Who's to blame?

When asked which president is "more responsible for the current state of the economy," the results of a recent poll were:

Obama 18% - Bush 58%

You think this was maybe some liberal-biased polling group? No, it was Fox News.

One more reason we shouldn't get too worried about the noisy tea-baggers, weepy TV showmen, and blustery fat men with big cigars. Just listen to the people.

Ralph

Cheney "cannot recall" 22 times

A summary of dick cheney's FBI interview about the leak of Valerie Plame's identity has been released to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics.

In response to the question of who leaked the identity, cheney reportedly said:

"I have no idea."

In addition, Mother Jones online lists 22 instances in the testimony where cheney claims not to remember in answer to questions about his actions re the Plame affair. I didn't keep count, but in reading through his testimony, it seemed far more than 22 to me. His "memory" under oath seems even worse than his compatriot Gonzo Gonzales

Frankly, Mr. XVP, I do not believe you. To quote an infamous politician from S.C., "You Lie !!"

Ralph

HolyJoe changes his mind

No, HolyJoe hasn't backed away from his attention-must-be-paid moment.

No, it's the opposite. In order to join the GOP filibuster of health care, HolyJoe had to change his mind about the filibuster process itself.

In 1994, he joined liberal senator Tom Harkin as sponsor of a bill to get rid of it, saying:

"[People] are fed up -- frustrated and fed up and angry about the way in which our government does not work, about the way in which we come down here and get into a lot of political games and seem to -- partisan tugs of war and forget why we're here, which is to serve the American people. And I think the filibuster has become not only in reality an obstacle to accomplishment here, but it also a symbol of a lot that ails Washington today."

The legislation failed, 76-19.

Too bad, because chameleon HolyJoe has now changed his mind and reversed himself. He now likes it.

Or is this just an extended temper tantrum -- HolyJoe's way of saying?

I AM HE, TO WHOM ATTENTION MUST BE PAID!!!

Ralph

Obama's folly?

Obama may turn out to have been wisest in the end. My respect for him leaves open that possibility. But right now, I'm feeling that his fetish with bipartisanship is folly -- in this climate of poisonous opposition from the other side. They wouldn't play nice, even if you gave them everything they said they wanted. They're intent on making Obama fail.

So, I was especially interested in Brian Beutler's article on TPM about how Harry Reid made the somewhat surprising choice to include a public option in the senate bill.

According to this: Obama and his reps, Reid, and Chuck Schumer were key players in negotiating. Pressure from progressives had Reid leaning toward it, but Obama's team apparently pushing for the very weak, trigger version. So Schumer and Reid finally prevailed and put in the better plan in spite of Obama's preference for the other.

Jon Stewart had it right, as usual, by lampooning them. He spoke of the ridiculousness of the Democrats negotiating with themselves; and he particularly heaped scorn on those who talked about the "liberal fringe" that was pushing for a public option. "Liberal fringe? That's 55% of the American people who favor it!!," he shouted.

Ralph

Don't overwork God

A friend sent me an article from USA Today about the rise of Christian religionists on the playing fields of big league sports teams -- players signaling to God, calling for a touchdown, or raising arms in praise of Him when they make one, and things like that.

It got me thinking. For believers, prayer can be powerful, but I think its power comes in what it does internally to the praying individual. I'm skeptical of prayers that ask God for favors.

It is really highly inconsiderate of competing sports teams to both be praying that God will let them win. I mean, doesn't God have enough to do trying to decide which warring nations to let win, and which babies to let die, and whose crops the rain should fall upon and whose get drought? Now he has to decide who wins football games?

That's too much to expect of an overworked God in this modern world. We need him to attend to more vital things like war, poverty, disease, and starvation.

Ralph

An historic day

Wednesday, October 28, 2009 will be remembered as an historic day in the history of gay rights.

President Obama signed into law what Congress had passed, as an amendment to the defense appropriations bill:

Crimes committed against people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity may be prosecuted as hate crimes.

Joe Solomonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, explained it's importance:

Today, something extraordinary happened. Love conquered hate. After more than a decade, the inclusive hate crimes bill we've fought so hard for has been signed by the president and sealed in law.

I cannot overstate the importance of this moment. This is the first time ANY federal equality measure protecting LGBT rights has become law. The very first time. And it is the first federal law to explicitly protect transgender people. It is a touchstone in our movement, a triumph of what is right. And I truly feel things will never be the same.

Now we still have DA/DT and DOMA to repeal, but this was a milestone.

