information, but, alas, no recent activity.

If anyone was there or knows what happened firsthand let me know. Likewise, I'll be checking for updates about their case, but if you have information send it to me at johnknefel@gmail.com.

This Is The Legacy Of Reagan

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The Jeff Farias Show

For anybody who's interested, I was a guest The Jeff Farias Show yesterday evening. We discussed the New York Times' irresponsible Iran coverage, as well as my argument that's beginning to take hold in the blogosphere that David Brooks is in fact a fully operational sewage facility. The truth hurts, people.

The audio can be streamed here, or probably downloaded from itunes by searching "The Jeff Farias Show." I'm on yesterday's episode, Sept. 30th, and my interview starts about a half hour into the show. Our thirty-minute conversation was quite fun. Hope you enjoy.

New York Times To Sociopaths: Give It Another Shot

OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. Have you looked at the New York Times' fucking Op-Ed section today?! I know I've been writing about that dumping ground a lot lately, but the editors published an article today that--if America does escalate the conflict with Iran--will go down in history as one of the most fact-free, shameful pieces of propaganda in that paper's history. It contains, literally, nothing other than irresponsible speculation and conjecture, and follows the Iraq script so closely that it might as well have been written by Curveball. Who had the courage to rehash an argument that has already been shown to absolutely, tragicomically absurd? The same fuckers who did it the first time! I'M NOT KIDDING! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! [BANG!]

The piece was written by Gary Milhollin and Valerie Lincy, who I had never heard of until this morning. Gare and Val run Iran Watch, whose tagline is, "Tracking Iran's Mass Destruction Weapons Capabilities." So...you know...they're like, totally not biased. What is Gary's track record? Wait for it. Wait...for...it.

HE USED TO RUN IRAQ WATCH! Guess what their mission was!?!?!?! To track Iraq's weapons of mass destruction! I'm not kidding. It's the same guy, literally, doing the same thing, literally. A detail like this would be cut from even the hackiest political satire for being to obviously absurd. Why, why, would the Times hand over their paper to him given his record, his clear thirst for Arab/Persian blood, and the fact that right now the country is following a disturbingly similar script as the one that lead to the invasion and occupation of Iraq?

I almost don't want to move on to the article. It's so, fucking, bad. Oh lord. Okay, let's do this. Hold your nose, 'cause here comes the cold water. The first line really tells you everything you need to know about the piece as a whole:

"THE disclosure of Iran’s secret nuclear plant has changed the way the West must negotiate with Tehran. While worrisome enough on its own, the plant at Qum may well be the first peek at something far worse: a planned, or even partly completed, hidden nuclear archipelago stretching across the country." [emphasis added.]

OH FUCK OH FUCK! We're all totally fucked! Bomb that country now before it's too late! There "may well be" dangerous things there that we don't know about. The wild speculation continues in paragraph 3.

"Perhaps Iran was planning to install more efficient centrifuges at the plant, like a version of the P-2 machine used by Pakistan." [emphasis added.]

Yes, perhaps, perhaps, per-haps.

"Clearly, the new plant makes more sense if it is one of many. If Iran built a second plant of the same size as the Qum operation and ran them in tandem, the production times described above could be almost halved. And if Iran had a string of such plants, it would be able to fuel a small arsenal quickly enough to reduce greatly the chance of getting caught." [emphasis added.]

And IF Optimus Prime were real, then he could just fuckin' drive up all like a fuckin' truck an' shit, and then once he got inside he could just be like, "OH YEAH! It's Optimus Prime in the house!" And IF that happened it'd be so fuckin' sweet, and then we could bomb those Browns into a real live Democracy, by gawd.

"This would also limit the damage if one site were discovered or bombed, because its loss might not affect the others. Such a secret string of plants, however, would probably require a secret source of uranium."
...
The Qum plant might also be linked to Iran’s known enrichment plant at Natanz...
...
By feeding this uranium into the new Qum plant, Iran could fuel one bomb in about seven months, even at the present low production rate. If the rate were quadrupled, as Washington is projecting, the plant could fuel a five-bomb arsenal in less than a year.
...
But because the Natanz plant is being watched over by international inspectors, diversion of its material would probably be detected...
...
Having begun the Qum plant to supply a bomb’s fuel, wouldn’t Iran also create what’s needed to produce the rest of the bomb’s components? [emphasis added.]

