Health Care: It's Not About Money

posted by Armadillo Joe

For the last couple days and to the detriment of chores and personal hygiene, yours truly has been neck-deep in a scuffle at Facebook over health care. In some ways, it is just like the one I got into back in April over torture, wherein a fairly innocuous initial comment quickly escalated into a sort of Battle Royale in the comments section because Rethugli-goon trolls are the same everywhere on the inter-webs.

The difference this time is that my opponent, while still deeply, horrifically wrong, is smart. Wicked smart. Freaky smart. This guy was the president of the debate club when we were in high-school together back during the Pleistocene Era and his cockiness back then about his quick-wittedness gave him the aire of a weird sort of jock-nerd hybrid (who looks kinda like Ed Helms). Since high school, he went to a high-end, brand-name university and then law school and works now as a high-power corporate attorney in Dallas. The fairly innocuous post I referenced above was about this NPR photo and it was like red meat to hungry wolves.

We have exchanged almost a hundred comment posts totalling probably thousands of words by now. This is also the last post up by either of us as of 4:30 pm EST today and he has yet to respond.

Other than that, I think what follows is fairly self-explanatory.

Thank you for the fraud numbers on Medicare/Medicaid. I had not seen those and I grant that they are a matter of concern, but then fraud is always a risk no matter the source of financing - private, public or some manner of hybrid. You cite the better fraud numbers for private insurance -- which I acknowledge -- as though they are their own self-evident proof of the superiority or your position. I say they are not. I don't really see how the fraud numbers in-and-of themselves themselves constitute an argument against universal health-care. If we have fraud, so what? Investigate it and punish it where necessary.

Furthermore, you continue to insist that this is ALL AND ONLY about money, money, money -- which I contend is still very, very wrong on multiple counts -- and you have not offered a single counterpoint that wasn't an argument from a financial, fiduciary or economic perspective.

If you want to make it about money, though, then OK, let's make it about money for just a little bit longer. I will say that your fraud numbers pale in comparison to these numbers (from this link: http://www.nchc.org/facts/coverage.shtml) - you can check the link for the numbered footnotes.

• The United States spends nearly $100 billion per year to provide uninsured residents with health services, often for preventable diseases or diseases that physicians could treat more efficiently with earlier diagnosis.14


• Hospitals provide about $34 billion worth of uncompensated care a year.14


• Another $37 billion is paid by private and public payers for health services for the uninsured and $26 billion is paid out-of-pocket by those who lack coverage.14


• The uninsured are 30 to 50 percent more likely to be hospitalized for an avoidable condition, with the average cost of an avoidable hospital stayed estimated to be about $3,300.14


• The increasing reliance of the uninsured on the emergency department has serious economic implications, since the cost of treating patients is higher in the emergency department than in other outpatient clinics and medical practices.11


• A study found that 29 percent of people who had health insurance were “underinsured” with coverage so meager they often postponed medical care because of costs.15 Nearly 50 percent overall, and 43 percent of people with health coverage, said they were “somewhat” to “completely” unprepared to cope with a costly medical emergency over the coming year.15

We're already spending way too much money on health-care in this country (note the numbers I cited above about the growth of the health-care sector from 10% to 16% over the last 25 years). When I advocate for universal health care, I know that nothing is cost-free -- that's not what I mean when I say money should be removed from the equation, I'm referring to the depredations of a for-profit health-care system -- I instead contend that the much-vaunted free market hasn't delivered the efficiencies its advocates have been promising us for decades, that for-profit health-care is a self-defeating contradiction and that the federal government is the only organization large and powerful enough to bring this whole mess under control and thus prevent the current financial and bureaucratic chaos from swamping our whole economy, with ruined fortunes for some and illness & death for a great many others.

I'm heartened that you agree with me that we have a problem to solve, but once again you propose the same gussied-up retread of a solution that has failed us again and again: free-markets and competition. We've tried it your way. We've been trying it your way for close on 100 years now and all it ever brought us is a mess we try mightily to clean up once a generation or so. It isn't like we don't have other models for how to structure a working universal health-care system. Other countries have ironed out the problems with the various approaches over the decades, so we should just pick one and get this stupid thing fixed. I vote for the French model and Business Week agrees: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_28/b4042070.htm

Although the Conservative Party of Britain think theirs is pretty keen, too: http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/06/conservatives-for-socialized-medicine.php

And, with the above, I'm kinda done with engaging you on the money side of this issue. If you want to keep throwing money-based arguments out there, its your prerogative but each time you do it, you reinforce my contention that this is a profoundly moral issue and the opposition are a bunch of amoral, parsimonious bean-counters who care more about protecting a status quo that works for them than recognizing the existence of a social compact which would require them to contribute to the general welfare. This is about how our values as a nation are reflected in our public policy. If money were the only issue that ever mattered, we'd still have a slave-based labor force in the south and children working 90-hour weeks in factories in the north. Sometimes issues are about more than money and when they are, we find a way to pay for what is important to us.

But before you come back at me with more sophistry about DDT or the economically disadvantaged "choosing" not to buy health coverage or what have you -- in an attempt to change the subject by force-feeding some ridiculous or distasteful false dilemma on me by skewing my positions into your own straw-man argument -- I would like you tell me precisely why you don't think this is a moral issue when millions of Americans live in fear of illness and death and economic ruin amid the general prosperity. Enough with the ad absurdum arguments. I ask you to explain why you don't think the language of morality applies on this issue.

