STAN"S WORLD II

The Three Nights of Halloween (2009)

nobody@vox.com(Stan) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:24:43 -0800

Halloween 2009

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Erectile Dysfunction? Consider this...

nobody@vox.com(Stan) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:33:05 -0700

I enjoyed this one. Thanks to Bill M. for the heads-UP!

Please view before using this product!!!!!

Erectile Dysfunction

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Weird Analogies, Tortured Metaphors, and a 21-Pun Salute

nobody@vox.com(Stan) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 06:47:51 -0700

Thank you (?), Mark and Ruthe...

From Mark:

Analogies & Metaphors Found In High School Essays:

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a ThighMaster.
His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
She grew on him like E. coli and he was room temperature Canadian beef.
She had a deep throaty genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before he throws up.
Her vocabulary was as bad, as, like, whatever.
He was as tall as a six foot three inch tree.
The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7 pm instead of 7:30.
Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.
The hailstones leaped up off the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across a grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resemble Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
Even in his last years, grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
"Oh, Jason, take me!" she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night.
He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a landmine or something.
The Ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids with power tools.
He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword.
Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.
She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
Her voice had that tense grating quality, like a generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightening.
It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

From Ruthe:

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PUNS FOR EDUCATED MINDS

The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.
I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.
A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.
No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.
A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.
A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: 'You stay here; I'll go on a head.'
I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'
The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.
A backward poet writes inverse.
In a democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.
When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.
Some wives mend their husband's socks; others just don't give a darn.
The butcher backed into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work.

And the special bonus pun...

It's not that the man didn’t want to juggle; he just didn't have the balls to perform.

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Hours after Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

nobody@vox.com(Stan) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 14:10:34 -0700

I couldn't have said it better. From "Democracy Now!," 09 October 2009, Juan Gonzalez, Naomi Klein, and Tariq Ali comment on Obama's Peace Prize:

http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2009/oct/video/dnB20091009a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=00:09:35

The volume on this video is a bit low, so I've copied a transcript below which you might find easier to comprehend. Also, immediately below, I've listed a few links to the contributors of this segment...

Further links:

Democracy Now!- http://www.democracynow.org/
Naomi Klein- http://www.naomiklein.org/meet-naomi
Tariq Ali- http://www.tariqali.org/
Juan Gonzalez- http://www.democracynow.org/about/staff and http://www.nydailynews.com/nydn/form/searchResults.jsp?site=news|boroughs|sports|entertainment|latino|gossip|lifestyle|money|opinions|travel&sort=date:D:R:d1&q=inmeta:nydn%252estory_byline~Juan%20Gonzalez%20-%20News

Transcript of the Democracy Now! piece follows below:

<<

As US Continues Afghan, Iraq Occupations and Quashes Accountability for Gaza Assault, Critics Decry Awarding of Nobel Peace Prize to Obama

President Obama has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, less than nine months after taking office. The award comes despite Obama’s continuation of the Iraq war and escalation of the US occupation of Afghanistan. We get reaction from author and journalist Naomi Klein and London-based author and commentator Tariq Ali. [includes rush transcript]

Guests:

Naomi Klein, Journalist and author of the books The Shock Doctrine and No Logo.

Tariq Ali, Author of over a dozen books and is on the editorial board of the New Left Review.

Rush Transcript

This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate - $25, $50, $100, More...

JUAN GONZALEZ: President Obama has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, less than nine months after taking office. The chair of the Nobel Committee, Thorbjorn Jagland, made the announcement today in the Norwegian capital of Oslo.

THORBJORN JAGLAND: [translated] The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.

JUAN GONZALEZ: The Nobel Committee specifically highlighted what it called Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world and his attempts to curb nuclear proliferation. After the announcement, Jagland took questions from journalists.

REPORTER: If we could just go over that same territory of the fact that he’s not been in office one year yet and has not fulfilled any of his promises, may never do so, and in English, if you could state why you’re so certain that this is a good choice so early in the day.

THORBJORN JAGLAND: Because we would like to enhance, to support what is he’s trying to do, what is he trying to achieve. And it is a clear signal to the world that we want to advocate the same as he has done, namely to promote international diplomacy, to strengthen the international institutions, to work for a world free of nuclear arms. All these kind of things, which—I mean, it’s a longstanding history of the Nobel Committee that we have tried to promote that kind of attitudes and that kind of policies. And, I mean, I could mention a lot of examples of awarding a prize to a personality that has started that kind of processes in the very beginning.

REPORTER: Mr. Obama is in the middle of a major decision, as you know, on—and will probably end up increasing troop levels in Afghanistan. How does the committee feel about that at this time?

THORBJORN JAGLAND: The conflict in Afghanistan concerns us all. And we do hope that an improvement of the international climate and the emphasis on negotiations could help resolve that. I do not claim that it must help or will help, but we could hope that this could help resolving that conflict, as well.

REPORTER: And what—do you have an opinion about raising the troop levels, increasing the—

THORBJORN JAGLAND: Well, I could have an opinion, but not the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

JUAN GONZALEZ: President Obama took office less than two weeks before the nomination deadline. He is the third sitting American president to win the Nobel Peace Prize after Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson in 1919.

For more, we’re joined by award-winning journalist and author Naomi Klein. She’s the author of the books The Shock Doctrine and No Logo. She joins us on the line from her home in Toronto.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Naomi.

NAOMI KLEIN: Thank you, Juan.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Your reaction to this surprise announcement?

NAOMI KLEIN: You know, I try not to speak about things before I really had a process—you know, a chance to process it, because my raw reaction is really that this represents—it’s very significant and disappointing, cheapening of the Nobel Prize. And, you know, it’s been cheapened before, and it will cheapen again—be cheapened again, but I think there’s something really striking here. And even just listening to the rationale that, despite overwhelming evidence, they’re giving this prize in the hopes that it will change Obama’s mind or encourage him to do things he hasn’t done—this is a candidate that ran a campaign that was much more based on hope and wishful thinking than it was on concrete policy. So we have hopes being piled on hope and wishful thinking.

This is supposed to be a prize that rewards concrete behavior, concrete action. And there are many people out there in the world who were under consideration for this prize, who every day perform acts that are taken at enormous risk for concrete benefit. I mean, I think that one of the people—one of the names under consideration this year was Dr. Mukwege in the Congo, in the DRC. This is somebody who is under personal threat because he is saving the lives of women every day who have been violently raped. And giving the prize to Dr. Mukwege—and I’m just giving one example—would have been such a concrete victory and encouragement for that action. It would have put pressure on the United States to take action, on the international community to take action, for the women of the Congo. And instead of that, we have this very, very political decision, and in many ways it’s like a pat on the head for good behavior or the hope of good behavior, because actually we’ve seen a lot of bad behavior. And we can come back to this.

