Nice

Don't look now, John, but they could and they did.

My New Name For A Blog

What Athenae Said

I really don't think it can be overstated, how crazy tough Nancy Pelosi had to be to get this bill through the House, with Stupak Stupak-ing all over the place and conseravtive Democrats running scared and even Obama being all, "It's my bill, no it's not, I want this, no I don't, you're on your own, except I KEEL YOU if you fail" all the time.

There's a lot -- A LOT -- about this bill that sucks. But, in the end, it was the women who got it done. I've had my differences w Pelosi as well, but, credit where credit is due. She made Boener cry.

Yes We Can!

It's probably just me, but I'm a huge negotiation geek. It was my favorite class in law school. Every single exercise, my partner and I got buckets and buckets more than anyone else. As we were doing one of the exercises, someone in the class sighed out loud, "They're doing it again." There's an art to negotiation, and a huge part of that art is going in knowing who and what you're up against. Plus, negotiation is great fun. I've made a very respectable living for years based, inter alia, on my ability to negotiate (and to go for the jugular when people won't negotiate with me). So it's driven me batshit insane to watch the Obama administration and the Senate Dems "negotiate" and I use that term loosely, themselves into a losing position on health care reform.

FireDogLake has an interview with Congressman Anthony Weiner, who appears to get it:

Weiner didn’t get an invite to tomorrow’s health care summit, but he’ll be watching and even live-blogging the proceedings, he told me. He found its utility limited. “If we want to spend hours tomorrow highlighting bankruptcy of GOP ideas, fine. But we mustn’t delude ourselves. When we gave up public option, we didn’t get a single Republican. When we gave up national exchanges for a state exchange, we didn’t get a single Republican. We keep negotiating with ourselves.” If the summit is meant to contrast the two parties on the issue, Weiner was fine with it, but if it was seen as an opportunity to convert Republicans to the cause of fixing health care, he advised, “Good luck with that.”

I wanted to know from someone who has been in the room for these discussions whether he thought the votes were actually there to pass the bill, regardless of what fixes could be made in reconciliation. Eric Cantor’s memo today certainly suggested otherwise, as have multiple news reports. I asked flat-out, does this thing have the votes?

Weiner replied, “Well, we passed the bill once.” Obviously, he said, the abortion language was a concern, and he admitted, “I don’t know how it gets resolved.” He reiterated the constant dynamic of dropping things like the public option, which he thinks has majority support in the House and Senate and among 72% of the American people, and getting nothing in exchange. In the final analysis, he said, “I’m not sure what we’re doing, and I’m pretty tied in.”

There's this little paperback called "Getting to Yes" that the Dems need to buy and pass out to all of the members of the Obama administration and the Dems in the Senate. Well, first they need to lock Harry Reid in his locker. Then, they need to read "Getting to Yes."

Picture found here.

My New Name For A Blog

What el Gato Negro Said:

I'm In Love

My New Name For A Blog

What Susie Said.

The average American might even be angry if he/she understood the fact that he spends five times as much for procedures as other people do. But Gwen Ifill isn’t going to tell Americans that. . . .

Why? Why do we spend twice as much for drugs? Why do we spend five times more for procedures? In a rational world, this remarkable state of affairs would lead to strings of front-page reports.

But you don’t live in a rational world. You live in the United States, a society which is owned by corporate interests—unlike the other societies in those OECD data.

That ownership is enabled by the dulled sensibilities found in the mainstream and career liberal worlds.

Go read the whole thing.

I Want A Public Option And I Want It Now

Every Bit As Logical As What We've Been Hearing

Most Americans Want Health Care Reform

First, let me just say that there's a reason why I've lived, on and off, in Virginia ever since I was five years old and have never been to Reston. And that reason is because Reston is way the hell out in the middle of no damn where. I mean, there should be signs that say: "Heading for Reston. Here be dragons." And why you have to pay a toll to get on the road to Reston and a toll to get off the road to Reston (no, honest, dudes, I'd have paid the whole $1.25 up front, no problem) is beyond me. So, in spite of leaving downtown D.C. at 4:30, it was 5:30 by the time we got out to Reston for Jim Moran's town hall meeting with Howard Dean. The entire school parking lot was full; I knew we were in trouble when we saw crowds walking from the shopping mall 3/4 of a mile away.