For your side, it always and only seems to be about the money and, it seems to me, the mysterious fairy dust of free-market forces are the only mechanisms for delivery of goods and services available to policy-makers. If that is true everywhere and all the time throughout history, then why bother having a government at all?

For my side, it is about social responsibility and, as I see it, the government is the embodiment of that shared commitment to the general welfare. It is the most efficient and equitable organ for the application of our shared values. In the end, if one side contends that they don't share those values, that we can't even agree that the state of our health care system is a moral problem, then merely agreeing to disagree and moving on maintains the grossly unfair status quo. In the last 150 years, we've moved forward on slavery, suffrage, labor rights and civil rights and at every junction we did so with a wealthy opposition that cried to the heavens about the end of the world. Each time civilization survived and people continued to be rich. On this issue, too -- as it always has -- history will move forward without your consent.

Must Reads

Liberality: Note to RedState: How to Stop the Gloating

Roger Ebert: The O'Reilly Procedure

Charles M. Blow: The Purient Trap

Ezra Klein: A Question of Priorities

Isabel Macdonald: Policing the Debate on Health Reform

Robert Parry: False Health-Scare Ad on CNN

Pierre Tristam: Obama the Collaborator letting naysayers neuter health-care fix

Paul Krugman: Not Enough Audacity

President Obama's Weekly Address - June 27, 2009

Opening the Door to a Clean Energy Economy

Music Break! Michael Jackson

Normally I wouldn't do this, but this video is special to me. I was the assistant production electrician for this concert at Madison Square Garden. We worked for a solid week getting this rig together and the stars that performed that weekend included Usher, Ray Charles, Liza Minelli, Britney Spears and the rest of the Brothers Jackson. There were two concerts, one on Friday night and one on Monday night celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Michael Jackson and The Jackson Five. After the second concert we worked all night to load out the show and ended at about 10am... on the morning of September 11, 2001.

Enjoy Billie Jean.

Michael Jackson Dead at 50

TMZ: Michael suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon at his Holmby Hills home and paramedics were unable to revive him. We're told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back.

A source tells us Jackson was dead when paramedics arrived. A cardiologist at UCLA tells TMZ Jackson died of cardiac arrest.

Farrah Fawcett Dies at 62

NY Times: Farrah Fawcett, an actress and television star whose good looks and signature flowing hairstyle influenced a generation of women and bewitched a generation of men, beginning with a celebrated pinup poster, died Thursday morning in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 62 and lived in West Los Angeles.

I had that pin up on a tee shirt when I was a kid.

Mark Sanford 2012!

Posted by Fraulein

So, looks like yet another super-smart Republican is involved in some extramarital hijinks. Is Mark Sanford's 2012 presidential exploratory committee up and running yet? God, I hope so. I want this guy right out there, front and center with Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, Newt Gingrich, and all the other genius bright lights of today's Republican party. Victory will be theirs!

Or not. Get your popcorn ready--the 2012 presidential race is going to be highly entertaining.

FRIDAY UPDATE: Now Sanford says he plans to reimburse the taxpayers for the cost of his little trip to Argentina. That's big of him.

The Pandemic of Stupid (Part Two: The Mark Sanford Edition)

Where in the world is South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford? The real question is, "Does anybody really care?"

This week found Gov. Mark Sanford (R-South Doucheland) conspicuously AWOL. No, seriously. No one knew where he was. Not his staff, not his wife. No one.

As the story goes, the father of four was gone since last Thursday with no mention to his wife, four sons (on Father's Day weekend) and apparently no word to his staff.

Then came this incredibly strange story from his staff that he had decided to go hiking on a Appalachian Trail, the same trail that Sanford was trying to deny stimulus money to. But still, no one was in touch with him. State Senator Jake Knotts (no relation to Don, but probably has the mentality of Barney Fife) wonders who's in charge of the Executive branch of South Carolina. Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, the next in line for the office, doesn't even know where Sanford is.

Then this:

S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford arrived in the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport this morning, having wrapped up a seven-day visit to Buenos Aires, Argentina, he said. Sanford said he had not been hiking along the Appalachian Trail, as his staff said in a Tuesday statement to the media.

Sanford's whereabouts had been unknown since Thursday, and the mystery surrounding his absence fueled speculation about where he had been and who's in charge in his absence. His emergence Wednesday ended the mystery.

...When asked why his staff said he was on the Appalachian Trail, Sanford replied, "I don't know."

Sanford later said "in fairness to his staff," he had told them he might go hiking on the Appalachian Trial.

Hiking in the state... Argentina... what's the difference? Now comes word that Sanford will hold a press conference at 2pm today. This thing isn't over by a longshot. Something more is going to come of this, I just don't know what yet. It seems like an awfully long way to go to hide something silly like an affair. At least the state didn't collapse without him, which is more than I can say for their financial situation with him.

UPDATE (2:33pm):

♫Don't cry for me Argentina... ♪

Sanford admits adultery and has said he will resign as Chairman of the Republican Governors' Association.