Really look over those quotes. What, WHAT is happening in this Op-Ed. We start from an unfounded assumption, that the plant "may well be" one part of a nefarious network of plants, and we end up with the vile innuendo, "wouldn't Iran also create what's needed to produce the rest of the bomb's components?" It should make any thinking person sick to their stomach that the Times' would publish such ridiculous speculation. A first year philosophy student couldn't get away with this fallacious of an argument. By the time the reader gets to the last rhetorical question, the existence of an evil, vast network of undisclosed America-killing factories is no longer in question. OH, IT EXISTS, the authors assure us. But what evidence have they provided? Literally none.

Can we prove or disprove the authors' claims? No, not exactly. Although it is theoretically possible that they are describing reality as it is, we as readers are given no reason to believe that is what's happening. And, put in context, we should believe the authors are doing the exact opposite: describing a paranoid fantasy world populated with Evil Geniuses bent on the destruction of America and Israel at all costs.

Never once does it cross the authors minds that the constant threats of war and sanctions from the US and Israel might lead the Iranians to build a protected nuclear power plant. Never once does it cross their minds that Iran notified the IAEA well before they were required to under international law. And, most remarkably of all, never does it cross their minds that Iraq was a massive failure on every level that has resulted in untold levels of suffering in that country--and America as well--and that the US will be dealing with the blowback and crippling cost of our occupation for decades to come.

None of that crossed the minds of the editorial board of the New York Times, either. Which, all things considered, is somewhat unremarkable.

David Brooks Is A Sewage Facility

I wasn't going to write about this, because, to be honest, the observation I'm about to put forth is so patently obvious that it really could probably go without saying--but here goes. I think, and I'm being sincere here, that David Brooks is not a person, but rather the name given to a process in which human waste is converted into a sort of food-paste and fed out to readers of the New York Times. It is no longer useful to refer to him as a human being, but rather as a poisonous force bent on the annihilation of thought, through shit.

His column today really must be read to be believed. That said, don't read it. There is nothing to be gained from believing such an Op-Ed exists, and, I'm sorry to report, much to lose. Reading his condescending tripe has left me feeling weak, sickly even.

There is no reason for me to pick apart what you might graciously refer to as his shitty argument, because Andrew Leonard over at Salon has saved me the trouble. Now, I will pass along to you his wise words. All you need to know about Brooks piece is that in it he says our "economic values" have changed, and we need to start living like we did in the 50s again. Here's a small taste of Leonard's massive takedown. I need a warm bath and some green tea.

"Brooks displays a bizarre historical amnesia throughout his column. For example, he never even mentions the transition from the Roaring Twenties to the Great Depression Maybe it's because the shift from decadence to thrift at that point was also obviously a response to economic incentives. Even worse, a moral revival didn't restore economic growth after the Crash -- government action and ultimately the fiscal stimulus provided by World War II did the trick.

But a far more pertinent point of reference comes much earlier. Has Brooks somehow forgotten that just nine years ago the U.S. operated under a balanced budget and enjoyed a budget surplus? The explosion of public debt since that point has very little to do with the moral failings of Americans, and everything to do with objective fact. George W. Bush cut taxes, but did not match those cuts with spending cuts. Instead, he ramped up spending dramatically, on two wars, healthcare, and finally, a huge bailout of Wall Street."

Preach it, Andy.

Taxpayers To Continue Making Decisions For Pregnant Women

If there's one thing we can be sure of in this country, it's that a woman's right to choose whether or not she's going to take a pregnancy to term is contingent on the whims of white guys in suits. Senators! As a country, we find it important from time to time to remind women that their privacy rights are given to them by men, and can be amended As We See Fit.

In this spirit, the New York Times is reporting today that dickhead lawmakers are trying to introduce provisions into the health care bill to ensure that tax-payer money (in the form of government subsidies) isn't used to pay for abortions. From the Times:

"Abortion opponents in both the House and the Senate are seeking to block the millions of middle- and lower-income people who might receive federal insurance subsidies to help them buy health coverage from using the money on plans that cover abortion. And the abortion opponents are getting enough support from moderate Democrats that both sides say the outcome is too close to call. Opponents of abortion cite as precedent a 30-year-old ban on the use of taxpayer money to pay for elective abortions."

I didn't know about that part at the end, that there's already a ban on "taxpayer money to pay for elective abortions." Hmmmm. Well, that's dumb and patriarchal. Let's get rid of that ban, and then the whole point is moot.

