I'm on short sleep rations these days because of a timetable that must be met, and I can't afford to expend any energy talking about fecklessness, dicklessness, betrayal, the growing plutocracy, and the handing of America over to the corporatists today. So I'll let others do it.

Draftglass: "America is currently too fucking stupid, spoiled and hateful to make good, long-term decisions." (You MUST read this one.)


Ezra Klein, who used to be a cute progressive kid blogging at Pandagon, has joined the Borg.

Digby, as usual, says what I lack the time or discipline to say.

Skippy notes that for people like our own jurassicpork, the 13 month extension doesn't include any benefits for those who have already exhausted all tiers of unemployment. If you are about to become a casualty of the Stuff the Rich Nation, you will have a year and a half to find another job for when these rich people who have had eight years of these tax cuts and have not created jobs, decide to create some (despite the fact that no one can afford anything they make). If you are already one, not one person in our government other than the outgoing Congressman from Florida's eighth district and Sen. Bernie Sanders gives a shit about you.

Michael Stickings wonders whether "something is better than nothing" is our new standard of achievement.

Greg Sargent explains why we're angry.

E.D. Kain, the resident conservative over at Balloon Juice, thinks it was a pretty good deal on a page which features an ad by the Progressive Change Committee, about which Angry Black Lady has some interesting and cogent observations.

And finally:

Yesterday the sad news came across that it seems Elizabeth Edwards is reaching the end of her cancer journey.

Every day, for 8, 10, 12, and sometimes more hours, I'm steeped in the conduct of cancer trials. For me it's about how to collect data, and once the data collection mechanism is done, I'm pretty much done until they either need a system change or there's a problem. In the latter case, I may have to take a cursory look at actual data. When I see what we call "The death form" completed, it means that an actual person that someone cared about has succumbed. When I see someone with liver cancer who's still alive after six, eight, twelve cycles of treatment, it's a sign of hope. That's what drives home for me that what I do, as removed from actual patients as it is, is about hope -- not the hope that's based on blind faith, but hope for small victories like time measured in days and months, if not years.

Yes, it's appalling that a half-century into serious cancer research we are still all about cut, irradiate, and poison. But for now that's what we've got. And if it gets someone through to his daughter's wedding, his son's graduation, just one more summer of watching the sun set over a Caribbean beach, it's a victory, however small. And for those who get that time, it FEELS like a victory, in the way getting relief for the hundreds of thousands of new unemployed in return for stuffing the pockets of the wealthy doesn't.

In 2007 and 2008, John and Elizabeth Edwards were the only ones on the campaign trail talking about the America in which people now find themselves -- people who thought it would never happen to them. Back then the rumblings of economic collapse were only starting. And those who had succumbed to trickle-down economics over the last thirty years were still forgotten.

In 2008 August 2007 I offered to hold a fundraiser for the campaign at my house. You have to realize that my house is a money pit -- a 1950's POS cape in which nothing had been updated since 1975. We've been updating very slowly, mostly on the outside where it shows. My living room has the same ugly red carpet it did when we moved in. My kitchen is still a work in progress three years after I started refacing the cabinets. Our basement family room still had ugly dark paneling and ugly rust-colored carpet.

Over fifty people showed up to schmooze with Elizabeth Edwards for a couple of hours. She was as kind and gracious in person as she seemed on television and that my house was not ready for prime time didn't seem to matter. When she left to go to a book signing, I said "This is the coolest thing I have ever done."

Of course we all know what happened next, and as more came out about exactly what Elizabeth knew even as she was taking donations for a campaign that we knew even then would go nowhere, and that would have been an utter disaster had it succeeded in making it through the primaries, I found myself utterly disgusted with her. She KNEW, and yet she carried on as if she and John were the couple we all thought they were. She continued to take the donations even as she must have known in her heart it was for naught. She took advantage of me, my friends, my neighbors, and the others who came and paid over a hundred dollars to schmooze with Elizabeth Edwards.

Later on, we read in the book written by those loathsome hacks John Heilemann and Mark Halperin that she was a harridan to John Edwards' staff, that she would get hysterical, that she was impossible.