Another one bites the dust. Tell me again how marriage equality for gays would destroy "traditional" marriage and family values?

UPDATE II (3:10pm): Another example of "Fair & Balanced."

Ed McMahon Dies at 86

NY Times: Ed McMahon, who for nearly 30 years was Johnny Carson’s affable second banana on “The Tonight Show,” introducing it with his ringing trademark call, “Heeeere’s Johnny!,” died early Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 86.

His publicist, Howard Bragman, told NBC that Mr. McMahon died at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center surrounded by his family. Mr. Bragman did not give a cause of death, saying only that Mr. McMahon had a “multitude of health problems the last few months.”

Ownership

posted by Armadillo Joe

This is your official daily reminder of who actually owns this country, no matter which party may be ostensibly "in charge" of minding the store from time to time. Whether health-care or blocking the release of White House visitor logs, the reminders come in all sizes, great and small:

US seeks to stop Geronimo lawsuit

US officials are seeking the dismissal of a lawsuit brought against the government by descendants of Apache leader Geronimo to recover his remains.

The descendants want to rebury Geronimo, who was buried in Oklahoma in 1909, in his native land in New Mexico.

They are also seeking the return of body parts they say were stolen in 1918 or 1919 by a secret society at Yale University known as Skull and Bones.

[...]

The lawsuit seeks the recovery of Geronimo's remains "from 100 years of imprisonment at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, the Yale University campus at New Haven, Connecticut and wherever else they may be".

This refers to long-standing allegations that members of the Skull and Bones Society, including Prescott Bush, the grandfather of George W Bush, broke into Geronimo's tomb and stole his skull and other bones to keep in their clubhouse in New Haven.

[...]

The US justice department has now filed a motion asking a federal judge to dismiss the case.

...read more...

That would be Obama's Justice Department -- again with all of us hoping that some rogue, yet-to-be-flushed-out, left-over Bushite functionary within the department (like the DOMA brief) just reflexively operated on auto-pilot in defense of monied privilege and the status quo -- instead of simply taking no action at all and letting the suit move forward on its own, choosing to insert itself into the process, on the pretext of the the letter of the law and not the spirit of actual, you know, Justice:

Officials say the descendants' complaint does not fall within the scope of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

Just remember that when we get into these fights over the health-care bill, Employee Free Choice, bank bailouts and CEO compensation, etc., the people who own this country are just a bunch of soulless assholes, pining away for the days of aristocracy, who really do think the rest of us exist at their pleasure, for their own private amusement, like peasants tilling the soil on the lord's land during the Middle Ages.

For them, stealing the remains of perhaps the most famous opponent of white, European settlement of North America, keeping those remains in what amounts to the Masters of the Universe's frat house to be humiliated and desecrated as befits a vanquished foe, is just how things should be. It makes digby's recent movie quote all the more poignant:

A couple of years ago Matt Damon made a movie called The Good Shepherd about the creation of the CIA. As you all undoubtedly know, for years the CIA recruited only the best and the brightest waspy ivy leaguers ... Damon's waspy, ivy league character Edward Wilson had a line that I thought rather cleverly explained how the CIA thinks of itself:

Joseph Palmi: Let me ask you something... we Italians, we got our families, and we got the church; the Irish, they have the homeland, Jews their tradition; even the niggers, they got their music. What about you people, Mr. Wilson, what do you have?

Edward Wilson: The United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.

Where's The Left Party In America?

posted by Armadillo Joe

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Douchebag of the Week: Rep. Cynthia Davis

I really don't get some politicians. Let me rephrase that - I really don't get the callousness of some politicians. Case in point: Rep. Cynthia "Let them eat cake" Davis (R-MO). Davis is not thrilled with the latest press release from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services on a summer food program and has decided to comment on it.

The program provides “food during the summer for thousands of low-income Missouri children who rely on the school cafeteria for free or reduced-price meals during the regular school year.” Davis, who serves as the chairwoman of the Missouri House Special Standing Committee on Children and Families, questioned whether the program is “warranted,” and extolled the hidden benefits of child hunger:

Who’s buying dinner? Who is getting paid to serve the meal? Churches and other non-profits can do this at no cost to the taxpayer if it is warranted. [...] Bigger governmental programs take away our connectedness to the human family, our brotherhood and our need for one another. [...] Anyone under 18 can be eligible? Can’t they get a job during the summer by the time they are 16? Hunger can be a positive motivator. What is wrong with the idea of getting a job so you can get better meals? Tip: If you work for McDonald’s, they will feed you for free during your break. [...] It really is all about increasing government spending, which means an increase in taxes for us to buy more free lunches and breakfasts.

I found it hard to believe that a mother and Christian would be so flippant about a program that provides low income families healthy meals for their children during summer months when they rely on school lunch programs during the year. I went to her website to make sure she wasn't taken out of context and it was actually worse than reported. The disconnect is pretty shocking. I've captured it just in case it's removed from the site.



Maybe they shouldn't buy chips and ice cream. Can't they just get jobs at McDonald's? They'll feed you for free.

Rep. Cynthia Davis: Douchebag of the Week.