But what I’m working on right now is a piece for Rolling Stone about the climate negotiations leading up to Copenhagen. And one of the things that the Obama administration is being rewarded for with this prize or what Barack Obama is personally being rewarded for in this prize is his supposed breakthroughs on international relations. What we’re actually seeing, as we speak, in Bangkok—this is the final day of two weeks of climate negotiations—has been extraordinarily destructive behavior on the part of the United States government, on the part of the Obama administration, absolutely derailing the climate negotiations in the lead-up to Copenhagen. Developing countries are absolutely shocked by what US climate negotiators have done. They have gone into these talks saying, you know, “We’re back. We want to reengage with the world.” What they’ve actually done is made a series of demands that would destroy the Kyoto Protocol and the binding emission architecture that was set up under Kyoto. So, to reward the Nobel Prize in the context of destroying the climate, where the US is destroying the climate negotiations, or threatening to, to me, is just shocking.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Naomi, the Nobel Committee specifically cited Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world. And I’d like you to comment, especially in light of the fact that right now the President is considering a dramatic escalation of the war in Afghanistan and also the US government’s criticism of the Goldstone report on the Israeli war in Gaza.

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, I’ll start with the second point, because this is something else that is so strange about the timing. I think the moment of just rewarding Obama for awakening hope and optimism has clearly passed. And we certainly see this in the context of Israel-Palestine, where there was a huge amount of hope that was awakened and inspired by Obama’s rhetoric, by his historic Cairo speech. But now we’re past that moment. He didn’t just give that speech yesterday. And now is the moment when we’re seeing his actual commitment to change. And it has been one disappointment after the next.

First, an extremely half-hearted attempt to get tough with the Netanyahu government when it comes to settlement expansion. I say “half-hearted,” because demands were made, but they weren’t followed through with any kind of muscle. As we know, the US has more than moral suasion to use with the Netanyahu government, if it’s really opposed to settlement expansion. There are billions of military aid that, of course, is never put on the table. And after a little bit of moral suasion failed, we see the same defeatism setting in.

And then the Goldstone report. You know, one of the supposed victories of the US reengagement with multilateralism has been the US taking a seat on the Human Rights Council. But what we see, as in the context of the climate negotiations, is the US is reengaging, but in an extremely destructive way, using their status, their seat at the table, to undermine international law. That’s happening in the context of the climate negotiations, and now it’s happened in the context of the Goldstone report, where, rather than strengthening international law, the US pressure on Abbas and also their own words and actions undermine a crucial report, which should have been a breakthrough.

And the Obama administration wasted absolutely no time in selling out Judge Richard Goldstone with no basis of fact whatsoever. The report was extremely balanced. The Obama administration could have stepped back and allowed it to work its way through the UN system, really kind of hid behind the UN on this one. Here you have a judge with an extraordinary international reputation for his belief in international law and his commitment to the reality of the—of “never again,” whether in the context of Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia. And this is somebody who’s really, really been committed to that idea. And the US has allowed his reputation to be destroyed, and contributed to it in many ways. So this is a moment where Palestinians more and more are saying, “OK, you raised our hopes, and now you’re dashing them.”

And then, in the middle of all this, the Nobel Prize Committee awards their top honors to Obama. And I think it’s quite insulting. I don’t know what kind of political game they’re playing, but I don’t think that the committee has ever been as political as this or as delusional as this, frankly.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Naomi Klein, I’d like to thank you for joining us on such short notice, since this was announced just a few hours ago, the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama. Naomi Klein, the well-known journalist and author of the bestselling books Shock Doctrine and No Logo.

We had hoped to get Jeremy Scahill on to respond, as well, but we’ve had some problems. But we did manage, just before the program, to reach journalist and activist Tariq Ali. He has written over a dozen books and is on the editorial board of the New Left Review. Democracy Now! producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous asked Tariq Ali for his reaction to Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

TARIQ ALI: Nobel [inaudible] surprises me. They’ve awarded the prize in the past to US presidents. Teddy Roosevelt, not particularly known for his love of peace. They’ve awarded it to Jimmy Carter, etc., etc. So the choice of Barack Obama, the only thing one can say is that they should have possibly waited; a decent interval might have been better, if they had waited ’til next year, because at the present moment US troops are occupying two countries: Iraq and Afghanistan. For all the talk, US soldiers remain in Iraq, and their bases are likely to stay there for some time. And the war in Afghanistan continues unabated, with President Obama actually sending in more troops. More people are being killed, both Afghans and NATO soldiers. The war has been expanded into Pakistan. So this is a sort of odd, though not surprising, choice by the Nobel Prize Committee.

They tend to take rhetoric very seriously. And though they deny it, we know that in 1938 they couldn’t decide whether to give the prize to Hitler or to Gandhi. And finally, they gave it to the Nansen International Office of Refugees, which was a much better choice.

It would be worth their while thinking that perhaps they should have a self-denying ordinance. They shouldn’t give the prize to serving heads of state. People still in power [inaudible] people making war.

I mean, I could have given them two candidates who are very deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize this year. One is, of course, Noam Chomsky, who has fought for peace all his life. And the other is Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has been peacefully sitting in prison, waiting for justice for the last twenty-five years. Now, that would have given people something to think about.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And what about the Nobel Committee’s citing Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world? Your reaction?

TARIQ ALI: Well, Obama made a speech in Cairo, where he spoke to the Muslim world, as US presidents have done in the past. In contrast to Bush, of course, that appears very dramatic. And it was welcome, in a way, that he said, “You’re not our enemies.” But, you know, actions always speak louder than words.

There has been no progress whatsoever on the Israel-Palestine talks. The administration is incapable of dealing with Netanyahu and the extreme right in Israel, which is now in power. And there has been no development in terms of getting out of Iraq completely. There are constant pressures being put on Tehran and war in Afghanistan. So talking to the Muslim world is fine, but one should always base one’s judgment on what politicians do, not on what they say.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And you’ve written much on Pakistan in your book The Duel. It’s called The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power. What about the Obama administration’s stance towards Pakistan?

TARIQ ALI: Well, the Obama administration’s stance towards Pakistan is to see it exclusively in instrumentalist terms as to whether it’s doing its bidding or not. This was the position of the previous administration. And Patterson, the US ambassador in Pakistan, behaves and acts like a viceroy. They’re expanding their military presence in the country. They are expanding the land holdings they have in that country, building more and more places for themselves, no doubt for their spy networks, as well. And they are essentially backing a corrupt regime, whose president does their bidding. In terms of what ordinary people in Pakistan need and what the real problems in that country are, they’ve actually done very little.