We pulled in and gave a thumbs up to a lovely lady holding a sign that said: "77% of Americans want a public option." An invocation to the mighty Goddess Asphaltia later, we snuck into a parking space only about 1/4 mile from the school. I'm not going to tell you exactly what magic we did, but I will say that we had some powerful supplies and invoked some interesting help. The line was already between 3 and 4 thousand people long and it was evident we weren't going to get into the auditorium. We walked all along the line, though, doing, well, I could tell you, but then I'd have to turn you into a newt, so let's just say, doing what we came to do. It worked. You watch.

There's, IMHO, a huge advantage to doing magic week after week, month after month, year after year, with the same group of women. You know each other's energy, you know that you can completely let go and trust them, you know how it feels when your magic works. You can cast a circle in a moving car, you can call the Quarters in real time. You can ground when the energy's vibrating 3 miles away.

The crowd was pretty overwhelmingly white, middle aged, and, based on our totally unscientific observation of signs, probably 5 to 1 in favor of health care reform and a public option. Not too surprising in blue Northern VA. The folks opposing reform were spread throughout the entire crowd and, although the press was definitely more interested in talking to them than to the thousands of people there supporting health care reforms, not particularly effective nor, I don't quite know how to say this, but not too enthused. They expect to ultimately lose, of that I have no doubt. I'm good at sensing energy and there was nothing threatening about this crowd, although I could see how, crowded into an auditorium, the energy could become more intense. I didn't see any guns and, if they were there, they weren't being flaunted. There were deluded young people who were generally libertarian. There were older people generally angry that the president is a black man. There were senseless signs: "ObamaCare. If Congress doesn't want it for themselves, why should we?" And there were the inevitable LaRouchies, doing their best to get attention. They were the only people I saw with pictures of Obama defaced to look like Hitler.

I hope the FiredogLake people got in. I'll follow up tomorrow w Jim Moran to ask him to sign a pledge to only vote for a plan that includes a public option. Then, I'll keep following up with him.

Finally, I want to thank the v numerous folks who supported us energetically in our magical working this evening. I imagine you could feel me drawing hard on the energy that you sent. And, I hope that all magic workers can experience, at least once in their lives, the amazing support that I got this morning from the universe. I draw a huge amount of my energy, magical and otherwise, from the beautiful Potomac River. This morning was, maybe, the most perfect late-Summer morning EVER, and the universe conspired in at least 3 different ways to ensure that I'd get to spend some extra time with La Potomac. What a lovely Goddess of a river.

May it be so for you.

Deep Thought (W/ Apologies To Atrios)

I should be adding mushrooms to the Susun Weed Cabbage that I make each week.

Picture found here.

What It Costs To Be A Musician In America

The Wild Hunt reports that Pagan musician S.J. Tucker has been hospitalized. In a country without national health insurance, getting sick can be a truly terrifying experience for musicians, who often don't have private insurance. Check out The Wild Hunt to help S.J.


Update: A wonderful commenter at Eschaton adds that musicians can get insurance here.

Stay Healthy

Susun Weed discusses simple, practical steps for dealing with late-winter colds.

I try to make Susun's breast-cancer prevention cabbage once or twice a month.

Chop up cabbage, onions, and garlic and saute in olive oil. Meanwhile, soak seaweed in warm water. Add seaweed and soaking water to the sauteed vegetables. Add grated carrots and tamari sauce. Sprinkle sunflower seeds on top and serve. It's delicious.

I just wish the stores sold smaller cabbages.

Some Sanity In A World Of "Abstinence Education"

Good. Let's hope that other schools will follow. What's the point to denying children the medical care that they need? Who thinks that it's a better option to let middle school kids conceive babies? As for the "parents' rights," parents can exercise their rights by staying involved with their kids' lives and supervising their kids. But they don't have a "right" to foist unwanted babies and sexual diseases onto their kids or the rest of us.