The Moral Equivalent of Slavery (UPDATED)

posted by Armadillo Joe

The so-called health care "debate" seems pretty simple to me. On one side are, well, anyone not making money off killing people by neglect -- what in a criminal trial would be called depraved indifference. On the other are the gobs of people who make gobs of money by collecting fees with the promise of paying out should the need ever arise and then not only not paying out on a wide variety of pretexts with no recourse when the need actually arises, but further revoking the policy once the person in need represents a negative income stream. In any other business such behavior would be called fraud. It is so profitable that one side can effortlessly thwart the will of an overwhelming majority of the public by spreading their blood-stained dollars around on an as-needed basis. Any politician from either party whose coffers include any money from the "Death-Insurance" industry has blood on their hands, too.

In other words, one side makes money by letting people die and anyone who helps them should be held criminally liable. It's really that simple.

But the problem we have now is that we have been robbed of the language to accurately talk about the health-care debate in the moral terms it requires. George Orwell called the phenomenon "doublespeak":

Communication will become... not the transmission of meaning, but the attempt to avoid meaning in furtherance of a political end which we feel must be mad but are unable to prove

[...]

"...the whole point of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought... In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it” ... The lack of words to express rebellion stabilizes the regime, as no one will have the ability to revolt. However, it also takes away the basic rights of people to express their feelings and thoughts.

The GOP, through the tireless efforts of Frank Luntz and other like-minded villainous functionaries of the Ruling Elite, has been able use various methods of debate-framing to leach meaning out of the very words we use to discuss any particular issue. Hence, we are no longer "citizens" deserving of certain base-levels of protection against violence foreign & domestic and calamity economic or social for the simple fact of being citizens. We are now "consumers" of government services or any other public good, which crudely reduces health-care to a mere commodity, and commodities -- as everybody knows --- are naturally always subject to magic laissez-faire sparkle-ponies and assorted free-market fairy dust which always fixes everything for all time throughout all human history forever and ever, Amen. Duh. Anyone who says different is a commie or a Dirty Fucking Hippie and hates America. And makes baby Jesus cry.

That is how they've been able to control the health-care debate for almost a century, yes: a century, from Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose calling for health care reform in 1912 to FDR failing to pass NHI in the 1930's to Harry Truman running on a platform of nationalized health-care in 1948 through the modest success of the Medicare/Medicaid battles in the 60's to Ted Kennedy's heroic but doomed efforts in the 1970's and the star-crossed Clinton initiative 15 years ago. We've been fighting this battle for almost 100 years and, except for the legacy-producing aire that passed Medicare and Medicaid in the wake of the blood-sacrifice of JFK's assassination, we always lose this fight.

We're about to lose it again. In fact, I would argue we lost it when Max Baucus paid no political price whatsoever for wantonly shutting out single-payer advocates in the initial health care hearings last month. The public option is already a piss-poor substitute for single-payer, a "Separate-But-Equal" compromise that will become the doctor's office equaivalent of "white" and "colored" drinking fountains. Anyone who has ever been glared at by the checker and other people in line while trying to buy groceries with food stamps knows what I'm talking about. At this point, the public option -- if it happens at all -- will be little more than a cobbled-together false-flag hybrid so chocked full of compromises that it is essentially engineered to fail, so that the insurance industry can point to it as proof they were right all along. No good faith efforts to make health-care work for all Americans here. No sir-ee, multi-gazillion dollar CEO salaries are on the line, so shut the fuck up and stay sick and die, you Dirty Fucking Hippie.

Over at FireDogLake, Glenn W. Smith calls this situation the moral equivalent of slavery:

The gravity of America's health care crisis is the moral equivalent of the 19th Century's bloody conflict over slavery. This is not hyperbole, though the truth of it is often lost in abstract talk of insurance company profits, treatment costs, and other cold, inhuman analyses.

Today's health system condemns 50 million Americans to ill health and death while guaranteeing health care to the economic privileged. It cannot stand.

About 18,000 Americans die each year because they lack health insurance. That's more than a third the number of lives lost in battle during each year of the four-year Civil War.

Members of Congress without the moral clarity to recognize this equivalence will be condemned by history. Their spinelessness and lack of will when confronted with the power of the insurance industry is just as morally bankrupt as the American congressmen who bowed to Southern slave-owners.

[...]

In other words, people are dying because our political leaders are afraid of the insurance industry.

Condemning Americans to premature death and ill health so some can earn profits is the moral equivalent of slavery. Some may find the comparison extreme, others distasteful. But history will record it as a fact.

And members of Congress who ignore that fact can be certain that their descendants will be haunted by their blindness and cowardice.

I recognize that politics is the art of the possible. Single-payer, dissolving the corporate charters of all health-insurance companies for violations of the public good and then jailing insurance CEO's for felonious depraved indifference is a pie-in-the-sky pipe dream of this DFH in an America that still protects torturers from prosecution, but I think Obama is playing it way too safe by not providing the vocal moral leadership from his bully pulpit that would give the cowardly caucus of Democratic capitulators in Congress the political cover they need to stand with their de jure constituency instead of their de facto one.

I don't think they need a collective spine-transplant because A.) we'd need a health policy that would cover it and we don't yet have it and B.) the success of such a surgery would presuppose a desire to do the right thing. They are craven opportunists, every single one of them, and I think they need to be shamed into doing what they've been elected to do by the public, not what they've been paid to do by industry. No amount of public phonecalls and letters and emails will trump the blood-dollars poured into their pockets. The only person with the power to lead this chorus of Quislings is our president. Based on what has happened so far, I fear he will attempt to navigate a middle course where there is none.