JUAN GONZALEZ: That was Tariq Ali, the noted journalist, activist, cultural critic and author. He has written over a dozen books and is on the editorial board of the New Left Review. Democracy Now! producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous interviewed him earlier.

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Screaming Into the Abyss

nobody@vox.com(Stan) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:20:31 -0700

Where are you, my friends? What are you doing to change things for the better? Are you so happy with your health care and health insurance that you feel the status quo is good enough?

Aren't you tired of the Democrats' capitulation to the Republicans. The GOP cowed the Dems for eight straight years from the White House, and another six from Congress, forcing their legislation through full speed ahead, wrecking our economy and the lives of millions, here and abroad. Yet, Obama and his party keep seeking bipartisan legislation. There will be nothing bipartisan about whatever legislation gets passed, other than scores of Right-Wing Democrats joining the GOP in opposition to the American electorate. The Republicans have made it clear they are against any health care reform proposed by the White House. They will vote as a block against it. And the party that controls the White House and both Houses of Congress continues to capitulate to them and join them screwing us all.

And where are you, my friends?

Today, for instance, five Democrats (including Committee Chair Max Baucus) joined the 10 Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee to kill Sen. Rockefeller's proposal to include a "public option" in the healthcare legislation that will come to the Senate floor. Had the Dems stuck together, the measure would have PASSED 13-10, instead of being KILLED 15-8. Then, they did it again on Schumer's amendment in support of a "public option," KILLING the bill by a vote of 13-10, instead of PASSING it 11-10, with Baucus joining the Republicans again.

Why aren't you screaming, as am I? Do you think these bought-and-paid-for politicians will risk failure at the polls in their next re-election bid, knowing their constituents will throw them out of office when the opportunity comes?

Hell no!!!!

You must let your elected officials know they're gone if they don't support a "public option." And that includes Obama.

So what will you do: Raise your voice or remain on your knees?

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"... No matter who's voted in, it's the influence machine that rules Washington."

nobody@vox.com(Stan) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 12:35:35 -0700

Very well-sourced essay on how special interests continue to legislate in Washington, despite the promises of President Obama and his Party...

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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/09/17/kroll/index.html?source=rss&aim=/news/feature

Lobbyists still run Washington

It was supposed to change when Obama took office.
But D.C.'s influence machine is going strong.
Just ask Max Baucus

By Andy Kroll
Editor's note: This article has also appeared on TomDispatch.com.

Sep. 17, 2009 |

At the end of this summer of discontent, of death panels and unplugging poor Grandma, of Birthers and astroturfers and rifle-toting picketers, the halcyon early days of the Obama administration feel increasingly like hazy, gilt-edged memories. The president's sprawling legislative agenda -- a healthcare overhaul, financial regulation reform, slashing wasteful military spending, and climate change legislation legislation -- is slowly grinding its way through the halls of Congress. Barack Obama's sheen, his administration's unflagging confidence, and all the bipartisan, post-racial aspirations have been replaced by the hard realities of Washington politicking. And with the media's lens more tightly focused than ever on Washington's every move and utterance 24/7, anything said a few months back feels like a lifetime ago.

One particular statement from distant April, however, bears revisiting. The president's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, then grasped not only the magnitude of what was being undertaken, but the raft of entrenched interests lining up in opposition. As he told the New York Times:

We're not taking on a fight; we're taking on a multiple-front fight because we've taken on a series of entrenched interests across the waterfront -- from education to health care, and the defense industry, and the lobbying industry as a whole … There will be a scorecard at the end of which ones we won and which ones we didn't, but every one of those policy challenges have been initiated by us.

Never short on chutzpah, Emanuel made it clear: it was Us vs. Them in a "multiple-front fight." A "scorecard at the end" would determine winners and losers. As a candidate on the campaign trail, Obama himself regularly decried the undue influence of moneyed interests and lobbyists. Announcing his candidacy on Feb. 10, 2007, for instance, he declared it "time to turn the page" on the "cynics, and the lobbyists, and the special interests who've turned our government into a game only they can afford to play." And on Jan. 21, 2009, the very day he came into office, Obama issued one of his first executive orders aiming to limit the influence of lobbyists in the new administration. He planned to "close the revolving door that lets lobbyists come into government freely, and lets them use their time in public service as a way to promote their own interests over the interests of the American people when they leave."

The new White House stood confident in those early months that it could take on "K Street" -- a street in the capital notorious for the density of its lobbying firms as well as Washington shorthand for their growing ranks. Tallied up today, however, the administration's seven-month scorecard tells a different story. Just as sweeping as the administration's packed domestic agenda has been the sheer force with which the lobbying industry and its clients have fought back, blocking, maligning or undermining its progress. In a Washington version of Newton's third law, the president's actions and those of his allies in Congress have elicited an equal and opposite reaction from opponents -- inside the Beltway and beyond it.

Spending eye-popping sums of money, deploying armies of lobbyists, dispatching grass-roots foot soldiers as agents of disruption, the special interests have fought fiercely to derail the White House reform agenda. It's now apparent that Obama and his advisors, including Rahm Emanuel, underestimated their strength. Even if Congress were to move in all four areas targeted for reform, the concessions already made, the softening of prospective regulations and restrictions, would likely signal a series of genuine victories for those special interests.

What does it mean when an intelligent, ambitious and well-liked president, who broke through one of the nation's most glaring racial barriers and enjoys majorities in both houses of Congress, can't overcome the deeply rooted interests that now seem thoroughly embedded in the American political system? A look at the unprecedented opposition to Obama's plans reveals why Rahm Emanuel might want to pocket that scorecard.

An opposition that knows no limit

The sheer presence of lobbyists cannot be underestimated. Case in point: the legislative battle over healthcare reform. As of mid-August, there were six lobbyists trying to influence healthcare legislation for every single member of the House and Senate, Bloomberg News reported.

That's 3,300 lobbyists working on a single issue (three times the number of defense lobbyists) with nearly three new lobbyists joining the fray each day. So far this year, $263 million (or more than $1 million a day) has been shelled out just for lobbying health-related issues, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Industry players have waged war to sway public opinion, spending $75 million on TV ads. Lawmakers up for election in 2010 have already seen $23 million flow into their nascent campaign coffers.