They Don't Even Try To Be Logically Consistent

It's old news by now that the Republicans and their orc pit of bloggers have taken to attacking the families of kids who benefitted from SCHIP, the children's health insurance program that Congress wants to expand and that Bush has vetoed.

What's interesting about the latest attack is that it's directed against a family that lacked insurance but chose to have a child, anyway. The child had a serious heart condition that required expensive health care. (The mother had insurance years ago at a prior job, but quit when that job became "unmanageable" and has worked for years as a waitress at a restaurant that doesn't provide insurance.) The right wing slime machine is in high dudgeon over the notion that this family shouldn't have had kids if they didn't want to work at jobs that provide insurance.

Of course, the right wing also doesn't believe in family planning or birth control. What was this married couple supposed to do -- abstain from sex forever? What if they'd saved enough to pay for a normal hospital birth for a healthy child, but discovered, while the mother was still pregnant, that the child, when born, would have an expensive heart condition? An abortion at that point would be affordable, out of their savings, but they couldn't afford the health care. In the wingnut world, what should they have done? Remember, wingnuts hate abortion worst of all.

And, of course, there's no end to the "objections" the wingnuts can come up with when they presume to decide how other people should live their lives. What about people who have jobs that provide insurance, have a child, lose that job to "oursourcing" (it happens in George Bush's America) and then their child develops an expensive medical condition? Sure, we could go back and criticize some "choice" they made -- there was that year that they took the family to Disney Land instead of foreseeing that their child would develop cancer and need to be hospitalized for a month. If they'd invested that money in the stock market -- oh, wait.

In the end, it's all just nuts. We're the richest country on Earth. We can afford trillions of dollars for an war of aggression against a country that didn't attack us. Our wealthiest citizens pay ridiculously little in taxes. If we have money for that, we have money to provide health care for working families, people like waitresses and cabinetmakers. The notion that people should have to "choose" between working at the vanishingly few jobs that provide real health insurance and having a child or between owning a home and having a child or between being self-employed or having a child is just goofy. Well, no, it's more than just goofy. It's evil and pernicious and disgusting. I'm looking at you, Republican Party.

Guestblog: My New Name for a Blog

What Kate Harding wrote.

Make sure you check out the slideshow on Flickr.

My New Name For A Blog

What watertiger said. (Yes, I know that is not a tiger. But I like it.)

Seriously, This Should Lead To Impeachment

Sweet Kali on a croissant, yesterday's testimony from former Surgeon General Carmona would, in a rational universe, be enough, all by itself, to impeach George W. Bush. Carmona, Surgeon General during Bush's first term, testified that:

* He was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches. You know, this is the kind of megalomaniacal, stupid-shit, ignorant, petty rule that only the most deranged of emperors puts in place. Carmona needs to be forced to say who ordered him to do that.

* He was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates. Shades of Lurita Doan, Bush's head of the GSA, who asked her employees "How can we support our candidates in the next election?"

* Bush administration officials discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to a “prominent family” that he refused to name. I don't know why he's playing so coy; everyone knows that the family is the Kennedys. I want this incident thrown in the face of all the David Broders of the world who whine about how Democrats need to be "more bipartisan." The Bush administration won't even turn off its relentless politicization of everything to help out retarded kids who want to play softball or run races. I want this incident thrown in the face of every talking head on tv who moans about liberals with their "irrational hatred of Bush."

* He attended a meeting of top officials in which the subject of global warming was discussed. The officials concluded that global warming was a liberal cause and dismissed it, he said. He tried to explain the science to them; he was never invited back. Again, I don't ever want to hear again about "reaching across the aisle" on issues of "common concern." The Republicans' only concern was whether an issue was "liberal" or "conservative" -- the fact that the entire Earth might be at risk was irrelevant. You've really got to stop for a minute and let that sink in.