In the meantime, just try not to get sick of anything.

UPDATED:
Over at Mahablog, it seems maha's in a pretty sour mood about how this whole health-care fight is winding down and frankly so am I. In a post titled "Reform Theater," she pretty much wrote the same post as I did, but better phrased (bold-face is mine) -

...I believe that in nearly any other industrialized democracy in the world politicians would be tripping over themselves in the rush to provide universal health care coverage for citizens.

But not in the United States. In the U.S., politicians pat us on the head and tell us we’re confused. What we really want, we’re told, is to keep the private for-profit system that allows increasing numbers of Americans to fall through the cracks.

In the United States, the will of the people means nothing any more. What was once a vibrant democracy has been riddled with parasites sucking democratic values, not to mention wealth, out of it.

[...]

At this point, most of us fully expect that President Obama’s health care proposals — which were moderate and centrist to begin with, not nearly the total overhaul most of us wanted — will be watered down and compromised away to nothing but a collection of minor tweaks. And when the health care “reform” bill is signed into law there will be a great ballyhoo about it, but the American public will see no real difference. And the struggle will continue, and the Right will argue that we tried a progressive option and it didn’t work.

[...]

Years of government that cannot be made to respond to the will of Americans has resulted in political enervation. We’ve become resigned to an ever-encroaching shabbiness, an increasingly instability. None of the promises of reform made to us by the politicians we elect are ever kept to any meaningful extent, and we no longer expect them to be kept. Instead, we get reform theater, and nothing changes. That’s just how it is.

That wasn’t always the case. I am old enough to remember the attitudes of my Greatest Generation parents and their friends, who grew up with the New Deal and fought World War II. They came out of that era believing the American people, through their government, could accomplish anything. Now we’re grateful if our lights come on and our bridges don’t collapse.

Sorry if I’m feeling bleak today, but a number of news stories say the Democrats are going to be forced to compromise away the public insurance option — you know, the option that 72 percent of Americans support — to get a health care bill passed. And as far as I’m concerned that’s the only part of the package that really matters. It’s not a perfect solution, but it would make a real difference to millions of Americans and put us on the road to more genuine reform in the future.

And of course we may ask, with such broad public support for the public option, who is forcing the Dems to compromise? And the answer is, well-funded interest groups, the over-represented Right, and Big Money generally. We won’t get the reform we need, because it would cause a few well-connected people to lose money.

[... ]

We can write letters and make phone calls and even hold massive rallies until we all grow feathers and fly. It won’t matter. We know that, because we’ve tried these things in the past, with this and other issues, and were ignored. That’s why so many of us have given up.

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Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

One of the funniest things I've seen in a long time.

Fear The State, Fear It

posted by Armadillo Joe

Conservatives are authoritarians to the core. They worship state power when it is wielded by the right kind of people for purposes they endorse, like any good fascist, and their views have no place in a free and democratic society. They certainly should be kept as far away from the levers of power as possible.

And they most certainly shouldn't be allowed anywhere near something like a Supreme Court for so much as being in the audience to hear cases, much less in charge of it:

In 5-4 Decision, Conservative Supreme Court Denies DNA Evidence To Potentially Innocent Man

Because, it seems, it is more important to the greater public good and the integrity of our justice system for the machinery of law-enforcement to maintain an aire of infallibility (just like, oh say, a pope), rather than, um, justice. So, instead of reinforcing a general faith in the fairness of the system, our country's highest court has decided that a general fear of the power of the state to fuck-you-up-real-good-with-no-recourse is more important. Tasers and indefinite detention also help.

Thus, Chief Justice John "Hang 'Em High" Roberts and Samuel "Strip-Search Sammy" Alito both performed to the exact specifications their corporatist sponsors ordered up when they told the Cheney Administration who they wanted installed in the highest court in the land. And, as per usual, Justice Anthony "I'm the Joe Lieberman of the Supreme Court" Kennedy provided the crucial swing vote while the two-votes-for-the-price-of-one-brain duo of Antonin "I Never Met A Police State Tactic I Didn't Like" Scalia and Clarence "Pubic Hair" Thomas reliably brought up the rear.

What a collection of mentally-diseased reprobates and mean-spirited degenerates. We call this our "Supreme" Court?

We are well and truly fucked. Get ready for a whole lot of 5-4 votes in the next several years, even with Sotomayor (who may give us some 6-3 votes, frankly), because the empathy-free, iron-hard, coal-black and shriveled ugly heart of the Supreme court -- those four dependably authoritarian boneheads -- are an average age of 61, with Roberts clocking in at 54. The liberal wing is an average age of 76 and swapping Souter for Sotomayor will only bring it down to 72. The Court's right wing is generally younger and healthier and Obama will likely only be replacing liberal justices for the next few years, treading water until a member of The Court's Rethugli-bot goon squad either croaks or retires.

