"They make me question evolution . . . "

Bill Maher said it about the mostly Republican climate change deniers:

"These people are so stupid they make me question evolution."

Well put, Bill. But I think your focus is too narrow. In that category, I would include:

1. Those conservative, Obama haters who, when it was announced that Chicago had lost out in its bid to host the 2016 Olympics, broke into wild applause and cheers. Because they saw Chicago's loss as a humiliation for Obama. On the contrary: the choice went to Rio most likely because it will be the very first time the games have been held in the entire continent of South America. And, to any extent that it represents anti-U.S. feeling, they can thank their darling george w. bush. But to these ignoramuses it proves that Obama can't walk on water after all, because his personal appeal for his home town failed to sway the IOC. So, Hurray! for Chicago's loss.

2. John Boehner for being so out of touch with Americans' support for a public option in the health reform bill that he says he is still looking for one American outside Washington who is in favor of it. By now he will have on his desk hundreds of thousands of signatures on petitions identifying support, including people from his own district. Or he could just read the paper and see that poll after poll show over 60% support it, including a majority of doctors. Let's hope that old tanning-booth Boehner is still this out of touch come next November. It would be good not to have to look at his sour, constipated expression every day. Someone should put a good laxative in this man's Ovaltine.

3. Michael Steele for his frequent, stupid remarks -- most recently calling Thomas Friedman a "nut job" for drawing the parallel between our current poisonous political atmosphere and what existed in Israel that led a zealot to assassinate Prime Minister Rabin in 1995, taking the rhetoric seriously and thinking that god would be pleased. Wake up, Michael. You're the head of a self-destructing political party, and you're only making it worse.

4. Michele Bachmann, any time she gets near a microphone.

Ralph

IF . . .

In the first official talks with Iran in more than 30 years, Iran has agreed to allow international inspectors into its newly revealed enrichment facility within two weeks and to send most of its openly declared stock of enriched uranium out of the country to be processed into fuel to produce medical isotopes.

There are several big IF's -- but if those ifs turn out to be correct, then this is a huge breakthrough.

IF: we are reading them correctly, although it sounds pretty clear as reported by the New York Times.

IF: the Iranians actually follow through on these promises. They are notoriously duplicitous.

IF: they do not also have other large secret supplies of enriched uranium so that what they're talking about is an insignificant amount of their total stock.

So, if those ifs turn into yesses, then Obama is vindicated in his policy that goes all the way back to the campaign debates, when he was derided by Hillary, among others, for saying he would sit down with our enemies to negotiate without preconditions (not without preparations, he later clarified).

Obama has been in office for 9 months -- and he may have accomplished something Bush didn't even try to do -- didn't even want to do; because cowboys don't talk to rustlers, I suppose. They think it makes them look weak. But look what you can get done if you're more concerned with results than image.

IF . . .

Ralph

Round the bend

I keep thinking that Michele Bachmann has gone "round the bend." But she just keeps going . . . and getting even worse.

Is she cynically and manipulatively partisan? Is she paranoid? Or just garden-variety nutty?

Her latest is a "creative" misreading of part of the Finance Committee health care reform bill. She refers to a section concerning "school based health care clinics" which, if established, would seek to reduce absences from illness and provide on site support for those who become ill at school. It makes no mention of abortion and in fact stipulates that services will be in accord with laws governing parental consent for services.

And speaking on the House floor, here's what the wild-eyed Michele turns that into. She refers to the "school based health clinics" as "sex clinics" and suggested that schools would begin offering abortion to students. And more . . . [sorry, but purple seems the only appropriate color]

The bill goes on to say what's going to go on -- comprehensive primary health services, physicals, treatment of minor acute medical conditions, referrals to follow-up for specialty care -- is that abortion? Does that mean that someone's 13 year-old daughter could walk into a sex clinic, have a pregnancy test done, be taken away to the local Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, have their abortion, be back and go home on the school bus that night? Mom and dad are never the wiser.

I kid you not. Such drooling, driveling nonsense . . . . spoken in a session of Congress, which means it will be forever inscribed in the Congressional Record.

She's no longer funny.