And the biggest spenders in healthcare lobbying aren't doling out their largesse to just anyone. Take Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the chairman of the influential Senate Finance Committee, leader of the bipartisan "Gang of Six" spearheading the Finance Committee's healthcare negotiations, and architect of that committee's much anticipated healthcare legislation. He's also one of the top five recipients of health industry-related money in Congress, pocketing $2.9 million in his career. For his 2008 reelection campaign, the unassuming Baucus took in $1.2 million from health industries, $690,050 of which came from health-related political action committees, the most for any Washington politician. Not that the six-term senator needed it: He steamrolled his opponent, an 85-year-old serial also-ran who'd lost 14 elections in 44 years and campaigned on a platform to turn the U.S. into a parliamentary system, by 48 percentage points.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking Republican member of the Finance Committee, not surprisingly ranks among the top recipients of health-related money as well. He's received $2.1 million from health industry players. And yet another Senate Finance Committee member and Gang of Sixer, Sen. Kent ConradD-N.D., has likewise enjoyed a steady flow of donations to his political action committee from lobbyists working for the pharmaceutical and health-insurance industries.

Loosening up lawmakers with lobbying and campaign donations is one way in the door; having worked for them doesn't hurt, either. According to the Sunlight Foundation, five former Baucus staffers -- two of whom are former chiefs of staff -- now lobby or work for major players in the healthcare debate, including the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (which outright opposes the House's promising healthcare legislation that includes a public option) and drug makers Wyeth, Merck and AstraZeneca. Similarly, all but one of the Finance Committee's 10 Republican members have ties to former staffers now lobbying for healthcare-related companies and organizations.

Perhaps, then, it's not so surprising to learn that none of the Big 3 -- Baucus, Grassley or Conrad -- backs a true public option in healthcare legislation, arguably the only way to keep insurers honest, ensure competition, and lower costs. Before the August recess, Democrats had hoped Grassley might come on board with healthcare legislation, giving the Obama administration the bipartisan imprimatur it sought. Grassley had other ideas, and spent his recess propagating the myth that the House was trying to "pull the plug on Grandma." He was even more forthright in a fundraising letter, declaring, "I am and always have been opposed to the Obama Administration's plans to nationalize health care. Period."

Baucus and Conrad, meanwhile, back a nonprofit co-op model, a pseudo-public option that, while successful in a handful of settings nationwide, would, most experts believe, likely fail dismally in any competition with heavyweight private health insurers. Indeed, an early outline of Baucus's long-awaited legislation lists Elizabeth Fowler, the senator's chief health aide, as the apparent author; Fowler, it turns out, formerly worked as an executive for Wellpoint, a big-time health insurer that -- you guessed it -- opposes a true public option.

Nor has the White House withstood the pressure of the deep-pocketed health industries. Before the August congressional recess, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius broke new ground, declaring that a public option was "not the essential element" of a healthcare overhaul. By then, the Obama administration had already made its "secret," backroom deal with top drug company representatives. In exchange for early support for its reform agenda, the White House agreed to limit how much (via drug price negotiations and industry rebates) Big Pharma would have to decrease the cost of its products, now borne by taxpayers, to $80 billion over 10 years. The deal was a coup -- for the drug makers. After all, the total sales of the top five U.S. pharmaceutical companies alone totaled almost $660 billion in the past half decade, more than eight times the agreed-upon cost savings.

Healthcare may be the most striking example of what's been going on in Obama-era Washington, but this sort of lobbying onslaught actually extends to Obama's whole agenda. Almost 2,400 lobbyists are, for instance, working on financial industry-related issues like the White House's proposed financial-regulation and consumer-protection reforms. Influential players, among them the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable, have already spent a staggering $222 million on lobbying in just the first half of 2009. The Chamber of Commerce, in particular, ranks first this year in finance-related lobbying (total spending: $26.2 million; total number of lobbyists employed: 167). A senior director for the Chamber of Commerce, which vehemently opposes a White House-proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency that would consolidate authority over credit cards, mortgages, loans and other consumer products into one centralized regulator, pulled no punches in a comment offered to Reuters: "We are working to kill the bill."

In fact, Wall Street's lobbying battle against increased financial regulation has been so powerful and smothering that, one year after the financial crisis began, plenty of experts already foresee future crises like the one in our not-so-distant past. Of the mega banks on Wall Street, MIT professor and former International Monetary Fund chief economist Simon Johnson says, "They will run up big risks, they will fail again, they will hit us for a big check."

On the Waxman-Markey climate bill, the first in U.S. history to tackle global warming, opponents have thrown everything but the classic kitchen sink at lawmakers to persuade them to drop their support. One of the heaviest hitters, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy (ACCCE), an umbrella advocacy group representing mining, coal, manufacturers and other energy interests, has spent nearly $12 million since 2008 lobbying against climate change efforts. But the 2,800 lobbyists weighing in on the Waxman-Markey bill in Washington -- more than 75 percent representing industry interests -- are only the tip of a rapidly melting iceberg.

The American Energy Alliance, headed by oil lobbyist Thomas Pyle, has hit the road with its "American Energy Express" bus tour visiting county fairs, horse shows and baseball games in coal-friendly Midwestern and Appalachian states, claiming that Waxman-Markey is actually a national energy tax that would eliminate jobs. The ACCCE has also hired a firm specializing in astroturfing -- that is, in creating or funding phony grass-roots organizations or networks -- to put together "America's Power Army," a 225,000-strong volunteer network to spread misinformation at the town-hall meetings of congressional representatives and other forums.

The anti-Waxman-Markey warfare reached a new low when one sleazy D.C. lobbying firm, showing the lengths to which opponents will go, fabricated letters opposing the bill and sent them to members of Congress. A congressional investigation found that Bonner and Associates, a specialist in grass-roots/astroturf campaigns working for ACCCE, forged more than a dozen separate letters and sent them to Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Va., and several other congressmen. The purported authors of the phony letters ranged from an American veterans' organization and the American Association of University Women to a Hispanic advocacy group, Creciendo Juntos, and the NAACP. But their message was the same: Fight Waxman-Markey, it will cost us jobs.

The F-22's false promise

In April, Defense Secretary Robert Gates signaled the Obama administration's new philosophy on military spending by announcing an array of notable budget cuts intended to curtail or eliminate some of the unsuccessful or unnecessary weapons systems that litter the Pentagon's bloated budget and reflect the previous administration's military excesses. "We must reform how and what we buy," Gates explained, "meaning a fundamental overhaul of our approach to procurement, acquisition and contracting."

In Gates' crosshairs were projects like the F-22 Raptor jet fighter, a Cold War relic that's run wildly over-budget and never flown a mission in Iraq or Afghanistan; the VH-71 presidential helicopter, which Obama specifically insisted he didn't want or need; the C-17, a transport plane Gates said the country already had enough of; and the Army's lackluster Future Combat Systems modernization program, the brainchild of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. After years of excessive military spending, Gates' plan to trim these wasteful projects (though, sadly, not the defense budget in toto) potentially presented a stark change of fortune to defense contractors and corporations accustomed to the beneficence of Washington's lawmakers.