Abortion-rights activists (who should really be called something like "Privacy is privacy" activists) are worried that this anti-poor, anti-women provision could have disastrous effects on people--specifically on poor women. And also on women who already have insurance.

"Nancy Keenan, president of Naral Pro-Choice America, argued that if the bill blocked the use of subsidies for abortion coverage, private insurers would stop covering abortion because those plans would be excluded from the federally subsidized programs.

“Women who already have this coverage would lose it,” Ms. Keenan said."

Anyone with half a brain knows that what Keenan is describing here is exactly what the anti-choice crowd is going for. They will fight to curtain reproductive rights with every tool available to them, because it is their business to tell poor women what to do.

It's worth noting that we see this kind of cultural "remember who you are" smackdown on other marginalized classes as well. Gays have the Obama administration's disgraceful handling of DOMA and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Latinos had Joe Wilson--and the GOP at large--telling them that the idea of providing health care to an "illegal immigrant" was so hateful to them that they literally couldn't control their anger at the thought of it. And blacks, of course, have recently been reminded that an organization (ACORN) that helps register primarily black voters will have the fury of the Congress rained down upon it at the slightest show of misconduct.

Those are all examples taken from the last 9 months, with the "Liberal" party in power, so, you know, that's...not...good. Oh yeah, and American Muslims were reminded by the previous administration exactly how important their rights are too.

Has Iran Already Nuked Us!?

This morning's newspaper headlines sure were exciting, weren't they?!?!?!?!

As of right now, the New York Times' headline screams:

Iran Is Warned Over Nuclear ‘Deception’

The Washington Post cries:

Iran Admits Second Nuclear Enrichment Site

OH NO! Drudge takes the predictably sober approach and whispers:

CAUGHT BY SURPRISE: IRAN BUILDING SECOND NUKE PLANT[ital. in original]

ACK!

Why, I think we might already be at war with fucking Iran! Or close, at least! The Times today dutifully contemplates that,

"After months of talking about the need for engagement, Mr. Obama appears to have made a leap toward viewing tough new sanctions against Iran as an inevitability."[emphasis added.]

Fellatio-enthusiast Thomas Friedman wrote this week that we [America!] should threaten Iran with immediate sanctions and the possibility that "Israel might do something crazy." I wonder what Obama and Friedman talked about when they played Golf the other day.

The Post ledes by raising the prospect of sanctions as well.

"President Obama and the leaders of France and Britain blasted Iran's construction of a previously unacknowledged uranium enrichment facility and demanded Friday that Tehran immediately fulfill its obligations under international law or risk the imposition of harsh new sanctions."

It sure sounds like the media is congealing around this new meme like the unthinking wad of lard that they are. And thankfully, the same horrifying tactics that gave us Catastrophe Iraq! are on full display yet again, for fun.

After reporting that Iran sent a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency informing them of the existence of the Plant, Politico goes on to say:

"“A very cursory admission to the IAEA years after the commencement of construction of the facility whose use is undeniable does not constitute living up to its obligations,” an American official said."[emphasis added.]

OOOOOOO!!!!!!! That's so scary, guys! An anonymous source is claiming with certainty that a new enemy can/will/already has killed us all! That sounds like a slam dunk case, right there.

Others have joined Friedman's calls for more human sacrifice to please the God of American Stability. Meat-puppet David Ignatious--who writes about politics with as much insight as John Madden does about Proust--spends his column today telling his readers that we are in a scary new cold war, but he and his anonymous insider friends are seriously doing their best to keep us safe, guys. Ignatious writes:

So why didn’t the Obama administration lay down an even stronger marker in response to this breakout -- by threatening, say, to intercept ships at sea that it believed were carrying parts for the Iranian nuclear program?

The answer, explained the senior official in a telephone interview, is that the U.S. wants to preserve consensus among its allies for much harsher sanctions, even as it heads toward a face-to-face negotiating meeting with the Iranians on Oct. 1.The U.S. has privately communicated with the Iranians in recent days that it wants those talks to go forward, the senior official said.

Asking why Ignatious granted anonymity to that senior official is like asking why banks rip people off--no matter how despicable we may find that practice, that's what they think their job is.