Ralph

ead more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/01/bachmann-sex-clinics-will_n_306292.html

You can't get more "out of touch" than this

Now here's a jaw-dropper:

John Boehner, House minority leader, said with a straight face today that

"I'm still trying to find the first American to talk to who's in favor of the public option, other than a member of Congress or the administration."

Now you just can't get more out of touch than that. Polls consistently show that at least 60% favor a public option. Any number of progressive organizations have been flooding Congressional offices with petitions demanding that a public option be put in the legislation. The AMA has come out in favor of it.

I'm sure we'll get a chance to add our names to piles of petitions to his office to let him know we support -- nay, demand -- a public plan in the reform legislation.

And let's hope that he and his ilk are still this out of touch with "Americans" come next election day.

Ralph

At long last . . . honesty from the GOP

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has said the following, according to HuffingtonPost:

Senate Republican leader made clear on Wednesday that his party, despite all its griping over the public health insurance option, abortion-funding or health care for illegal immigrants, is simply and flatly opposed to the "core" of the Democratic health care reform proposal.

Satisfying every Republican demand short of scrapping the entire project, said Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), would still not capture GOP support.

This breeze of rare honesty comes the day after all the Republican attempts to amend the Senate Finance Committee bill failed. So I guess they had nothing more to lose and could finally be honest.

What a charade.

Ralph

Wise words

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman had a very thought-provoking article yesterday. He began by drawing a parallel between the poisoned political atmosphere that exists in the U.S. today -- culminating in the FaceBook entry polling readers as to whether Obama should be killed -- with that in Israel leading up to the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.

I've had a similar foreboding feeling of something ominously different, but I had not linked it to Rabin's assassination. Friedman's parallels are frightening: It's not the differing of opinion on issues or even the vociferous voicing of those differences. It's the delegitimizing and the vitriolic attacks. As Friedman says about 1995:

And in so doing they created a poisonous political environment that was interpreted by one right-wing Jewish nationalist as a license to kill Rabin — he must have heard, “God will be on your side” — and so he did.

And what about 2009?

And Mr. Obama is now having his legitimacy attacked by a concerted campaign from the right fringe. They are using everything from smears that he is a closet “socialist” to calling him a “liar” in the middle of a joint session of Congress to fabricating doubts about his birth in America and whether he is even a citizen. And these attacks are not just coming from the fringe. Now they come from Lou Dobbs on CNN and from members of the House of Representatives.

He ends his article with an attempt to understand what has happened to us as a nation:

The American political system was, as the saying goes, “designed by geniuses so it could be run by idiots.” But a cocktail of political and technological trends have converged in the last decade that are making it possible for the idiots of all political stripes to overwhelm and paralyze the genius of our system.

Those factors are: the wild excess of money in politics; the gerrymandering of political districts, making them permanently Republican or Democratic and erasing the political middle; a 24/7 cable news cycle that makes all politics a daily battle of tactics that overwhelm strategic thinking; and a blogosphere that at its best enriches our debates, adding new checks on the establishment, and at its worst coarsens our debates to a whole new level, giving a new power to anonymous slanderers to send lies around the world. Finally, on top of it all, we now have a permanent presidential campaign that encourages all partisanship, all the time among our leading politicians.

I would argue that together these changes add up to a difference of degree that is a difference in kind — a different kind of American political scene that makes me wonder whether we can seriously discuss serious issues any longer and make decisions on the basis of the national interest.

We can’t change this overnight, but what we can change, and must change, is people crossing the line between criticizing the president and tacitly encouraging the unthinkable and the unforgivable.

Wise words, indeed.

Ralph

Don't give up yet

Although it came as no surprise, I felt a sense of gloom and discouragement after yesterday's votes on amendments killed the public option in the Senate Finance Committee bill.

But, let's put it in perspective. We never expected the bill from that committee to include a public option. The chair, Max Baucus, gives lips service to supporting it, but voted against it because he says his goal is to get a bill that can be approved.

As I've written here before, he seems pretty tainted by his big money ties to health care corporations; and he has dawdled along, under the guise of bipartisanship, and seems to be crafting a bill that the insurance companies love.

Anyway . . . along comes a blog on HuffingtonPost that raised my hopes. Robert Creamer says this about the votes today:

In a surprising vote Tuesday, ten Democrats voted to add a public option to the most conservative of the five health insurance reform bills working their way through Congress. That's just two votes short of passage.