In response, the defense industry and its lobbyists mobilized. Six months later, as new defense legislation staggers through Congress, just north of 1,000 defense-related lobbyists are hard at work. This year $62 million has been spent on Pentagon lobbying efforts. In particular, Lockheed Martin, the F-22's main manufacturer, has sunk almost $7 million into lobbying in 2009, in part through a campaign targeting lawmakers with F-22 manufacturing sites in their states, while extolling the number of jobs an F-22 program would create. Lockheed even launched a faux-grass roots Web site, PreserveRaptorJobs.com, to drum up public support for the plane. (It has since been taken down.)

Obama, however, stood firm. Even after House lawmakers tried to restore F-22 funding, the president insisted that he'd veto any bill with more of the planes in it. This was made crystal clear in a "Statement of Administration Policy" (SAP) on the House defense appropriations bill. The plane's loyal supporters like Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., and Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., got the message and left the F-22 on the cutting-room floor.

But the question remains: How pyrrhic was the administration's F-22 "victory"? Gates has, as a start, agreed to order four more of the useless F-22s at a cost of $351 million a pop -- they are included in the 2009 supplemental defense bill -- and he plans to more than double the future run of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, a cumbersome, accident-prone, prohibitively expensive plane like the F-22. It will surprise no one that the F-35 is also made by Lockheed -- and it is easy to imagine that the F-35 commitment could, in fact, have been a corporate trade-off for the lost F-22, which Lockheed still hopes to sell abroad with the Senate's help.

And what about those other projects eyed by Gates: the VH-71 helicopter or the C-17 transport? The Obama administration, by all evidence, seems to be wilting in its defense of their termination. (That the second most powerful Pentagon official, William Lynn, is a former lobbyist for defense contractor Raytheon undoubtedly doesn't help.) The same SAP with the F-22 veto is noticeably softer on the VH-71, saying only that "the President's senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill," but stopping short of insisting that the helicopter must go. As for the C-17, any kind of administration recommendation is MIA in the SAP.

"Gates and Obama got tough on the F-22, and in Congress the porkers backed off, and Murtha even took the F-22s he had in his bill out," Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information and a former Capitol Hill staffer for three decades, told TomDispatch. "But in the same bill, Murtha also packed in more C-17s, more presidential helicopters, more F-35 engines, challenging Gates and Obama. They need to understand that they need to put up a fight."

If not Obama, then who?

Rahm Emanuel knew back in April that the administration was entering the ring, but how ready have Obama and his team been to duke it out on all fronts? On paper, Obama has appeared ready enough. In his moving address to Congress last week, for instance, he not only emphasized the need for a public option in healthcare reform, but directly debunked the "bogus claims" being used to attack his healthcare reform vision.

His actions, though, have been less reassuring. While committing his administration to the Afghan war, the president has appeared unwilling to fight defense boondoggles down the line, as he did in the case of the F-22, and he's been less than forceful in defending sorely needed financial reforms -- like those for the $592 billion over-the-counter derivatives market -- in the face of Wall Street's lobbying clout.

Once again, this isn't entirely surprising: For all the talk of the flood of small, individual donations to Obama's historic 2008 election campaign, its coffers overflowed with money from financial powerhouses like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase and corporations like General Electric, Google and Microsoft. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Obama still ranks near the top among all recipients when it comes to contributions from the health, defense, financial and energy industries.

The same goes for Obama's staff. In an interview with Politico.com, Bill Moyers put it vividly. "I think Rahm Emanuel, who is a clever politician, understands that the money for Obama's reelection would come primarily from the health industry, the drug industry and Wall Street, and so he is a corporate Democrat who is destined, determined that there would be something in this legislation," Moyers asserted, that will appease those powerful interests.

If the president's sprawling agenda has revealed anything, it's the extent to which private industries and their foot soldiers on K Street and Capitol Hill influence -- and in some cases dictate -- American policymaking. Right now, about 12,500 federally registered lobbyists make their trade in Washington, but believe it or not, they're only a small slice of the pie. James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, tells TomDispatch that the number of people in the political advocacy business who aren't registered -- the astroturfers, public relations firms, and strategy groups, among others -- number anywhere from 90,000 to 120,000. Conservatively speaking, that adds up to 168 influence peddlers for every member of Congress.

Now you know the players. The teams, uneven as they may be, are on the field. So take out that scorecard. Beating the Washington influence machine, flush with cash, amply staffed and relentless in its mission, will be no small feat for Obama's team. And if they fail, then it will be possible to say that no matter who's voted in, it's the influence machine that rules Washington.

-- By Andy Kroll

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... And, according to the official record, he got the "Jewish vote" in Miami...

nobody@vox.com(Stan) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:56:29 -0700

This is a must read, not only because the author-- Pat Buchanan --ran for President of the USA, but because he's being highly promoted by MSNBC, a company co-owned by Microsoft and GE (see more on this following the conclusion of Buchanan's column, below), and through which Buchanan speaks to his public...

Knock, knock... anyone "in" upstairs?

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20090901/cm_uc_crpbux/op_3311160/

Did Hitler Want War?

Pat Buchanan Tue Sep 1, 3:00 am ET

Creators Syndicate – On Sept. 1, 1939, 70 years ago, the German Army crossed the Polish frontier. On Sept. 3, Britain declared war.

Six years later, 50 million Christians and Jews had perished. Britain was broken and bankrupt, Germany a smoldering ruin. Europe had served as the site of the most murderous combat known to man, and civilians had suffered worse horrors than the soldiers.

By May 1945, Red Army hordes occupied all the great capitals of Central Europe: Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Berlin. A hundred million Christians were under the heel of the most barbarous tyranny in history: the Bolshevik regime of the greatest terrorist of them all, Joseph Stalin.

What cause could justify such sacrifices?

The German-Polish war had come out of a quarrel over a town the size of Ocean City, Md., in summer. Danzig, 95 percent German, had been severed from Germany at Versailles in violation of Woodrow Wilson's principle of self-determination. Even British leaders thought Danzig should be returned.

Why did Warsaw not negotiate with Berlin, which was hinting at an offer of compensatory territory in Slovakia? Because the Poles had a war guarantee from Britain that, should Germany attack, Britain and her empire would come to Poland's rescue.

But why would Britain hand an unsolicited war guarantee to a junta of Polish colonels, giving them the power to drag Britain into a second war with the most powerful nation in Europe?

Was Danzig worth a war? Unlike the 7 million Hong Kongese whom the British surrendered to Beijing, who didn't want to go, the Danzigers were clamoring to return to Germany.

Comes the response: The war guarantee was not about Danzig, or even about Poland. It was about the moral and strategic imperative "to stop Hitler" after he showed, by tearing up the Munich pact and Czechoslovakia with it, that he was out to conquer the world. And this Nazi beast could not be allowed to do that.