Wouldn't you be? And if you were faced with a recurrence of breast cancer in the middle of a presidential campaign and found out that your husband had thrown away not just your marriage, but a cause you both had supposedly believed in -- for a fling with an aging New York party girl who was the inspiration for a character in a 1980's Jay McInerney novel? Wouldn't you try to Act As If everything was normal?

In the Showtime series The Big C, the protagonist played by Laura Linney explains her unwillingness to tell her family about her Stage IV cancer diagnosis, "I just wanted a little more time where it's not about me being sick." I think that's what motivated Elizabeth Edwards too -- that and kicking the can of deciding what to do down the road -- putting it off because it's just too painful to deal with now.

I still feel angry at how we were sold a bill of goods about John Edwards, but I do understand why she did it. I understand why she thought that the bigass North Carolina house that he built her would somehow compensate for SOMETHING. I understand why she felt the need, after probably hundreds of house fundraisers like mine, to get out into the media and punishing her no-good dog of a husband for what he squandered.

But at this point, all that is behind us. What we need to keep in mind about Elizabeth Edwards is how she stayed out there, looking marvelous for a long time, trying mightily to sound the alarm about health care in this country. While she was out in public, she was a living rebuke to the "I Got Mine and Fuck You" doctrine -- someone with pots of money who still remembered that there are people out there dying because their insurance will not cover the cancer treatments that allowed her to stay out there fighting long after others with recurrent breast cancer have succumbed.

I wish Elizabeth Edwards a peaceful passing with no pain. I wish her children well. I thank her for what she tried to do to call attention to the inequities in our health care system.

And I hope that the image of this brave woman's last battle tortures John Edwards every single fucking day of the rest of his life.

UPDATE: Elizabeth Edwards died this morning at the age of 61.

Labels: capitulation, Elizabeth Edwards, taxes, unemployment, wussy-ass Democrats

Remember when the White House expended everything it had in order to try to woo Maine Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe to vote for health care reform, because Barack Obama believed that if two Republican Senators voted for his sop to the insurance companies (which in no way satisfies their gaping maw), that made it "bipartisan"? That's why single-payer never even merited a passing mention, and a public option was taken off the table before anyone could discuss it.

Well, here's how that worked out:

ens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are co-signing an amicus, or friend of the court, brief to be submitted to the federal court in Florida that will hear a constitutional challenge of the federal health care reform law.

The brief was initiated by U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and boasts signatures of 30 Senate Republicans. The lawsuit was brought by the attorneys general for several states and the National Federation of Independent Businesses, a small-business trade organization.

At issue is a requirement that U.S. citizens purchase health insurance beginning in 2014 or face a fine -- known as the "individual mandate."

Snowe was the only Republican to support any version of health care reform, but ultimately voted against the final bill. The version Snowe supported did include an individual mandate, but her aides said she opposed that provision and hoped to change it through the amendment process.

Snowe was concerned with the concept of government mandating an individual purchase of something, especially because she did not believe health insurance would be sufficiently affordable, her office has said.

Snowe and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., tried to amend the reform to reduce the number of people subject to the mandate and allow Congress more flexibility to review the mandate altogether, but it failed in committee.

"The individual mandate has no place in a health care reform bill unless and until affordable health insurance is available for all Americans," Snowe said in a release about the brief.

"We must take seriously the gravity of this imperious and intrusive government mandate and repeal the individual mandate before millions of Americans are forced to purchase health care coverage that they neither want nor can afford."

Supporters of the individual mandate say it will help keep health insurance costs down because it spreads risk: Those who decline to buy insurance are often the healthiest, while those who buy it are often need it most and, therefore, cost more to cover.

Snowe, one of the senators most likely to vote across party lines, faces re-election in 2012. Many expect she will face a strong primary challenge, given the experience of several incumbent Republicans in the 2010 election cycle.

Some also speculate she's trying to improve her conservative credentials by signing her name to the court challenge.

Collins and Snowe are going to get Tea Partied right out of the Senate, as is anyone who dares to put the good of the nation, or even its national security, above Mitch McConnell's stated primary agenda of ensuring that Obama is a one-term president.

Meanwhile, Obama continues to preach the gospel of conciliation with these people, who would murder him with their own hands if they thought they could get away with it.