We don't live in a free country anymore, folks. In truth, unless you happened to be born rich, white, male, not openly homosexual and otherwise able to convincingly proclaim outwardly to be a good Protestant, this never has been a free country, but my point here is that we aren't even pretending anymore. This is the lasting damage of not only the Bush/Cheney era, but of the "conservative" revolution of the last 40+ years. The Supreme Court has always been The Prize to these people, ever since Brown v Board of Ed meant all the pretty little blonde girls would have to go to school with all those scary little black boys. The backlash from that decision gave rise to the upsurge which almost put Goldwater in the Oval Office, then led to Nixon, Reagan and both Bushes. Roberts and Alito during the second Bush term were the culmination of that decades-long march to hegemony. Bush may be gone, but The Movement got what it wanted in Roberts and Alito, and they are young, healthy guys able to make mischief for decades to come.

The Movement has spent decades and decades packing the lower courts with authoritarians and corporatists for the exact purpose of thwarting the public will on behalf of this country's true owners. We can win all the presidencies and take-over all the Congresses we want, but it will take a generation or two or even more to clean all that Rethugli-goon filth out of our judicial system, if we ever do.

In the meantime, just try not to get convicted of anything.

Journalism Is Dead

... Or so says Fox News. Why? Apparently, Fox News has a problem with ABC giving a platform to President Obama for an upcoming special on health care reform, complete with a town hall style meeting inside the White House. "Unprecedented," you say? Hmmm... where have I seen something like this before?

The Stakes

posted by Armadillo Joe

Right on cue, just as I'm continuing to plow my way through Pearlstein's book on Goldwater and writing vague & incoherent rants about an ongoing right-wing conspiracy dating back to the 1940's and early 50's and running right on up to today -- right now this very moment, even -- to undermine the America we all know and love, I go and read a blog post that sums the whole situation up better than I ever have or could.

He somewhat cheekily refers to his website as "Der Stiftung Leo Strauss" ("the Leo Strauss Foundation") as in Leo Strauss the "Jewish Nazi" -- a villain in American history you should know about, if you don't already. He also seems to be some kind of Washington insider, I think, because he refers to conversations he's had with members of Congress in their offices. His vision of America is rather dark, which naturally grabbed my attention, and he has little use for the majority of politicians and pundits who still treat this whole process we call "politics" as a mere parlor game with not the slightest clue as to the actual stakes. He persuasively argues that this thing called the GOP "Base" or sometimes "movement conservatism" is in fact an entity apart from the "conservative base" which is itself a separate entity from the GOP. His imagery is spot-on:

The Movement is the controlling parasite astride its enfeebled Republican host.

Our Ruling Class, though, whether pundits or politicians, either don't get the stakes or they do and don't care, because...

Seemingly bright ‘mainstream media’ still do not understand the dichotomy. Or its implications. They still treat ‘Republicans’ and Democrats as equivalent political actors playing the same game by the same rules for the same prizes. As long as relative neophytes view politics in this prism, the Movement wins.

One side thinks we're all playing a gentlemanly round of paintball on a paintball court while the other shells the whole damned town with live artillery. Or, if you will, one side keeps bringing a knife to a gun fight. Whether Emmitt Till or JFK or Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Kansas, how many people have to get shot down before we realize the other side isn't fucking around, that they actually want us dead?

the Movement within the conservative base always plays a different game for a different prize. The Movement may speak in normal political talking points from ‘Republican’ institutions. Yet is is not committed to Dahl-esque pluralistic politics. It has has never sought compromise or ‘moderation’. That’s because for the Movement, politics is existential warfare. Compromise is defeat.

I have tried at this blog and elsewhere to paint the Big Picture by arguing against the D.C. Establishment's cherished notion of bi-partisan centrism -- a notion that seems to soothe the tortured souls of our nation's punditocracy, worshipping as they do the blessed and elusive "middle" where one finds both moderates and roadkill. Choosing sides between the different parties is manifestly not like selecting a red car or a blue car, as though each is essentially the same in purpose and function and the selection is one of mere aesthetics and personal taste -- country music versus jazz, Dallas & Atlanta versus New York & San Francisco, BBQ versus granola and yogurt, Dunkin' Donuts versus Starbucks, beer versus wine. It's a little bit of regionalism, it's a little bit of ethnicity, it's a little bit of class and socio-economic status, but in the end we're all Americans and we all want the same things even if we disagree about process, right?

Wrong:

For the Movement ... politics is existential. And when survival is on the line, pluralistic compromise is for chumps. Democrats still are playing for political advantage within the confines of traditional two party politics. ... When the other side’s world view is existential, then the stakes are higher than something so trite as the Constitution.

The idea that one group may laugh at Larry The Cable Guy jokes and the other at Woody Allen movies, yet both love America and want it to succeed for all Americans, is silly and laughably naive. Such pablum may make for pat and comforting answers to gullible people who think we're all in this together as Americans and we just have different ideas about how to get there, but it's useless when steeling yourself for attacks from the other side, attacks not merely intended to wound, but to mortally wound. Digby calls this vague sense of "our side/their side" American Tribalism and I think the embrace of those outward trappings is an important component of the divided American soul, but more as external signifiers to fellow tribe members than any instrinsic affinity for the actual things embraced.