* When stem cells became a focus of debate, Dr. Carmona said he proposed that his office offer guidance “so that we can have, if you will, informed consent.” “I was told to stand down and not speak about it,” he said. “It was removed from my speeches.” Informed decision making? This junta don't' need no informed decision making! Karl Rove decides that a given position will play well with the irrational, batshit insane, fundie base and that's the end of the matter. Meanwhile, American medicine and research lags behind the rest of the world and other countries patent and profit from new medical discoveries. The Republicans don't care. They care about being in power. Period.

* He wanted to address the controversial topic of sexual education. Scientific studies suggest that the most effective approach includes a discussion of contraceptives. “However there was already a policy in place that did not want to hear the science but wanted to preach abstinence only, but I felt that was scientifically incorrect,” he said. See above re: Rove.

* A surgeon general report on global health was never approved because he refused to sprinkle the report with glowing references to the efforts of the Bush administration.

* A surgeon general report concerning health care in prisons has also never been released. “The correctional health care report is pointing out the inadequacies of health care within our correctional health care system,” he said. “It would force the government on a course of action to improve that.” Because the administration does not want to spend more money on prisoners’ health care, the report has been delayed, Dr. Carmona said. “For us, the science was pretty easy,” he said. “These people go back into the community and take diseases with them.” He added, “This is not about the crime. It’s about protecting the public.” Protecting the public is so low on this administration's list of priorities that it's laughable.

Interestingly, Dr. Carmona described himself as politically naive. He's not the only person chosen by this administration who can be described that way. Remember John J. DiIulio Jr., director of the faith-based office, who eventually accused the the Bush White House with being obsessed politics but dismissive of policy, and slammed them as "Mayberry Machiavellis"? David Kuo, who was deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, later charged much the same thing. You get the impression that naivete was what the Bush administration wanted, especially for positions such as Surgeon General. Let's face it, if they were starting from scratch, Republicans would never even have a Surgeon General. Given, however, that they had to fill the position, they filled it with a naive dupe who would follow their instructions to mention the boyking three times on every page and allow them to use him to mislead the American public. Sometimes, even naive dupes insist on trying to do their actual jobs. In that case, they are never invited back to meetings and are let got at the end of the first term. And, here's how the Bush junta thanks them:

Emily Lawrimore, a White House spokeswoman, said the surgeon general “is the leading voice for the health of all Americans.” “It’s disappointing to us,” Ms. Lawrimore said, “if he failed to use this position to the fullest extent in advocating for policies he thought were in the best interests of the nation.” That's cute; isn't it? Dr. Carmona failed to advocate for policies that would help Americans. Shame on him. The denial of reality is positively breathtaking. The man just testified under oath that when he tried, for example, to advocate for sex education that included information on contraceptives, "there was already a policy in place that did not want to hear the science but wanted to preach abstinence only." When he wanted to release a report that would have prevented released prisoners from spreading AIDS to the general public, the report wasn't released because that might have impacted Paris Hilton's tax cuts. When he wanted to release a report on global health, it was trashcanned because he hadn't sufficiently larded it with praise for Republicans.

Someone impeach Bush and Cheney and do it fast.

Fuck You, Leslie

Michael Moore rips Leslie W. Blitzer a new asshole. It is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Go watch it if you don't watch anything else, all day.

Note how Blitzer doesn't even try to defend CNN's record on the war.

Duckpit. Come the revolution, Blitzer goes into the duckpit.

Go

A Nation Of Busybodies, Gossips, And Scolds. And, For What?

I've avoided commenting on Elizabeth Edwards' heartbreaking reoccurrance of breast cancer; having had the disease myself, every story like hers stirs up my worst fears. I really liked Elizabeth Edwards during the entire Kerry/Edwards campaign; she seemed smart, down-to-earth, warm, real. I was pretty disappointed when she recently took a sexist potshot at Hillary Clinton and I called her on it. I haven't read her book, Saving Graces. I'm terribly sorry to hear about her reoccurrance and amazed at the strength and equanimity that she's showing in the face of it. I hate the notion that breast cancer survivors are supposed to be "examples," of anything, but given Ms. Edwards' place in the national spotlight, she's certainly in a position to do a world of good for breast cancer patients, many of whom still suffer from society's perception (and, sometimes, their own) that cancer=instant death.