But let's back up just a little. Ignatious nobly wonders why the US didn't "intercept ships at sea that it believed were carrying parts for the Iranian nuclear program." That is really a remarkable sentence because it highlights, in a nutshell, how our punditry class thinks, which is to say they are blood-thirsty war-mongers, no matter how banal their demeanor appears. What meat-puppet Ignatious is describing is an act of war. You know, bang bang. Look at how casually he posits this question, the consequences of which would undoubtedly lead to massive civilian suffering and death, both American and Iranian. Yet to Ignatious, it seems odd that America didn't strike first.

To read an evisceration of another pundit warrior, read Greenwald's vicious dismantling of David Brooks, here.

And to read a historical account of how familiar all this Iran scare-mongering is, go here.

Watch out for a ratcheting up of the scary Iran meme this weekend on the Gas-bag Happy Hour with George Stephanopolous, or on This Week with Dickheads. I won't be watching them, but if anything happens let me know if you want to.

American Savagery

Thomas Friedman loves one thing and one thing alone, which is to give off very sophisticated airs that he hates war--HATES IT, DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND--only to call for more war in the very next breath. For this reason, he is considered America's Leading Intellectual(!) and also a Liberal(!?). Oh, he doesn't want war, don't you see, it's just that, well, this new war is so goddamn necessary. His lamentations fill the page as he bravely calls for yet another unprovoked assault on a sovereign country. War is hell, but it makes a good lede.

Friedman the Warrior begins his column today by showing all you pussies how fucking tough he is.

"For the first time since Iran began enriching uranium that could be used in a nuclear weapon, we have a glimmer of hope for a diplomatic solution to this problem — as long as we are not too diplomatic, as long as the Iranian regime is made to understand that biting economic sanctions are an absolute certainty and military force by Israel is a live possibility."[emphasis added.]

Oh yeah, Friedman ain't scared to talk some shit. He'll preemptivly threaten a motherfucker if he gots to. Sanctions, war, you name it, he'll threaten it.

Throughout his column, Friedman repeats this theme of "biting economic sanctions," also calling them, "real biting sanctions," and "real sanctions." He lists a few different options for what those sanctions could be, but what he really wants to talk about is Israel puttin' up its dukes.

"While real sanctions are necessary to exploit this moment, they are not sufficient. We also need to keep alive the prospect that Israel could do something crazy. I don’t favor Israeli military action against Iran and hope we’re telling Israel that privately. But I do believe that U.S. officials, particularly the secretary of defense, Robert Gates, need to stop saying that publicly."[emphasis added.]

Ooooo, can't you feel what a reluctant soldier Friedman is? He really doesn't want war, but we need to "keep alive the prospect that Israel could do something crazy." Anyone looking for a perfect example of the deranged, symbiotic relationship between the US and Israel--and the hawkish mentality behind it--need look no further. Iran, a country that has never attacked the United States, and has no real capability of attacking the United States, must be constantly threatened with declarations of potential military and economic force.

Friedman goes on to correctly describe how brutal Ahmadinejad regime is, as though the well-being of Iranian citizens is of his utmost concern. Remember, he is the same guy who said we need to go to a Muslim country and tell them "Suck. On. This."

Excuse me if I find Friedman's motives less than humanitarian.

[Author's note: As I write this, a "Free Iran" protest is marching past my building towards the UN. It's worth remembering that these are the people who Friedman is so quick to cast into the hell of economic sanctions. See here for some of the devestating effects of the sanctions on Iraq.]

Primary Victim Of 1960s Violence Was Family Values, Apparently

Twice every week, the warden at Bellvue Hospital for the Criminally Insane unlocks a heavy steel door with a name tag next to it that reads "David Brooks, columnist." The warden opens the door, heaves in a typewriter and a raw steak, and Brooks--bound by a straight jacket and frothing at the mouth--pounds out his twice-weekly missive by repeatedly smashing his head against the keyboard until a mix of blood, tears, and neocoservativism has dirtied the page.

Yes, it's an origin myth, but frankly it makes more sense to believe that than to believe the New York Times gives an office to a man who would write a sentence like this (from Brooks' eulogy today of Irving Kristol):

"Kristol championed middle-class virtues like faith, family and responsibility, especially during the 1960s when they were so much under attack."

Oh yeah, if there's one thing that was seriously under attack in the 1960s, it was family values. Not civil rights leaders, or, I don't know, Vietnamese peasants. Mostly it was the family values that suffered. The real victim of institutionalized racism, sexism, and war-mongering were the Brady Bunch.