They are more like prescursors to learning the secret handshake, to getting invited into the club:

This I share out of personal experience talking with the Movement crowd over the years. Many of the conversations are carefully masked and there is almost a secret handshake and a ‘feeling out’ to see if one is receptive to test, and then small conversational overtures. If the Stiftung has seen and heard this stuff from Capitol Hill to refined salons in the Imperial City so has everyone else. From fatuous Tweety to Howard — to all of them.

To think that our problems in America are only about cowboy boots versus Gucci loafers is to manifestly not get to the heart of the matter where epic struggles over race and gender and class have been fought -- often to the death -- and will be fought again. One group of Americans wants the rest of their fellow Americans eliminated, in fact refuses to even acknowledge that they are fellow countrymen, and that spiteful, bitter group of people has the means, motive and opportunity, whether with guns or ropes or control over health-insurance policies, to make good on their secret wishes. That the talking heads on the Tee-Vee and in print don't, can't or won't incorporate this uglier, more existential threat to the health of American political discourse into their horse-race/game-day style analysis of the scene in D.C. reveals that they are morally vacant, willfully blind or just plain stupid.

The Krugman and Joan Walsh fantasy that some ‘Republicans’ are going to put a stop to the Movement is a joke. At one time there was a functioning Republican apparat apart from the Movement, capable of independent action. The Movement long ago slipped the leash.

[...]

Because Krugman et al. fail to grasp the fundamental difference between the Movement, the former Republican Party and the Democratic Party, talking heads refer to the Movement as the ‘Republican base’. As if somehow the Movement and its Manichean zero-sum nihilism is the same as the Democratic base.

[...]

It wasn’t always like this, of course. The Republican Party as an independent actor and entity was able to keep the Movement within bounds. But after Reagan, and especially the Bush debacle in ‘92, the Movement learned to seize power on its own within and without the Republican Party.

As Pearlstein depicts in his book, the transformation of Barry Goldwater from a stalwart political actor to the head of a full-fledged political movement represented the coagulation of a movement whose constituent parts -- once disparate and scattered between the two parties or even beyond them -- had been churning under the placid surface of a "Leave It To Beaver" 1950's America still basking in the glow of her glorious victory over fascism with FDR's "Arsenal of Democracy" -- tools and weapons built by mighty American industry -- before wheeling around to stare down another form of monolithic totalitarianism in the USSR, it too doomed to defeat by superior American ingenuity and culture.

America thought itself to be invincible.

Such an America imagined itself at the end of internal conflict and strife, that no problem was beyond the reach of Yankee grit and determination, even the "Negro" problem, hence the subtitle of Pearlstein's book "The Unmaking of the American Consensus," because a growing chorus of Americans throughout the 1950's simply no longer wanted to get along in the post-New Deal, pluralistic, ecumenical, multi-ethnic country that America had long purported to be and was finally en route to becoming.

Frankly, they never really had been down with that program and still aren't, to this very day:

In the case of racism, overt comments allow all quickly to depict a discovered outburst as ‘isolated, unacceptable incident’, etc. The nativism swirling around the immigration debates are an easy example. ‘You look different than me’ or the White trash psychology of another era trying to pick on someone below them socially is an ugly but known practice. The same argument on more upscale level is to mask it behind NAFTA, globalization and now economic free fall. Beyond the socio-economic critique, alleged health dangers, welfare freeloaders. Pat Buchanan long swam in those waters now plied by Lou Dobbs.

[...]

As a famous ‘Republican’ once told me, he’d rather live an American version of Franco than have to deal with multiculturalism. *That’s* how existentialism trumps liberal democracy.

Pearlstein's book just details how, over a couple of decades, the screeching, poo-flinging monkey hordes were driven or herded or bribed or otherwise willfully gathered under a single political banner for the simple reason that a large enough swath of the American public was finally demanding that this country live up to the high-falutin' rhetoric of its founding, but rather than man-up, admit that America's failures had done wrong by whole segments of her population and then work to make amends, enormous voting blocs got Pied Piper'd by sociopaths like Nixon and Saint Ronnie into the Republican fold, where their basest, ugliest, most anti-social impulses would never be condemned or even questioned. Then, like a virus, they multiplied and spread until the original Party of Lincoln no longer resembled itself. The Movement had triumphed. Our friend at the Stiftung continues:

All of the above are premised on loyalty to the Movement’s higher existential values rather than ‘mere process’ like democracy ... When you understand this dynamic, then the relative silence about Dr. Tiller’s murder, or the right wing extremism that led to Officer John's heroic courage makes sense.

[...]

What this means as a social, cultural and political actor, the Movement is unable to accept loss of power or control through liberal democratic means. The Movement’s eschatology is to higher truths than liberal democratic government: race, security, nationalism, order, security. The Movement’s psychology compels the rage as its Counter-Enlightenment agenda is revealed, in power and then snatched away again.

I fear we may simply be in one of the inter-glacial thaws between periods of Rethugli-goon mis-rule. It seems to only take a few years for the voting public, helped along by a prostrate and compliant corporate media complex, to forget just how bad things tend to get during Republican regimes and to view past GOP administrations through a gauzy lens.