This robust support for the public option -- in what most observers consider the most conservative committee in the Senate -- signals a sea change in Congressional opinion toward the public option. The odds are now very high that some form of public health insurance option will be included on the final bill when it emerges from a House-Senate Conference Committee later this fall and is ultimately passed by Congress.

The three bills that have passed House Committees, and the Senate Health Committee bill, all contain a public option. And increasingly it appears that the strongest form of public option will come out of the House.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/growing-momentum-for-publ_b_303415.html

In addition, Congressional Budget Office number crunchers say that a public option is the best way to bring the costs of reform down.

Hope is in the air. The Braves might still come from way behind and win the wild card spot in the National League playoffs -- if they don't lose any of the remaining games. And we might get a health reform bill with a public option -- if the Blue Dogs will come on board.

What a lover-ly day that would be.

Ralph

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/growing-momentum-for-publ_b_303415.ht

Listen to the generals

Politico is reporting:

About a dozen retired generals and admirals, trying to add momentum to President Barack Obama's effort to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison, are accusing former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz of scaremongering about the dangers of closing it.

“It’s up to all of us to say these arguments advanced by Cheney and his acolytes are nonsense and that really what they’re doing is undermining our national security by delaying the date at which Guantanamo is closed," retired Brig. Gen. James Cullen, a former chief judge of the Army’s Court of Criminal Appeals, told POLITICO Tuesday. . . .

Get that damn symbol off the table,” said retired Gen. David Maddox, a former Army commander-in-chief for Europe. “We take a setback every time somebody, whether it’s the vice president or his daughter, comes out and says the things that they say.”

Gen. Maddox went on to dismiss the hyped-up talk of danger, suggesting that the people already in these maximum security prisons are a lot more dangerous than those who would be transferred from Guantanamo. Look at the record. When's the last time anyone ever escaped from one of them?

Cut the fearmongering, Dick and Liz. You're no longer VP, Dick; and Liz, stop trying to carve out a political career for yourself through fear and demogogery. You're starting to sound shrill like your mama, Lynne, who had such extremely high negative polls numbers that they put a muzzle on her.

Ralph

Crime and punishment

I found the article in today's paper about Roman Polanski quietly disturbing.

In 1977, film director Roman Polanski was arrested for having sex with a 13 year old girl. In the midst of negotiating a plea bargain and while awaiting a court date for sentencing, he fled the country. Even since, he has lived abroad, avoiding travel to countries that have an extradition treaty with the U.S. The U.S. has kept it as an active case and has sought opportunities to have him extradited.

Meanwhile, Polanski has enjoyed life outside the U.S. law, living in France and succeeding in his film career, winning a directing Oscar for "The Pianist" along the way.

This week, he was arrested in Switzerland, where he had traveled to a film festival, and is in jail awaiting a negotiation between the US and Switzerland about extraditing him.

What I find disturbing is the attitude expressed, not only by individuals but by officials. The French foreign minister called that arrest "a little sinister" after such a long lapse. Numerous political leaders and show business luminaries have come to his defense, insisting that he should be released because the original criminal charges were so long ago.

First, even if a statute of limitations would apply, I believe that's about reporting a crime, not about how long it takes to bring a criminal to justice. And second, he is not just charged with a sex crime, but he is actually a fugitive from justice -- which is also a crime. His entering into plea bargaining would belie any claim of innocence, I would presume; and he fled while waiting to be sentenced.

I do not believe that we should just ignore a case because the person is too famous to put in jail or because "it's so far in the past, let's just forget it."

Let us be clear: Polanski is not a victim here. A 13 year old girl was the victim, regardless of what may have been claimed as a consensual act. He was 42 at the time. Sex with a minor is by definition a crime. We put a 17 year old boy in jail for years for having consensual oral sex with an almost 16 year old girl -- and let a man go free who, at age 42, had sexual intercourse with a 13 year old girl?? The 17 yr old was black; Polanski is white and the darling of the international film set.

Polanski's defenders are now trying to cast him in the role of victim. That's hog wash.