What was under attack in the 60s--other than Vietnam--was the supremacy of a white, sexist, imperialist mindset in America. Kristol and his neocon offspring believed--and continue to believe--whole-heartedly in the inherent goodness of American hegemony, so it should be no surprise that Kristol would've defended what Brooks euphemistically refers to as "middle-class virtues." Kristol believed that society was falling apart due to the loss of religion, and the patriarchal society that goes along with it. The following quote is taken from J. David Hoeveler, Jr.'s Watch on the Right: Conservative Intellectuals in the Reagan Era (via Sadly, No):

"Kristol identified a spiritual vacuum that cut across the whole public culture of the United States. He was a writer who could cry out for censorship of pornography and who could praise Victorian culture for its deference to womanhood. What Kristol sorely lamented was the loss of republican virtue in Western life, and behind that loss, he believed, was the decline of religion. The decline did not constitute for Kristol a merely curious cultural shift. It lay at the base of every issue that liberal and conservative ideologies confronted. The loss of faith, Kristol wrote, was the “most important political fact of the last hundred years.”"

That paragraph speaks for itself, but it's worth briefly returning to the Brooks quote.

Brooks' phrase, "middle-class virtues like faith, family and responsibility," is repugnant and offensive, but those types of constructions get used all the time. Those three "virtues" become property of the "middle class," as though the working class doesn't give a shit about family. As though immigrants and blacks--because make no mistake, when Brooks refers to 1960s middle-class society he means white--don't give a shit about responsibility.

There's no real need to comment on any other part of Brooks' column, which is entirely dedicated to the memory of Irving Kristol. Learning about Kristol from Brooks is like learning about the Emperor from Darth Vader--if you don't trust the source, it's hard to really throw yourself into academic pursuit.

Concern For Palestinians' Well-Being Not High On Pundit's List Of Things He Cares About

When it comes to debating the continued occupation of Palestine by Israel, there is no better way to be taken seriously by the Talking Class than to competely and utterly disregard the safety and well-being of Palestinians. Jackson Diehl, writing in the Washington Post (which has an explicit policy of burning Gazans for sport), illustrates this unspoken truth quite well today.

All things considered--ie, concerning Israel--that whole massacre of Gaza thing last year wasn't really so bad. Diehl does acknowledge that many Gazans--including at least 450 civilians--died, but he is such a Serious Adult About Foreign Policy that he only examines how this affected Israel.

"But what of the grievous Palestinian suffering in the invasion -- Israel itself counted 1,166 dead Gazans, including more than 450 civilians -- and the international backlash that has caused? Just last week a U.N. commission headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone condemned what it called "a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population," and suggested that responsible Israelis be hauled before the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges.

Israel's leaders worried a lot about losing the war that way. But as they see it, they suffered only scratches. Egypt, which quietly collaborates with Israel's blockade of Gaza, came under pressure to change its policy but held firm. No Arab country toughened its stance toward Israel: According to the Obama administration, as many as five may be willing to offer diplomatic and economic concessions if Israel freezes its West Bank settlement construction.

Perhaps most significant, Hamas's rival for Palestinian leadership, the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, is considerably stronger than it was before the war. Probably it will renew peace talks with Israel within weeks. As for the Goldstone report, the heat it briefly produced last week will quickly dissipate; the panel was discredited from the outset because of its appointment by the grotesquely politicized U.N. Human Rights Council."[emphasis added]

So, here's what Diehl is saying: "Hey, buddy, too bad about all that civilian death, but, hey, you know what? It worked out pretty well for us over here." You know what that sounds a lot like?

Main Entry: ter·ror·ism
1 : the unlawful use or threat of violence esp. against the state or the public as a politically motivated means of attack or coercion

And, saddest of all, the lesson that Diehl learned from the massacre was this,

"The Gaza invasion was the second military operation Israel embarked on in less than 18 months despite disapproval from Washington. The other was its bombing of a nuclear reactor under construction in Syria in September 2007. Then, too, officials in Washington feared a dire diplomatic backlash or even a war between Israel and Syria. Nothing happened.

As they quietly debate the pros and cons of launching a military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, Israel's political and military leaders no doubt will be thinking about that history. That doesn't mean they will discount American objections -- Iran would be a far harder and more complex target, with direct repercussions for U.S. troops and critical interests in the region. But, as with Gaza, even a partial and short-term reversal of the Iranian nuclear program may look to Israelis like a reasonable benefit -- and the potential blowback overblown."[emphasis added]

This unfettered bloodlust is nothing short of sociopathic behavior, and should be called as such. "Nothing happend," Diehl writes, forgetting that an entire city was fenced in and systematically destroyed. He shows no sympathy, none, for any of the thousands of Iranians who would no doubt be killed in a preempitive attack.

