This will be a brief one, again. Hands full, head empty. Kind of sleepy, actually, so watch the prose – it may falter badly. No guarantees.
Obama’s plan to open up off-shore drilling along much of our national coastline resembles some of the graphics I’ve been seeing in BP commercials lately. I guess all it takes is a little public diplomacy by the enormous oil and gas industry groups, and this administration will bend back at the knees. No, it’s not the worst possible plan for extraction of fossil fuels, but it is a major wedge in the door towards the same “drill, baby, drill” Obama’s presidential campaign opponent advocated. Can’t believe they won’t pry that door even further open in the near future.
Where are people at on this issue? As mentioned above, they have been bombarded with television ads 
like no other time I can recall. America’s Oil and Gas Industry, Chevron, BP, and others, all trying to outdo one another with how dedicated they are to creating jobs, saving the environment, finding “solutions”, raising families, promoting public investment …. everything except generating massive profits, which is what they are ACTUALLY doing. I can’t imagine that, with all this promotional bullshit running on every channel, people aren’t getting more cozy with the idea of “drill, baby, drill”. (Sure, they always mention a full menu of energy options, including renewables, conservation, and others. But you and I both know they’re talking oil and gas.)
The energy sector is putting its unprecedented amounts of cash to good use, I can see. So are many other corporate players – many I’ve never seen do advertising before. The banks, of course, are saving the world, according to their ads. Then you’ve got the defense contractors, like Boeing, waxing poetic on the air. And, strangely, companies like Siemen’s, Cisco, etc., vying for position in the new “clean” energy bonanza, the new network technology frontier. So why is Obama unilaterally disarming on fossil fuels? He doesn’t think he is, that’s why. But in effect, that’s what’s happening.
I don’t know – it’s a zig-zag path between moderate and conservative, as far as I can see, just like Clinton. Just wish the zigs went a little farther. (Wishing won’t do, of course.)
luv u,
jp
point in the ad he says, “Taxes never made anyone healthy.” Interesting statement. I guess he’s never heard of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, various Health and Human Services programs, and any number of other government services, from OSHA to the FDA, that in some respect help us stay healthier as a result of tax revenues. Yeah, I know the ad is about a “sin” tax, but you can also see how taxes on cigarettes and alcohol have had a positive effect health-wise. In a sense, it’s just a way of having the price of something reflect the true cost. Sure, we want people to be healthier. But we also want to recover some of the cost of their NOT being healthy, like emergency care costs for people who sugar themselves into heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and the like. Don’t we?
And yet the philosophy continues to command respect. Somehow people like Grover Norquist and his ilk are still listened to, still asked for guidance. Meanwhile, the nation’s infrastructure is falling apart, our last major investments (beyond maintenance) in roads, bridges, tunnels, rail lines, etc., now decades old. A stiff wind storm knocks out power to whole states. Instead of investing in the future of this country, we’re putting band-aids over compound fractures. The most striking irony is that these programs are being starved by the kind of deficit hawks who constantly claim that they are doing this for our children and our grandchildren, i.e. not leaving them a huge debt. Fine. There’s a solution. Get people to understand that we need to pay for things, and that civilization is not free. That’s the central point of health reform, lackluster as it may be.
principle behind this choice – for example, the fact that the bill is flawed, that it gives too much to the insurance companies, that it doesn’t have a strong public option, that it is not a single payer plan, etc. But his reasoning appears to be based solely on political calculus. He’s reading the polling, and it’s showing a large majority of his district turning against the bill. Now, this isn’t too surprising, since the airwaves have been flooded with attack ads over the past month in particular, many sponsored by the national Chamber of Commerce (the folks who helped bring you our lack of a national health insurance plan in the first place). And, of course, they’ve stripped out some of the most popular aspects of the original plan in an attempt to please people who would never vote for the legislation in any form.
Mike’s take on this as that it should be done incrementally. Note to Congressman Arcuri: this is doing it incrementally. It would be a mistake to think of this bill as the last word on national health care. It is merely a stake in the ground, establishing the principle of a national system. Yeah, I think it’s a mess, and I’ve said so. It excludes far too many people. It preserves the profits of large sectors of our money-obsessed health care delivery system. It lacks the virtue of a public option for people who simply cannot get a decent plan in the private market. But the alternative is the wild west system (or lack of same) we have now. That is clearly unsustainable. Voting against an admittedly imperfect solution simply to please people like Don Jeror and other “tea party” basket cases is farcical, at best. 
all. Well, that may work for bread. I’m not so sure about anything else. I mean, if you need a car, and you ask your spouse to go out and find one for you, and s/he comes back with one axle, a steering wheel, three tires, and a seized engine, you still are not going anywhere. Same deal, it seems to me, with health care. For all the cautionary comments about “not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good,” we really do not have a whole car here, so far as I can see. For one thing, they stripped out the most popular provisions, namely, the public option and Medicare expansion – features that would benefit people immediately, save money, and make for a much more reasonable system.