Take, for instance, the Republican beatification of a third-rate Hollywood meat-puppet as The Greatest President in the History of Human Civilization™. Saint Ronnie of the Ray-Gun is the only other Republican president -- going all the way back to Lincoln -- not to die in office, bolt the party in disgust, lose a bid for re-election, leave office amid widespread corruption or be hounded from office by scandal. Except of course for Eisenhower, but he was barely a Republican anyway. Many in his own party accused him of being a Communist sympathizer.

Thus, considering the weakness of the competitve field, Saint Ronnie being the Greatest Republican President since Lincoln is a pretty low bar to hurdle. Upon his death a few years ago, one would have thought Pericles himself had returned to earth just die all over again, to hear the corporate media tripping over each other to issue ever more thoroughly unquestioning paens to his great and glorious era of prosperity, strength and greatness. It made me sick to my stomach to hear all that "Morning in America" bull-pucky again, as though he had led us from the Dark Ages.

I can't wait to hear how Jimmy Carter will be spoken of upon his passing. I suspect the tone will be somewhat different.

The resurrection of Richard Milhouse Nixon's career as an elder statesman in the 1980's is the clearest indicator of The Movement's not-so-latent authoritarianism. For them, the problem was never that he did something wrong, just that he got caught. His re-emergence paved the way for all those unreconstructed Nixonites to weasle their way back into government throughout the 1980's and early 90's and eventually into the Bush43 White House.

Therefore, when I hear people on our side talk about how this or that move makes Republicans look dumb and boy howdy, they're just gonna keep acting all dumb and losing elections, I can only join in the schadenfreude to a point. These people aren't engaged in a merely political program. Politics is but one facet of their agenda and since violence and a willingness to kill is one of their primary and most effective tools, they have the power to de facto enact huge swaths of that agenda, even if they fail de jure.

From race-relations & immigration to the health-care showdown, these are the stakes.

The Pandemic of Stupid (Part One: Iran's Election)

I haven't blogged much over the last couple of days because I've been sitting in front of my television machine waiting for a CDC news conference to announce that about 30% of the US population has been infected with a Stupid Plague. But so far, nothing. No BREAKING NEWS or THIS JUST IN. No Alex Witt(less) and her hairsprayed mane on MSNBC to warn of the Stupid Plague. No Wolf Blitzer and his Beard of Doom™ interviewing a government official telling us to wrap our houses in plastic sheeting and duct tape to avoid losing your brain cells.

What gives? We've all been exposed to it. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck seem to be the "Typhoid Marys" of the Stupid Plague, the carriers of this disease but somehow remain immune to becoming so stupid that they continue to breathe involuntarily even though their brain matter has turned to goo. I sometimes wonder how they haven't stepped into an oncoming bus while crossing the street.

There has been an outbreak of the Stupid Plague and it's easy to detect those infected. For example:

Iran has its presidential elections and it looks like a tight race. Mahmoud "Holocaust Schmolocaust" Ahmadinejad was feeling the heat from Mir-Hossein "That's HOssein not HUssein" Mousavi. The vote counting went all through the night. The results? Ahmadinejad wins 63% of the vote. WHAAA?!?! This was "close"? There are riots in the streets, hundreds of thousands of protesters wanting their vote to count. It looks like they take their elections seriously in Iran; they don't take their vote for granted, like in.... nevermind.

So what is the general reaction?

President Obama: "The second thing I think’s important to recognize is that the easiest way for reactionary forces inside Iran to crush reformers is to say it’s the US that is encouraging those reformers. So what I’ve said is, `Look, it’s up to the Iranian people to make a decision. We are not meddling.’ And, you know, ultimately the question that the leadership in Iran has to answer is their own credibility in the eyes of the Iranian people."

Makes sense doesn't it? If we're shouting democracy and freedom from the mountaintops, why in the hell would he interfere in another country's election if we don't happen to like the outcome?

John McCain: "I'm disappointed, it is an American principle ever since our founding that we are dedicated to the principle that all are created equal and the fact is they have the right to free elections and to select their leadership."

That's right, Johnny. An American principle. Last I checked, Iran was a Middle Eastern theocracy that we've had no diplomatic relations with for the last 30 years.

But you have to hand it to McCain being so concerned about the elections of a people he joked about bombing the shit out of not too long ago. And haven't we heard the nutty neocons like Joshua Muravchik, William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer advocating military action against Iran for what seems like forever? Now the same neocon establishment are the defenders of democracy in the Middle East? The bastions of liberty for Iran? Please, spare me.

Mike Pence (R-Doucheland): "I appreciate the fact that the president said the protesters have a right to be heard and represented, and I appreciate the fact that he said he is troubled... But I respectfully disagree with the administration's decision to essentially draw the line at not meddling and not interfering."

So Pence wants the United States government to meddle and interfere with Iran's elections? I wonder what Pence would have said if, oh I don't know, Germany or France or even Iran had "meddled or interfered" with our 2004 Presidential election because of the prospect of voter fraud in Ohio? I'm guessing he wouldn't have been thrilled about it.

Oh, and by the way, just because President Obama mentioned Iran and said we weren't going to meddle in their electoral affairs was enough to cause Iranian officials to accuse the US of meddling in their affairs. But, unlike the GOP using this as a political opportunity, and the neocons who have a penchant for being incredibly wrong on their warmonger ideas (see Iraq, Shock and Awe), I'd rather be accused of meddling in another sovereign nation's political process than actually meddling.