I'm breaking my silence, though, because I think Digby's post concerning criticism of Ms. Edwards makes an incredibly important point. Digby says:

Now, I'm sure [the author of a hit piece on Ms. Edwards] will immediately tell us all that we should care about her shallow "diagnosis" because it illuminates some aspect of the Edwards' characters. That's always the first refuge of the scandalmonger caught in flagrante and trying to spin her way out of being seen as a voyeur. But nobody can know what really goes on inside somebody else's marriage. . . . Let's face it, analyzing other people's realtionships inevitably reveals more about you than them.

Back when the Clinton marriage was under the microscope for years on end, we were told by every tattler with a microphone that it was terribly important that we know all the dirty details of their lives because it allowed us to assess the president's ability to do his job. That was nonsense. Our current president has what appears to be a very stable, traditional marriage (which everyone treated as if it meant they'd been ordained by god himself) and it said absolutely nothing about his ability to run this country. The awful results of using that political "metric" are clear for all of us to see.

Digby's right. Some people with what almost anyone would call shitty marriages acquit themselves quite well in their careers and some people with what anyone would consider to be an exemplary marriage do a crappy job at work. Some people who aren't married are quite happy that way and find that it lets them focus more of their attention on a career that they love, while others believe that it's their supportive marriage that lets them do the best job that they can at work. Some people have long-term partnerships that aren't marriages and that seem to work for them. The one thing that all of these relationships have in common is that they're really no one else's business. I imagine that, generally, even the people in the relationship might give you different answers on different days if you could get an honest answer as to how they really feel about their relationships.

We've created this ridiculous fetish in America about some perfect nuclear family with a love-matched successful man and smiling supportive wife, their happy, well-adjusted 2.5 kids, and either a cat or a dog. That's not the model of family life portrayed in, for example, the xian's holy book, nor is it the model that's been prevalent over most of the world for most of the world's history. It's not a model that works for even lots of Americans and it's about time that we got over our fetishization of it. And, as Digby points out, it's an incredibly shitty way to decide who will make a good president.

George Washington is rumored to have married his wife, a then-widow, at least in large part for her money. Lincoln, perhaps America's greatest president, had what looks to have been a troubled marriage to a troubled woman. FDR was a pretty effective president and he had what, from the outside, at least, appears to have been a rather complicated marriage. Eisenhower may or may not have had an affair and Mamie may or may not have known about it. John Kennedy is considered to have been effective during his short time in office and we now know that he was a serious philanderer. Nixon was never accused of chasing other women and he was a disaster as a president. Gerry Ford, hardly counted as one of the greatest presidents, had the prototypical happy nuclear family, although his wife was later revealed to be a drug addict. Jimmy Carter, considered by many (not necessarily me) to have been a somewhat ineffective president, is still married to and actively involved in many causes with his wife Rossalyn, his admission to having committed adultery by lusting in his heart for other women notwithstanding. Reagan's family life was also, by all accounts, complicated; some of his children actively diskliked his wife Nancy. Bush I is reputed to have had a long-standing affair that hurt his wife. And then there was Bill Clinton, popular in the U.S. and abroad, father to a seemingly incredibly well-adjusted daughter, and, like Kennedy, a serial philanderer.

The point is that there seems to be little correlation between the overall "success" or "failure" of any given presidential marriage and the job that the president did. Which, when you think about it, really isn't that surprising, or wouldn't be, if Americans (and Americans do seem to be worse about this than, say, Europeans or South Americans) didn't make such a ridiculous big deal out of "family" and "family values."

We'd do well to get over it.

John Edwards isn't my first choice for the Democratic nominee, but that's more because I'd like to see a woman or an African American in office, after two hundred plus years of rich white men, than anything else. I like his message of populism. But his wife's health is a matter between him, Ms. Edwards, and her doctors. It's irrelevant to whether or not he should be the nominee or the president. Or, it would be in any rational world.