It should be noted that Israeli civilian death is horrible and abhorent. I am not in any way attempting to say that those who died in Sderot and any less tragic than any 8 or 9 Palestinians, it just so happens that there are another 1,400 Arab deaths on top of that to account for.

A Prediction For The Republican Party

The '08 election argued that the GOP is essentially a regional party, with little or no productive role to play in the governing of America. I have referred to them in the past as "a confederacy of white nationalists and robber barons," and now it seems a recent poll is supporting my claim.

This is a graph created by Steve Bennen that I saw over at Ezra Klein's blog. It breaks down GOP support by region, and the numbers do not look good for the Repubs.


MonkeyCage has the line of the day with this gem,

"Quite seriously, if I saw this type of regional distribution of support for a political party in a country like Slovakia, I would assume the party represented an ethnic minority."

It's funny, because the GOP hates ethnic minorities! Oh, man, that is too good.

How Can We Possibly Have An Honest Debate If People Say Mean, True Things About War Crimes?

Last year, Israel rained down massive, collective punishment of the people of Gaza--actions that constitute war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity. At least that's what Richard Goldstone and his team of UN investigators reported last week. The report also said that Hamas was guilty of committing war crimes by sending rockets into Israel aimed at civilian targets, but on a far smaller scale. The findings of the report were dismissed both by Israel and the Obama administration as being overly harsh on Israel.

David Landau, the former editor-in-chief of the Israeli newspaper H'aaretz, wrote about this report in Sunday's edition of the New York Times, and frankly, he did not care for the report's findings one little bit! In fact, he thought the report was mean and disproportionately critical of Israel, which is not fair at all.

Yes, Palestinian deaths numbered around 1,400, and Israeli deaths came in at 13. Yes, there is strong evidence to suggest that Israel used white phosphorus on an imprisoned population, and shot Palestinian civilians who were literally waving white flags to surrender. And bombed UN schools. But, yeah, you wouldn't want anything about this massacre to be disproportionate.

Landau makes the childish claim that Goldstone is at fault here, because he was so mean in his report that now Israelis won't want to talk about their feelings honestly. He writes:

"But Judge Goldstone has thwarted any such honest debate — within Israel or concerning Israel. His fundamental premise, that the Israelis went after civilians, shut down the argument before it began."

What a evil "premise" for an investigator to begin an argument with. What's unfortunate for Landau, and the New York Times, is that he clearly doesn't know what the word "premise" means. Hahahaha, silly editor-in-chief.

What he means to say--and this is a common mistake people for people who can't argue properly--is "conclusion." Goldstone arrives at the conclusion that Israelis targeted civilians, he doesn't begin at that premise. It's a common mistake, to confuse "premise" (the beginning assumption of a debate) with "conclusion" (the end point one arrives at after examining evidence). It's especially common for the head of a major newspaper to make that mistake. Or he might have been employing a dirty rhetorical trick.

In Landau's critique of the report, he offers no counter-arguments, no examples of bad methodology, and no flaws in the logic of the report. He simply doesn't like its conclusions, so he dismisses the whole endeavor as a wasted opportunity. According to Landau, we should have maybe asked some questions and called it a day, I guess.

"When does negligence become recklessness, and when does recklessness slip into wanton callousness, and then into deliberate disregard for innocent human life?
...
Are widespread civilian casualties inevitable when a modern army pounds terrorist targets in a heavily populated area with purportedly smart ordnance? Are they acceptable? Does the enemy’s deployment in the heart of the civilian area shift the line between right and wrong, in morality and in law?"

When a rhetorical question has a clear answer, should we stifle it in an absurd attempt to maintain civility in discourse?

"These were precisely the questions that Israeli politicians and generals wrestled with in Gaza, as others do today in Afghanistan."

Yes, we should have wrestled with those questions, but not drawn any conclusions. I get it now. Silly me, I thought there was value in making legitimate accusations of wrong-doing when the evidence warranted it, but I guess that would count as a wasted opportunity, to, um, hold people accountable for their crimes, I guess.