Polanski should be brought to trial -- for the original charges -- and for being a fugitive from justice for 32 years. Let a jury decide the verdict; let a judge assign the punishment and be lenient, if he sees fit. But don't just ignore it.

Ralph

Sauce for the gander

Reuter's is reporting that the United States is calling on Israel "to conduct credible investigations into allegations of war crimes committed by its forces in Gaza, saying it would help the Middle East peace process." They also are saying that Hamas has a responsibility to investigate crimes of targeting civilians in Israel and use of Palestinians as human shields.

I would remind our leaders of the old adage: "what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander" . . . or something like that.

Why aren't we investigating the alleged war crimes of our own people in connection with the invasion and destruction of Iraq and for the torturing of prisoners?

Ralph

Reading the tea leaves

I have no inside sources, no special links -- just a pretty keen, intuitive sense of how small clues in the fabric of our communal life add up -- call it reading tea leaves.

Here's what I think may be happening:

1. There seems to be an increase in news of terrorist plots being interrupted. There was the arrest last week of the young guy who was the neighborhood coffee/donut cart vendor who was arrested on charges as a jihadist with bomb plans and materials. It sounded more serious than those trumped up ones bush used to trumpet. Seems like there was another one recently, and today police took two men of middle Eastern appearance off a plane when they behaved suspiciously. It feels like there is an uptick in such activity, or at least of reporting it.

2. Obama behaved very decisively at the U.N., at G-20, and in revealing the secret Iranian uranium enriching facility. His warning to the Iranians had more steel in it than before. It was all quite appropriate -- not the old bush swagger. But he clearly was projecting an image of strength and of being in control of the situation.

3. We know that there is a big internal debate going on in the administration about Afghanistan and our future role there. Biden and others are urging a shift away from military involvement; the other side is urging an increase of troops. They have let out some trial balloons that Obama might adopt Biden's views.

4. Here's my tea leaves reading: All the emphasis on catching terrorists and on Obama's image as a strong leader may be an intentional strategy to counter what will be the inevitable criticism when he decides to draw down our involvement in Afghanistan.

It's inevitable that he will be painted as weak, endangering our security, running away from the "just" war, etc. by the hawks -- and the Republicans, who may or may not agree, will nevertheless take full political advantage.

My prediction: an announcement will come soon that we are not going to do a Viet Nam kind of escalation into a quagmire; there will be a change of course in Afghanistan.

Remember: you read it here first.

Ralph

Iran's secret site

Pamela Hess, writing on HuffingtonPost today seems to have the inside story on the discovery of Iran's other secret uranium-enriching site.

Our intelligence agencies, along with those of the British and French, had been looking for such sites, and several years ago discovered evidence of suspicious underground construction going on inside a Republican Guard compound. They followed it closely but were waiting to break the news until there was undeniable evidence that it was for the purpose of enriching uranium. There had not been such evidence in the form of equipment, until the last few weeks -- only construction of an underground complex that could be used for it.

Then last week, it seems that Iran got wind of the fact that the site was known about and jumped out ahead to reveal it to the International Atomic Energy Agency. They claimed that it was for peaceful energy use, but the fact that it was in a Republican Guard compound and that it was underground and had been conducted in secret made it all the more suspicious that it was not just for peaceful purposes.

Once Iran made the revelation, then the Obama quickly shifted into gear to show what we knew that makes it likely for making a bomb, and thus to galvanize world opinion and to use it in the negotiations that are to begin in October. Clearly, Iran has been knocked off balance -- and this coming on the heels of their disastrous election and aftermath that lost them much standing in the world.

Remember last September when McCain wanted to cancel their political campaign and have him and Obama go to Washington to mediate the financial crisis? -- and how that ploy backfired on him? One of the most memorable lines from the campaign was Obama's explanation for not accepting McCain's invitation:

"I think the American people expect us to be able to do more than one thing at the time."

Lucky for us we elected someone who can do more than one thing at the time. Health care reform, financial crisis, energy policy, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, changing policy toward Israel and the Palestinians -- all that and he can respond so well to this from Iran, all in the same week as addressing the U.N. and meeting with G-20 leaders.

How sweet it is to have a president who can do all that -- and be the leader in making the decisions -- not just the self-proclaimed decider, because he really understands the issues.

Ralph