Well, let me tell you why. Because too many people would opt for it. That doesn’t work for the money-drenched cretins that the insurance companies have sent to Washington to represent us. I’m afraid I have to include my own congressman, Michael Arcuri, in that number. He has thrown up his hands on health care, and while I wouldn’t blame him for not supporting the Senate bill, he should join with progressives in trying to pass some reasonable version that has a strong public option. They put the scare into him, and the insurance lobby is buying lots of T.V. time in our market telling people to call Arcuri and have him vote against the bill (which, ironically, he has already said he will do). Don’t just sit there and vote no, Mike – pull together with some of your colleagues and make it better.
in Somalia facing possible war crimes prosecution in the United States (where he now resides). Some of his torture victims now live in the U.S. as well, and would like to get some justice. Fair enough. While the correspondent took the time to describe how heinous that regime was, she neglected to mention the fact that our government had sent them something like $1 billion over the Carter, Reagan, and Bush I years. Small detail.
Perhaps it’s unfair of me to single out NPR. I just guess I’m getting annoyed with hearing Jim DeMint, Judd Gregg, or some other “conservative” leading light every time I tune in. On Thursday I got to hear from a Democrat…. Bart Stupak. Who’s running Washington again? (Oh, yes. On Wednesday, during the “Political Junkie” segment of “Talk of the Nation”, there was an extended conversation with Mitt Romney, a.k.a. Guy Smiley, a.k.a. Bush redux.) Meanwhile, the daughter of our own Karadzic is reviving McCarthyism with a web commercial attacking what she terms “The Al Qaeda Seven” in the Obama justice department. So not only does the war criminal brag of his guilt in plain sight, but his spawn is somehow treated as possessed of some expertise by virtue of her father’s ill deeds.
comprehensive health insurance reform? Never. Rebuild the entire thing to suit them, and they’ll still vote against it purely for spite. The problem here is, of course, the democrats themselves, who can’t seem to recognize when they’ve got something that’s both popular and worth defending. I’m referring to the public option, Medicare expansion, and other measures denounced as “socialism” by the other side (and conservative dems) but which the general public is strongly in favor of. The reason why people aren’t fired up about the current plan is that they stripped those measures out to please conservatives. Obama – congress – get a clue! Pass something that will make a real positive difference in people’s lives quickly, and they will support you.
The latest Afghan campaign continues unabated. I’ve heard the Taliban being accused of using civilians as human shields. Just a couple of weeks ago, though, the U.S. and local Afghan government leaders were encouraging people to stay in Marjah so that there would be someone to govern when they had taken over; and there have been reports of refugees being blocked from exiting by our military. Numerous civilians have been killed in what quickly became a war zone. How is this different?
enough. But whatever his motivations or limitations may be, we simply cannot allow ourselves to be confined by them. What America needs is a healthy dose of movement politics – the kind that brought us the five day work week, earned black people the vote, and brought the Vietnam war to an end. It’s the only way fundamental change happens, and we had best start facing that fact.
Whether or not Obama is serious about making positive change, he should understand one thing: the Republican party, particularly those in Congress, will not support him no matter what he does. He could adopt all of their positions (instead of just many of them) and they will still work to destroy him politically. That is their clear objective, whatever noises they make for the cameras and microphones. From a political standpoint, I don’t blame Obama for addressing the G.O.P. retreat this week and taking their questions. I think he should call them out, and we did see a little bit of that today. But if he seriously thinks that they are going to work with him on anything substantive, he is smoking crack. He would be well-advised to start appealing to his base, a.k.a. the people who got him elected, and use his considerable rhetorical gifts to articulate a more progressive vision of governance.
Looks to me like the good people of our neighboring commonwealth have seen fit to hand Ted Kennedy’s old seat to Mitt Romney 2.0, a slight upgrade from the original model (this one, at least, confirmably anatomically correct). As far as his political positions are concerned, it’s a mixed bag – a little angry anti-bank populism (People are mad, damn it, and so am I!), a little love for waterboarding, some tin-foil hat-ism, and the usual measure of running away from his most inflammatory comments, like passively questioning president Obama’s origin as the son of two legally married individuals. (Smooth.) There’s also the listing from political side to political side as needed, like voting in favor of Mitt Romney’s statewide health insurance system in Massachusetts, but opposing the national version. He should blend in nicely with the G.O.P. caucus, though poor Jim DeMint will have to forfeit his crown as the party’s Senatorial winged Adonis. (Sad. Very sad.)
excuse to openly channel their inner Republican (to the extent that they haven’t been doing it up to now). Of course, with this week’s Supreme Court decision removing any restrictions on the flow of corporate cash into political advertising, any Democrats who maintain a less-than-congenial relationship with Exxon-Mobil, Google, Cargill, or any other firm with deep pockets will likely find their districts flooded with attack ads, paid shills, and every kind of legal sabotage money can buy. Yes, folks – George W. Bush and his reactionary predecessors are truly the gift that keeps on giving. The 5-4 decision to sell our electoral process to the highest bidder was advanced by two Reagan appointees, one Bush I appointee, and (crucially) two Bush II appointees. Is it too late to say, we should have kept W out of the White House?