Labels: Barack Obama, capitulation, We Are So Screwed, wussy-ass Democrats

In the nearly two years since Barack Obama took office, we've seen a nonstop litany of wingnuts whipping their minions into a frenzy about a socialist far-left agenda.

Here we have a President who has not closed Guantanamo Bay, who has expanded the war in Afghanistan, who didn't fight for even a public health care option, let along single-payer, who dickers with DADT in the hope that he can get outta Dodge before he has to deal with his own "icky feelings" about Teh Gays, and who seems willing to gut Social Security and Medicare in the hope that it will make Republicans play nice. Oh, and he's also been called a secret Muslim terrorist who's an enemy to Israel, which probably explains what is likely to be his next "Nixon Goes to China" moment:

In June 2010 Congress strengthened the sanctions against Iran, with even more severe penalties against foreign companies. The Obama administration has been rapidly expanding US offensive capacity in the African island of Diego Garcia, claimed by Britain, which had expelled the population so that the US could build the massive base it uses for attacks in the Central Command area. The Navy reports sending a submarine tender to the island to service nuclear-powered guided-missile submarines with Tomahawk missiles, which can carry nuclear warheads. Each submarine is reported to have the striking power of a typical carrier battle group. According to a US Navy cargo manifest obtained by the Sunday Herald (Glasgow), the substantial military equipment Obama has dispatched includes 387 "bunker busters" used for blasting hardened underground structures. Planning for these "massive ordnance penetrators," the most powerful bombs in the arsenal short of nuclear weapons, was initiated in the Bush administration, but languished. On taking office, Obama immediately accelerated the plans, and they are to be deployed several years ahead of schedule, aiming specifically at Iran.

"They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran," according to Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London. "US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours," he said. "The firepower of US forces has quadrupled since 2003," accelerating under Obama.

The Arab press reports that an American fleet (with an Israeli vessel) passed through the Suez Canal on the way to the Persian Gulf, where its task is "to implement the sanctions against Iran and supervise the ships going to and from Iran." British and Israeli media report that Saudi Arabia is providing a corridor for Israeli bombing of Iran (denied by Saudi Arabia). On his return from Afghanistan to reassure NATO allies that the US will stay the course after the replacement of General McChrystal by his superior, General Petraeus, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen visited Israel to meet IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and senior military staff along with intelligence and planning units, continuing the annual strategic dialogue between Israel and the U.S. The meeting focused "on the preparation by both Israel and the U.S. for the possibility of a nuclear capable Iran," according to Haaretz, which reports further that Mullen emphasized that "I always try to see challenges from Israeli perspective." Mullen and Ashkenazi are in regular contact on a secure line.

Guess what, Mr. Obama. The Republicans will STILL hate you. And so will everyone else.

Labels: Barack Obama, capitulation, insanity, Iran attack, Israel, war hawks

I've been fascinated by the psychological dynamics that seem to have been the driving factors behind our last three presidents. Until Bill Clinton, the last president who seemed to have been driven by something primal in his childhood was John F. Kennedy, with his arriviste father's drive to "belong" through the attainment of political power, his aristocratic wife, and his parade of women. Today TV therapists would call him a sex addict, but would still stay away from the far more interesting theme of "belonging" in mainstream (then read as WASP) society. I've spilled enough keystrokes on this blog already about George W. Bush's father issues.

But if Barack Obama sometimes seems in many ways to be an echo of Bill Clinton (only without Clinton's innate charm which buffered him against the slings and arrows of outrageous Republicans), there's a good reason for it. Obama's economic team are all graduates of the School of Robert Rubin (only without the 1990's result). Obama engenders the same blind, baseless hatred on the right that Bill Clinton, another centrist president did. Some of the hatred with Obama is based on race instead of the sense I had with Clinton that he's the guy who got all the girls in high school and the Republicans are the masturbators in the boy's room who are still angry about that perceived injustice. The sense I have from the right with Obama is that he's the focused black kid in the mostly white school who seems to be able to focus on a goal instead of being trapped by his background, whereas they go home to the alcoholic father and it defines who they are. The down side to that focus is that it's left him aloof, sometimes isolated, and intent on avoiding any sort of conflict, lest it interfere with his goals.