It also showed up how determined the majority of Republicans are to defeat such matters. They voted against this, even though it meant they were voting against money for their beloved military -- because to vote against the gay rights issue, they had to vote against the defense appropriations bill.

That's how much they didn't want to protect GLBT people.

Ralph

Palin polls poorly

A nice little factoid:

In a CNN/OpinionResearch poll, 71% think Sarah Palin is not qualified to be president.

Count me in there too.

Ralph

The right question

A year ago in the 2008 election, California voters passed a ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage. But conservative, Bush-era solicitor general Ted Olson has teamed up with a liberal attorney, David Boies, to challenge the case in the federal courts (CA's Supreme Court has already upheld it, reasoning that the right of the people to amend their constitution trumped the right of gay people to marry.)

Now it's in the federal courts, with the expectation that it will go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And therein lies the problem. Many gay rights folks feel it is too soon to go there, thinking that the current Big 9 will not overturn it, that the momentum is in action in individual states (now there are 6), and that it will stand a better chance in court after more states have already made it legal. It's the sort of "laboratories of the states" idea that makes the state opt-out on public health care plan attractive.

Nevertheless, Olson and Boies are pressing forward, and there will be a trial in January. The judge has just rejected the opposition lawyer's motion to dismiss the case. I had commented recently (10-16-09) on the lawyer's response when the judge asked him, "What would be the harm of permitting gay men and lesbians to marry?" He said, "I don't know," and then talked about the need to give some time and see the effect in the states that had allowed it.

Now the New York Times reports more from that conversation, which is delicious and it really destroys the lawyer's argument that the government should be allowed to favor opposite-sex marriages, in order "to channel naturally procreative sexual activity between men and women into stable, enduring unions."

To which Judge Vaughan Walker replied:

"The last marriage that I performed involved a groom who was 95, and a bride of 83. I did not demand that they prove that they intended to engage in procreative activity. Now was I missing something?"

And Ted Olson chimed in that his mother had married three years ago at the age of 87.

Marvelous ! ! !

But I'm afraid the Supremes will not be amused.

Ralph

HolyJoe strikes again

Some of you know from my derisive nickname for Lieberman, "HolyJoe," that I have no kind feelings for this man. He is sanctimonious, weasley, and vindictive. I regret ever voting for him, although I guess I had to in order to vote for Gore.

I say: Let the silly Republicans filibuster and claim HolyJoe as one of their own. Their 19% rating on "who do you trust more to do the right thing" isn't likely to improve. Denying health care reform to people in need won't raise that. Call their bluff. See how long Olympia Snowe sticks with them. Let everyone get even more disgusted.

And it looks like HolyJoe must think he's going to play kingmaker, with the power to bring it down. Then let's play hard ball. If they start appeasing him to get his vote, I will denounce the whole lot of them, Obama included. Appease HolyJoe? Hell, strip away his subcommittee.

And now, Mickey Nardo reveals that HolyJoe's wife has a cushy job with a lobbying firm that represents one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies. One month after she began the job in 2005, Lieberman introduced a bill that would award new incentives to such companies to produce flu vaccines at a cost of billions to taxpayers. Perhaps he would have introduced the bill anyway, but it looks damning. It was even more generous to BigPharma than one introduced by the Republican leadership.

And what do voters in his state of Connecticut think about the public plan? They support it 64-31.

Holy Smoke, HolyJoe. You should re-examine your priorities and think about who your constituents are. BigPharma and the BigBlues? Or the people of Connecticutt?

Ralph

Behind the scenes on public plan

Interesting article by Sam Stein on HuffingtonPost about how the big shift in the Senate on the public option came about:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/26/how-reid-found-his-silver_n_334687.html

We progressives would like to think our pressure did it -- how many online petitions did I sign? -- and in fact Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin says it was progressives that forced them to find the opt-out compromise for a public plan. As he says, how long has it been since progressives won a legislative victory?

But here's the back room story, according to Stein's sources: Early enthusiasm for a public plan soured over the summer and seemed dead -- in the Senate, anyway. The public was always in favor. But Baucus was in a dilemma -- conservative Dems wouldn't vote for a bill with it and progressives wouldn't vote for one without it. So they needed a compromise. [See, if progressives hadn't stuck to their guns by saying they wouldn't vote for a bill without a public plan, it would have gone down the tubes.]

Tom Daschle floated the idea of an opt-in plan for the states to choose to sign on to a national plan. That seemed inoffensive enough to conservatives, but the moderates led by Chuck Schumer saw some promise and said it was not too big a stretch then to flip it and make it an opt-out plan. (bait and switch tactic?)