If true, a fair point. Americans, after all, were prepared to use atom bombs to keep the Red Army from the Channel. But where is the evidence that Adolf Hitler, whose victims as of March 1939 were a fraction of Gen. Pinochet's, or Fidel Castro's, was out to conquer the world?

After Munich in 1938, Czechoslovakia did indeed crumble and come apart. Yet consider what became of its parts.

The Sudeten Germans were returned to German rule, as they wished. Poland had annexed the tiny disputed region of Teschen, where thousands of Poles lived. Hungary's ancestral lands in the south of Slovakia had been returned to her. The Slovaks had their full independence guaranteed by Germany. As for the Czechs, they came to Berlin for the same deal as the Slovaks, but Hitler insisted they accept a protectorate.

Now one may despise what was done, but how did this partition of Czechoslovakia manifest a Hitlerian drive for world conquest?

Comes the reply: If Britain had not given the war guarantee and gone to war, after Czechoslovakia would have come Poland's turn, then Russia's, then France's, then Britain's, then the United States.

We would all be speaking German now.

But if Hitler was out to conquer the world — Britain, Africa, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, South America, India, Asia, Australia — why did he spend three years building that hugely expensive Siegfried Line to protect Germany from France? Why did he start the war with no surface fleet, no troop transports and only 29 oceangoing submarines? How do you conquer the world with a navy that can't get out of the Baltic Sea?

If Hitler wanted the world, why did he not build strategic bombers, instead of two-engine Dorniers and Heinkels that could not even reach Britain from Germany?

Why did he let the British army go at Dunkirk?

Why did he offer the British peace, twice, after Poland fell, and again after France fell?

Why, when Paris fell, did Hitler not demand the French fleet, as the Allies demanded and got the Kaiser's fleet? Why did he not demand bases in French-controlled Syria to attack Suez? Why did he beg Benito Mussolini not to attack Greece?

Because Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps.

Hitler had never wanted war with Poland, but an alliance with Poland such as he had with Francisco Franco's Spain, Mussolini's Italy, Miklos Horthy's Hungary and Father Jozef Tiso's Slovakia.

Indeed, why would he want war when, by 1939, he was surrounded by allied, friendly or neutral neighbors, save France. And he had written off Alsace, because reconquering Alsace meant war with France, and that meant war with Britain, whose empire he admired and whom he had always sought as an ally.

As of March 1939, Hitler did not even have a border with Russia. How then could he invade Russia?

Winston Churchill was right when he called it "The Unnecessary War" — the war that may yet prove the mortal blow to our civilization.

Pat Buchanan's book on the causes of World War II, "Churchill, Hitler and 'The Unnecessary War,'" can be purchased through amazon.com at http://tinyurl.com/nnyexu. To find out more about Patrick Buchanan, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

And, unbelievable as this may seem, read this...

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http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/09/msnbc_promoting_buchanans_hitler-sympathizing_colu.php

TPMMuckraker

MSNBC Promoting Buchanan's Hitler-Sympathizing Column

Zachary Roth | September 3, 2009, 11:34AM

Pat Buchanan, Right-wing extremism

It's one thing for a national cable network to feature a Nazi sympathizer as a political analyst, and refuse to answer questions about it. It's another for that network to actively promote that person's apologies for Hitler.

But that's what MSNBC is doing.

We told you yesterday about Pat Buchanan's column, marking the 70th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland, in which he argued that Hitler didn't really want war. We also told you that MSNBC wouldn't answer questions about its use of Buchanan as a frequent commentator.

But it turns out the network actually has Buchanan's revisionist column up on its own site, marked "commentary" -- as if this were a piece about, say, health-care reform, or Sonia Sotomayor.

That's right. Supposedly liberal MSNBC now has a column on its site that argues, essentially, that Hitler was a man of peace -- a point of view usually relegated to the fringiest of neo-Nazi newsletters.

Hard to know what more to say.

Late Update: MSNBC has now taken down the column -- after Media Matters and a Jewish organization had joined us in raising concerns. We've asked MSNBC for comment and will keep you posted.

Late Late Update: An MSNBC spokeswoman responds:

An editorial decision was made to remove the column from msnbc.com. Pat is a contributor to MSNBC, his syndicated column does not speak for the network or represent the views of MSNBC.

Good to know MSNBC doesn't think Hitler wanted peace, I guess. The spokeswoman didn't respond to our question about MSNBC's decision to continue having Buchanan on.
>>

Interestingly, if you go to the MSNBC website and lookup the story today (09-08-09)-- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32642367/ns/msnbc_tv-msnbc_tv_commentary/ns/msnbc_tv-msnbc_tv_commentary --what you get is the following:

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The page you are seeking has expired and is no longer available at msnbc.com.

MORE FROM PATRICK J. BUCHANAN
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Censorship as good business.

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People to the Powers: Healthcare Reform NOW!

nobody@vox.com(Stan) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 02:24:11 -0700

Or...

Why I'm not a Democrat (nor a Green, nor supporter of any other political party)...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/09/05/sirota_movements/

A party is not a movement

In 2008, progressive groups subverted their own agendas in the name of electoral unity. Where does that leave them?

By David Sirota

Sep. 05, 2009 |

The difference between parties and movements is simple: Parties are loyal to their own power regardless of policy agenda; movements are loyal to their own policy agenda regardless of which party champions it. This is one of the few enduring political axioms, and it explains why the organizations purporting to lead an American progressive "movement" have yet to build a real movement, much less a successful one.

Though the 2006 and 2008 elections were billed as progressive movement successes, the story behind them highlights a longer-term failure. During those contests, most leaders of Washington's major labor, environmental, antiwar and anti-poverty groups spent millions of dollars on a party endeavor -- specifically, on electing a Democratic president and Democratic Congress. In the process, many groups subverted their own movement agendas in the name of electoral unity.

The effort involved a sleight of hand. These groups begged their grass-roots members -- janitors, soccer moms, veterans and other "regular folks" -- to cough up small-dollar contributions in return for the promise of movement pressure on both parties' politicians. Simultaneously, these groups went to dot-com and Wall Street millionaires asking them to chip in big checks in exchange for advocacy that did not offend those fat cats' Democratic politician friends (or those millionaires' economic privilege).

This wasn't totally dishonest. Many groups sincerely believed that Democratic Party promotion was key to progressive movement causes. And anyway, during the Bush era, many of those causes automatically helped Democrats by indicting Republicans.

But after the 2008 election, the strategy's bankruptcy is undeniable.

As we now see, union dues underwrote Democratic leaders who today obstruct serious labor law reform and ignore past promises to fix NAFTA. Green groups' resources elected a government that pretends sham "cap and trade" bills represent environmental progress. Healthcare groups promising to push a single-payer system got a president not only dropping his own single-payer promises, but also backing off a "public option" to compete with private insurance. And antiwar funding delivered a Congress that refuses to stop financing the Iraq mess, and an administration preparing to escalate the Afghanistan conflict.