Bill Clinton was a conflict avoider too, only he came to it from the background of going home to the alcoholic father. We had the sense that all Bill Clinton wanted was quiet. I understand this mindset, I have it myself, coming from a family that experienced a fair amount of shouting fights and uproar in my childhood. When you grow up as a conflict avoider, you tend towards twisting yourself into a pretzel and jumping through hoops in a vain effort to just have some peace and quiet. It's a terrible way to live and it doesn't teach you that sometimes people will disagree and you have to learn that capitulation is not always the best way to resolve a conflict. You have to learn that your viewpoint is just as valid as anyone else's, and that you have a right to defend it.

Because of Bill Clinton, the gutlessness of Capitol Hill Democrats, and the increasing intransigence of Republicans over the last twenty years, we've come to expect conflict avoidance in the form of capitulation from Democrats. This is the main reason many of us decided not to support Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama as the primary race ran down last year. Some of it was about the war, but we also knew about the Clintons and triangulation. Yes, Hillary wasn't Bill, but in a marriage like theirs, we also knew that a certain amount of capitulation in the name of keeping the peace was part of Hillary's makeup too.

It doesn't completely surprise me that Barack Obama has turned out the way he has. I still remember the way he sat on his hands in 2004, as a new Senator, while the late, great Stephanie Tubbs Jones tried to get a Senator to stand against certifying Ohio's tainted vote tally after thousands of black voters were barred from voting after waiting up to 10 hours in the rain. I never bought him as the Great Progressive Savior, and so I'm somewhat less disappointed than some of my peers (though no less disgusted) as his timid mode of "leadership." You can make the excuse for him not wanting to rock the boat right out of the gate as a new Senator, what with that house's "protocols" and such, but that doesn't seem to bother Al Franken much.

Drew Westen wrote about this earlier this week, in a much-discussed piece at HuffPo:

Consider the president's leadership style, which has now become clear: deliver a moving speech, move on, and when push comes to shove, leave it to others to decide what to do if there's a conflict, because if there's a conflict, he doesn't want to be anywhere near it.

Health care is a paradigm case. When the president went to speak to the Democrats last week on Capitol Hill, he exhorted them to pass the bill. According to reports, though, he didn't mention the two issues in the way of doing that, the efforts of Senators like Ben Nelson to use this as an opportunity to turn back the clock on abortion by 25 years, and the efforts of conservative and industry-owned Democrats to eliminate any competition for the insurance companies that pay their campaign bills. He simply ignored both controversies and exhorted.

Leadership means heading into the eye of the storm and bringing the vessel of state home safely, not going as far inland as you can because it's uncomfortable on the high seas. This president has a particular aversion to battling back gusting winds from his starboard side (the right, for the nautically challenged) and tends to give in to them. He just can't tolerate conflict, and the result is that he refuses to lead.

[snip]

Like most Americans I talk to, when I see the president on television, I now change the channel the same way I did with Bush. With Bush, I couldn't stand his speeches because I knew he meant what he said. I knew he was going to follow through with one ignorant, dangerous, or misguided policy after another. With Obama, I can't stand them because I realize he doesn't mean what he says -- or if he does, he just doesn't have the fire in his belly to follow through. He can't seem to muster the passion to fight for any of what he believes in, whatever that is. He'd make a great queen -- his ceremonial addresses are magnificent -- but he prefers to fly Air Force One at 60,000 feet and "stay above the fray."

It's the job of the president to be in the fray. It's his job to lead us out of it, not to run from it. It's his job to make the tough decisions and draw lines in the sand. But Obama really doesn't seem to want to get involved in the contentious decisions. They're so, you know, contentious. He wants us all to get along. Better to leave the fights to the Democrats in Congress since they're so good at them. He's like an amateur boxer who got a coupon for a half day of training with Angelo Dundee after being inspired by the tapes of Mohammed Ali. He got "float like a butterfly" in the morning but never made it to "sting like a bee."

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with wanting everyone to get along. The problem is that everyone is not going to always get along, and capitulation is not the answer, not when millions of people voted for you to change the course from the Republican theocratic corporate agenda. And if your childhood baggage is just too strong to fight, then get help.

Labels: Barack Obama, capitulation, spinelessness