This has many advantages: the states don't have to come up with their own structure for a public plan to opt-in, so it's more likely that many states will do it. It always easier to decide not to opt out than it is to decide to opt in. And yet it preserves autonomy for the states. It has the further advantage that states become laboratories -- some will, some won't -- and we'll get an idea of what works.

Then, in time, maybe we can take the next step to an expanded Medicare-for-All type plan.

I'm elated -- and afraid to hope. This might actually work.

Ralph

BushSpeak

George W. Bush was one of the motivational speakers at the day-long "Get Motivated" seminar in Forth Worth. Here are two nuggets that attendees heard from the xprez:

"I'm confident I made the right decisions as president."

and:

“The marketplace works. It is fair. It is equitable. It is a fair form of democracy.”

Fine. Let people pay megabucks to hear him work that circuit. At least he's not out there with cheney trying to destroy Obama's credibility and undermine his presidency.

Expect his book to have all the nuance and complexity of analysis that a 5 year old is capable of, however.

Ralph

Going global

They're taking the concept of missionary work to a new level of hatred and civil rights atrocities.

Change.org is reporting on the influence that a group of Christian evangelicals and ex-gay ministry proponents has had on proposed, draconian anti-gay legislation in Uganda.

Uganda is an interesting example of how the radical religious right in the United States has sought to take their battle against all things related to homosexuality to a global level. Earlier this year, a prominent group of evangelicals -- among them representatives from Exodus International and Defend the Family International -- attended a conference in Uganda aimed at discussing ways to fight homosexuality. The goal of the conference was to brainstorm ways that the government, schools and churches in Uganda could "wipe out" homosexuality from the country.

For American religious leaders to participate in something like this shows some pretty gross disrespect for human rights. What's worse, their support has lent credence to a bill introduced in Uganda's parliament this week that will imprison people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, and will imprison straight people who support gay rights. Oh, and let's not forget that the bill also calls for HIV-positive gay people to be put to death.

A leading LGBT rights activist, Wayne Besen, says that these Americans clearly left their stamp on the proposed legislation by giving them a way to justify it based on the ex-gays' much touted claims that homosexuality is a choice and can be changed. And, in fact, almost identical wording wound up in the legislation.

Conservative evangelicals have been feeding this kind of misinformation to Ugandan officials for years. In fact, according to Besen, they have embraced the current Ugandan president as the key man in Africa to help spread conservative Christianity.

This is sickening.

It's bad enough that gays are subject to being executed in Muslim countries. But for this to be a cornerstone of a Christian movement in the 21st century in unthinkable -- but it is apparently happening.

It's also terribly disheartening regarding progress in Africa. Just a few years ago, Uganda was being held up as an example of an effective program that actually reduced the spread of AIDS. I try very hard not to resent Christianity itself, and evangelicals in particular, and to remember that these are imperfect humans who are misguided in their interpretation of the message of Jesus, and that it does not represent what Jesus would have done. But it's hard to keep that perspective and not be enraged at the whole lot of them.

Ralph

Overdue pushback

On CNN's "State of the Union," we got some pushback to dick cheney's outrageous attacks on Obama.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said,

"To listen to Dick Cheney, who was the mastermind of the most failed decade of foreign policy that this country's had at least in my political lifetime, perhaps my whole lifetime, perhaps my parents' lifetime too, to listen to him when they talk about dithering... when their mistake was to attack Iraq and lose sight of Afghanistan... eight years of failure of [Hamid] Karzai, implicitly is eight years of failure and dithering by that administration."

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) also called cheney's remarks "out of bounds" and said that cheney simpy lacked the credibility to be taken seriously on the issue.

Even Republican Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) got into the act. Although he had to preface it by wondering why Obama would "not follow the advice of all of his generals;" but he then went on to say, "I would never want to call my president dithering."

Apparently the senators have decided that cheney can't simply be ignored. It goes along with the administration's taking on FoxNews.

News for Senator Hatch. The president (and Congress, for that matter) are constitutionally charged with the responsibility for civilian control over major military decisions. There is a reason for that, and Obama is doing what he needs to do. Does anyone really seriously advance the idea that we should increase our committment in Afghanistan before we know who they are going to wind up with as their president?

Obama is not dithering. He is being wise, prudent, and responsible.

Ralph

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/25/dems-counter-punch-cheney_n_332987.html

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/25/dems-counter-punch-cheney_n_332987.html