What Landau fails to recognize is that the findings of this report are so horrific that even in describing them, one will risk angering those who are blindly "pro-Israel." And, yes, roughly 9/10ths of the report is spent documenting Israel's crimes, and only 1/10th documenting Hamas' crimes. But, as Norman Finkelstein argued on Democracy Now!, that's what you would expect in a massacre that left 1,400 dead on one side, and about a tenth of that, 13, dead on the other.

This type of inability, or unwillingness, to call a crime a crime ensure that this type of behavior will happen again. Whether the offender will be the USA, Isreael, or another occupying power is anybody's guess.

Blantant Racism Not About Race, Explains White Oligarch

Respected race theorist David Brooks writes today in the New York Times that the backlash against Obama isn't about race, like, even at all. He knows this because one time Brooks saw some white people having a rally and they weren't murdering black people who were having a separate rally SO CASE CLOSED ALREADY.

In making what may be the laziest argument ever committed to paper, Brooks engages in what must be the laziest (and, sadly, most common) rhetorical tactic in the Op-Ed writer's toolbox. He cherry-picks one singular example of evidence from his own life to support his weak-ass thesis, and then generalizes from that specific interaction. Tommy "Suck. On. This." Friedman is the absolute worst perpetrator of this crime against readers. If he weren't allowed to begin a column by writing, "I was in a Taxi in [insert foreign country] and my driver told me [insert awesome thing about Globalization]..." he might never be allowed to write again.

Brooks, in his column today, tackles the extremely complicated problem of latent racism in contemporary America. Psyche! Haha, he can't do that, because he's not very compassionate, and he adores, SIMPLY ADORES, "Centrism," which is short-hand for, "Good luck, minorities! Tell me how things turn out!" No, Brooks intelligently concludes that America is not racist any more in any way and why do the mean liberals keep bringing it up? Brooks helpfully presents this trite anecdote as proof-positive that institutional racism is a thing of the past. He writes about jogging past the Piss-Drinkers (Tea Baggers) march the other day, noting:

They were carrying “Don’t Tread on Me” flags, “End the Fed” placards and signs condemning big government, Barack Obama, socialist health care and various elite institutions. [Note he fails to mention any of the explicitly racist signs, belonging to the so-called "birthers."-JK]

Then, as I got to where the Smithsonian museums start, I came across another rally, the Black Family Reunion Celebration. Several thousand people had gathered to celebrate African-American culture. I noticed that the mostly white tea party protesters were mingling in with the mostly black family reunion celebrants. The tea party people were buying lunch from the family reunion food stands. They had joined the audience of a rap concert.

Because sociology is more important than fitness, I stopped to watch the interaction. These two groups were from opposite ends of the political and cultural spectrum. They’d both been energized by eloquent speakers. Yet I couldn’t discern any tension between them. It was just different groups of people milling about like at any park or sports arena.

Problem solved! A race riot didn't immediately break out when some white people met some black people, so, um, what more proof do you need that America is great?

Brooks bravely rips race from its historical and cultural context, isolating it as merely one of many potential sources of strife, and then triumphantly (if inexplicably) concluding, "race is largely beside the point." [For a deep look about the intersection of race, class, and gender, see AK here.] Yes, yes, Mr. Brooks, how wonderful of you to throw in your two sense. Let's talk about the Obama backlash, whose de facto leader explicitly called Obama a racist, without giving significant weight to the issue of race. While we're at it, let's talk about the health care debate, without discussing race and class. And let's do the same thing when we talk about the ousting of Van Jones, and the vile, despicable targeting of ACORN by the Piss-Drinker movement. Why, the hatred expressed towards Van Jones and ACORN couldn't possibly be race-based, now, could it? Noooooo.

Brooks continues on, heroically descending further and further into a fever dream in which the new administration is solely responsible for the inseparable joining of the State and the Corporation.

"Barack Obama leads a government of the highly educated. His movement includes urban politicians, academics, Hollywood donors and information-age professionals. In his first few months, he has fused federal power with Wall Street, the auto industry, the health care industries and the energy sector."

I have written in this space many times about the destructive pact the Democrats have made with the health insurance companies, and I'm under no illusion that they are free in any way from massive corporate control. But to claim that the fusion of federal power with Wall Street is the result of the Obama administration verges on the deranged. The marriage of the State and Corporate Power goes back to the founding of this country, and, in the modern setting, at least as far back as the Eisenhower administration.

And then there's this lunacy.