Of course, frustrated progressives might be able to forgive the groups who promised different results, had these post-election failures prompted course corrections.

For example, had the left's preeminent groups responded to Democrats' healthcare capitulations by immediately announcing campaigns against these Democrats, progressives could feel confident that these groups were back to prioritizing a movement agenda. Likewise, had the big antiwar organizations reacted to Obama's Afghanistan escalation plans with promises of electoral retribution, we would know those organizations were steadfastly loyal to their antiwar brand.

But that hasn't happened. Despite the president's healthcare retreat, most major progressive groups continue to cheer him on, afraid to lose their White House access and, thus, their Beltway status. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that Moveon.org has "yet to take a clear position on Afghanistan" while VoteVets' leader all but genuflected to Obama, saying, "People (read: professional political operatives) do not want to take on the administration."

In this vacuum, movement building has been left to underfunded (but stunningly successful) projects like Firedoglake.com, Democracy for America, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and local organizations. And that's the lesson: True grass-roots movements that deliver concrete legislative results are not steered by marble-columned institutions, wealthy benefactors or celebrity politicians -- and they are rarely ever run from Washington. They are almost always far-flung efforts by those organized around real-world results -- those who don't care about party conventions, congressional cocktail parties or White House soirees they were never invited to in the first place.

Only when enough progressives realize that truism will any movement -- and any change -- finally commence.

-- By David Sirota

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Squandering It All

nobody@vox.com(Stan) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:51:57 -0700

This article by Joe Conason in Salon.com this week pretty much sums-up my sentiments:

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http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/09/04/conason/index.html?source=rss&aim=/opinion/feature

Healthcare didn't have to go this way

Obama gave away the store on this crucial issue. It's time to take it back

By Joe Conason

Sep. 04, 2009 |

Achieving humane and affordable healthcare in America was never going to be easy, even with an audacious new president and large majorities in both houses of Congress. Compromise between the Democratic Party’s diverse representatives -- let alone with the tiny handful of Republicans who actually care about the need for reform -- was always inevitable. And when the moment for compromise arrived, the result was certain to disappoint many of the president’s most ardent voters, who cherished his campaign’s promises of change. But the mundane grind of making legislation need not have been quite as painful as it is today, when progressives feel betrayed, and Democrats feel deflated.

The essence of President Obama’s problem can be found in an anonymous quote, attributed to a White House official, that appeared on the front page of the New York Times last Wednesday. “It’s so important to get a deal,” confided the unnamed aide, that the president “will do almost anything it takes to get one.” Such desperate confessions of politics as usual, which have appeared in dozens of such remarks in the press over the past several months, not only serve the president poorly but damage the fresh brand that he brought to Washington after his triumphant election last year. They are the residue of an ill-conceived strategy that has left Obama politically vulnerable, attenuated his connection with loyal progressives, and blurred his most important message.

That message was Obama himself, of course -- meaning what he represented and what he meant to accomplish. From the outset of the 2008 campaign, the rationale for his long-shot candidacy was that he stood firmly for a set of principles in policy and governance and against political business as usual, as well as a style of politics that emphasized citizen activism. He would drive the corporate lobbyists away from Capitol Hill, the White House and the federal agencies. He would insist on transparency and integrity in conducting the people’s business. Above all, he would pursue the public interest forthrightly rather than inch forward triangularly and incrementally.

Perhaps none of these happy promises was likely to be fulfilled, and perhaps that was something Obama and his campaign aides always understood. But as the new White House came to terms with the realities of Washington, they seem to have thrown off their original images and ideals insouciantly -- as if unburdening themselves of unfashionable baggage that embarrassed them in the big city.

Nowhere has this fundamental mistake been more visible than in the effort to reform healthcare. From more than six decades of struggle over the question of universal coverage and cost control, the Obama team must have known that they would face enormous opposition. They should also have known, from the ugly mood of the Republican campaign during the final weeks of the election and the partisan history of the past 15 years, that chances for bipartisan agreement were minimal. And they ought to have realized that the energy of the progressive movement, expressed in their own campaign, could become their most formidable weapon in that battle.

That was the insight attributed to FDR in a famous anecdote. When progressive leaders approached him with a wish list of reform programs and liberal legislation, he nodded. "I agree with you, I want to do it. Now make me do it." Although Roosevelt biographers consider that story apocryphal, it expresses a truth of political history that remained salient from the labor organizing of the Depression through the civil rights, antiwar, feminist and environmental movements. For a president who wants reform and change, citizen agitation is an important instrument of power, not an obstacle to deal making.

But this president surrendered that powerful weapon when he chose aides who prefer lobbyists to activists and adopted a strategy that ranks bipartisan agreement above policy substance. The telltale remark came from still another anonymous aide who boasted recently that the White House would welcome a "confrontation" with Democratic liberals over healthcare because it would "show he is willing to stare down his own party to get things done."

No doubt this willingness to further divide Democrats and punish liberals is pleasing to Beltway pundits. It arises from the same instinct that welcomed a parade of lobbyists into the White House and that fawned over Republican senators and Blue Dog representatives, even as they conspired to wreck reform. Meanwhile, the political environment was suffused with right-wing messages about the president and his program, while the White House failed to promote or explain its plan. (No great sophistication is required to determine who, aside from the president himself, bears the greatest blame for these tactical and strategic errors.)

While this depressing scenario may seem preordained, especially in the conventional idiocy of Washington politics, there were other possibilities, had Obama remained true to his promise and platform. Instead of seeking to silence supporters of a single-payer, Medicare-for-all plan, for example, the Obama team could have encouraged those organizations to create pressure from below. Then the public option might have become part of the ultimate deal, rather than an ideal that gets traded away. All the whispered White House waffling over the public option -- which remains on Obama’s own Web site as a central feature of his reform plan -- has only made him appear weak, indecisive and unreliable.

Can he regain the initiative and restore his brand when he addresses a joint session of Congress next week? Only if he returns to the principles enunciated in his campaign and his inaugural address. He must tell the people and their representatives again that it is time to put away childish things. He must explain why it is imperative to bring our healthcare system into the 21st century, like every developed nation that accomplished this fundamental task long ago. He must stand fast for universal coverage.

And he must vow that he will do whatever must be done to achieve that promise -- rather than sell off whatever he can, including the security of millions of families, simply to pass any bill.