"We now have a populist news media that exaggerates the importance of the Van Jones and Acorn stories to prove the elites are decadent and un-American, and we have a progressive news media that exaggerates stories like the Joe Wilson shout and the opposition to the Obama schools speech to show that small-town folks are dumb wackos."

What?! That block quote may reign supreme as the greatest example yet of the mindless (or worse, deliberate) equivocation between what is called "the Left" and "the Right." The "populist news media" is presumably Fox News and it's collection of inbred spin offs. Brooks plays a particularly deceitful rhetorical trick by subtly referring to Van Jones and ACORN as "elites" in the voice of the populist media. A casual reader, however, could very easily interpret that sentence construction to mean that Brooks himself--who is, in the mind of the casual reader, a respected centrist--considers Van Jones and ACORN the "elites," which is laughable. ACORN receives about 3 million federal dollars per year, a mere drop in the bucket compared to financial institutions.

Then he says part of the problem is the "progressive media," which is, I don't know, MSNBC and blogs, maybe. There is certainly a liberal blogosphere, but calling Joe Wilson an asshole and pointing out that Reagan gave a speech at a school too is a far cry from calling the president a racist. What he fails to mention, because he is fundamentally incapable of realizing it, is that people like him are what amplify the false claims of the Right, and make it necessary for the Left to fact-check the media.

Brooks' aim is so far off base here, one could use it as a jump off for an entire book about the broken media. He falsely asserts that race can be talked about separate from class and gender, subtly advances right-wing lies about Van Jones and ACORN, and presents an idiotic equivocation between Fox News and the liberal blogosphere, in essence saying, "they're both good and bad, but here I am in the center like an Adult." That's really a remarkable achievement, even for Brooks.

And Let's Deny Orphans, While We're At It...

As all Serious Adults know, reform must happen in small increments and include everybody--EVEN PEOPLE YOU MIGHT NOT AGREE WITH. This is called being a moderate, or centrist, a label that is valued in Washington, DC even more than air itself. It shows your colleagues that you don't actually believe in anything, which is to be avoided at all costs, lest you be labeled an "ideologue." That's why health care reform must--SIMPLY MUST DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND--include health insurance companies.

But then there's also this. According to insurance companies, getting beaten by your husband counts as a pre-existing condition. Yeah. HuffingtonPost is reporting:

It turns out that in eight states, plus the District of Columbia, getting beaten up by your spouse is a pre-existing condition.

Under the cold logic of the insurance industry, it makes perfect sense: If you are in a marriage with someone who has beaten you in the past, you're more likely to get beaten again than the average person and are therefore more expensive to insure.

I can't imagine a more perfectly distilled illustration of the brutal logic of capitalism. A company that exists to make money by denying care to sick people (and make no mistake, that is exactly what a health insurance company is), extends an already corrupt and revolting practice--denying care due to "pre-existing conditions"--to include people who aren't sick, but are victims of abuse.

And, according to Huffpo, this practice has been happening since at least the early 90s, when insurance companies promised to end this practice during Clinton's push for reform. Surprise, surprise, that didn't happen, because, oh, I don't know, maybe because ANYONE EVIL ENOUGH TO DENY COVERAGE TO A VICTIM OF DOMESTIC ABUSE MIGHT DO ANYTHING TO MAKE A BUCK, INCLUDING LYING ABOUT ENDING THAT PRACTICE BUT THEN CONTINUING TO DO IT. That's just one theory, though, there might be others.

To give credit where it's due, in 2006 Senate Democrats tried to outlaw the practice, but the Republicans stymied the measure.

Let's invite everyone to the Big Table for Reform! Sigh.

Old Men Debate Merits Of Health Care Reform, Piss

Folks, health care will be reformed, I JUST KNOW IT! How can I be so sure? My evidence is below, in the form of a humble video offering, straight from the God of Joy. The human capacity for language is not yet expansive enough to describe the beauty contained in this quasi-pornographic town hall moviefilm, but here's a shot.

One old guy yells at another old guy, and then they start talking about how neither one wants to pee on each other, which is the centrist position. Common ground! The arbiter of Centrism, David Brooks, has publicly argued many times that Serious people don't pee on each other--though in private this blog has been told other stories. Look, David Brooks' addiction to getting peed on notwithstanding, this is a serious display of how sausage (legislation) gets made, and then pees on the elderly and then the government steals their Medicare. (via Wonkette)

(All the pee talk comes at around 1:25. If anyone watches the rest of this thing and nothing else interesting happens, hahahaha.)