-- By Joe Conason

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Obvious, though no less brilliant for it

nobody@vox.com(Stan) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 06:51:00 -0700

Here's a piece of criticism posted this week on salon.com by Michael Lind. Although it presupposes that Obama actually does want to do good, I'm not convinced that he does. That said, Lind's short essay makes a lot of sense. As a person who read Machiavelli's "The Prince" while still in high school, it saddens me that apparently our ostensibly intellectual President has not-- or at the very least, never really learned its lessons on leadership.

--Stan

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http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/08/18/machiavelli/index.html?source=rss&aim=/opinion/feature

Obama, you're no Machiavelli
The president should have heeded the Florentine's advice before he embarked on healthcare reform

By Michael Lind

Aug. 18, 2009 |

To judge from his faltering campaign for healthcare reform, President Obama, well-read as he is, appears to have neglected to read Machiavelli. If he had done so, the American president would have learned this from the Florentine statesman and philosopher in "The Prince":

"It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favor; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it. Thus it arises that on every opportunity for attacking the reformer, his opponents do so with the zeal of partisans, the others only defend him half-heartedly, so that between them he runs great danger."

"For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order ..." Machiavelli's observation is particularly apt in the case of healthcare. The American healthcare system costs nearly twice as much as the average among similar industrial democracies, and yet overall it does not provide better care. American doctors make more money than doctors in similar societies; American drug companies gouge American consumers, in order to make up money lost in other countries where governments control drug prices; and private insurance and hospital and doctors' office bureaucracies consume other resources. For this very reason, the groups that contribute to the problem -- the medical profession, the pharmaceutical industry and the private insurance industry -- have every incentive to spend enormous sums to bribe or intimidate politicians and mislead the public in order to continue extracting their even more enormous rents from their fellow Americans.

" ... and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order ..." Here, too, Machiavelli's observations could not be more apposite. The Obama administration and the Democratic majority in Congress claim that most Americans who are now covered by employer-provided health insurance would be better off in the long run as a result of Democratic reforms. Universal coverage must come first, and cost reductions can come later. The political problem arises from the fact that only a minority of people in the U.S. lack employer health insurance. As in the 1990s, the majority of insured Americans are more concerned about rising deductibles than about universal coverage. However, cost reductions as a result of measures like comparing effective treatments are likely to manifest themselves only in the long run, rather than in the near future. The insured majority are thus being asked to support a reform that will chiefly benefit the non-insured minority in the short run, in the hope that maybe in the long run their own costs will go down -- maybe. Small wonder that not only many Democratic voters but their elected Democratic representatives have been "lukewarm" at best in supporting reform.

"... this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favor ... " Machiavelli was talking about revolutions from below or above. In the case of the contemporary U.S., his quote should be amended to read "this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the law-makers in their favor ... " The fight over healthcare reform dramatically illustrates the extent to which the American political system has been colonized by producer lobbies, in healthcare and other industries. This phenomenon is neither new nor unique to the U.S. In every society, consumers of goods and services outnumber producers. But the vast constituency of consumers tends to be disorganized and inattentive, while producers, although numerically far fewer, are focused and mobilized. Because politicians respond to intensity and money and not just electoral numbers, the doctors, drug companies and insurance companies may not have the laws in their favor, but thanks to their successful lobbying they have many lawmakers in their favor.

" ... and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it." Machiavelli's second kind of "lukewarmness" is also evident in the debate over healthcare. The Republicans defeated the Clinton healthcare reform by making the case that, as bad as American healthcare might be now, the alternative might be even worse. That strategy worked once before; why not again? Particularly in the midst of the greatest economic downturn since the Depression, people are risk-averse when it comes to the trade-off between risking benefits that exist and going for possible gains. In the words of the children's rhyme by Hilaire Belloc, "It's always best to cling to Nurse/ For fear of finding something worse."

In addition to exploiting one kind of "incredulity" -- disbelief that change will be better -- many conservatives shamelessly have exploited the incredulity and ignorance of poorly informed voters, who are being told that the Democratic plan will lead to euthanasia for the elderly and the disabled. It is no defense of these vile tactics to observe that the Democrats have made themselves vulnerable to wild conspiracy theories by not being completely candid about healthcare.

The president and the congressional Democrats have claimed that we can cover every American, allow people who want to keep their employer-provided insurance to do so, not raise taxes on the vast majority of Americans, not ration healthcare and cut costs. This cannot possibly be true. According to the CBO, the plan in its present form would cost more than a trillion dollars over a decade. An extra hundred billion a year for real healthcare reform could be a bargain, but let's not pretend that any significant reform can be revenue-neutral.

Progressive supporters of a public option are being less than candid when they claim that a public plan will not put private insurance out of business -- when in fact their not-so-secret hope is that over time the public plan will grow into universal single-payer by putting private insurance out of business. If not, why is the left so supportive of the public plan? A supporter of single-payer, I have no problem with the goal, but instead of trying to sneak the seed of single-payer in by stealth, proponents ought to make the case on its merits. Crude pseudo-Machiavellianism based on misdirection is likely to backfire. (In "The Prince," Machiavelli -- a small-r republican who preferred the many to the elites -- says that the best leaders are those whose reputations for virtue and honesty are actually justified.)

In short, by claiming all gain and no pain -- no rationing of any kind, no middle-class tax increases, no limits on doctor choice, no price controls, no seed of single-payer -- the Democrats have created an LBJ-like "credibility gap." Just as the discrepancy between the Johnson administration's pretext for escalation in Vietnam and its actual strategic motives created a gap that was quickly filled by conspiracy theories, so the gap between the promises of the Democrats and the reality of hard trade-offs has opened a door to false and revolting conspiracy theories, like Sarah Palin's claim that under the Democratic plan her Down syndrome child might have been euthanized.

If Machiavelli were around today, he would not give the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress high marks for Machiavellianism. Indeed, the wily Florentine probably would have been stunned by the fact that the Obama administration and the Democratic congressional leadership announced a schedule for passing the Democratic healthcare plan before there was a Democratic healthcare plan. The Renaissance equivalent would have been an agreement by Florentine conspirators to set a date certain for overthrowing the Medici tyrants, and deciding only later how to do it and whom to include. Right now the evolving Democratic healthcare bill consists of different versions that are not understood either by most defenders or most opponents. Democrats insist that we need to hurry up and pass whatever-it-is, while Republicans are against whatever-it-is, sight unseen.

But while he might have been surprised by the willingness of the Obama administration to campaign for a plan that is not even finished, Machiavelli would not have been surprised that healthcare reformers for the second time in a generation have underestimated the difficulty of reform. The Democrats must hope that Machiavelli's words in "The Prince" are not an epitaph for the latest attempt to provide universal healthcare: "Thus it arises that on every opportunity for attacking the reformer, his opponents do so with the zeal of partisans, the others only defend him half-heartedly, so that between them he runs great danger."

-- By Michael Lind

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