Tom DeLay is wicked popular now that he's on "Dancing with the Stars"

The story about Tom DeLay appearing on "Dancing with the Stars" was bouncing around all day. Tonight, USA Today posted an interview with him. He's just all the rage now:

"I can't answer the phone. My e-mails are out of sight, I can't keep up with my Facebook, and TV reporters have been outside my house since this morning," says DeLay, 62, nicknamed The Hammer for his forceful handling of political opponents. "I knew Dancing was popular, but I didn't know it was this popular."

Executive producer Conrad Green and senior producer Deena Katz had talked to politicians about signing on before. But "I was astonished when he said yes," Green says.

DeLay's political career fizzled when a grand jury indictment on money laundering charges in 2005 forced him to step down from the House leadership post and later from Congress. No trial date is set.

DeLay, who now runs a political consultancy, says his love of ballroom dance, not image enhancement, is the prime reason he's on Dancing.

"To be honest, I hope people will see another side of Tom DeLay," he says. "But you can't be a Texan and not love to dance. I've always been able to two-step and polka. My wife (Christine) and I even took disco when that was hot."

Disco DeLay. Who knew? Read More......

Krugman: The public option as a signal

Not that Nobel laureates aren't intrinsically smart folks, but I think this analysis of the politics of the public option is particularly insightful.

Partly it’s a matter of style — as many people have noted, he has been weirdly reluctant to make the moral case for universal care, weirdly unable to show passion on the issue, weirdly diffident even about the blatant lies from the right. Partly it’s a spillover from his other policies: by appointing an economic team that’s Rubin redux, by taking such a kindly attitude to the banks, he has squandered a lot of progressive enthusiasm....

So progressives have their backs up over one provision in health care reform that’s easy to monitor. The public option has become not so much a symbol as a signal, a test of whether Obama is really the progressive activists thought they were backing.

And the bizarre thing is that the administration doesn’t seem to get that.

I'd go one step further. I don't care if Obama is a progressive, a communist, or a Martian. And I suspect most of the left is already convinced that the man is no progressive - or if he is in his heart, his heart clearly does not dictate his actions. Rather than worrying about labels, I want him, and expect him, to keep his promises and advance the interests and values (both, not just one) of our party. What's repeatedly upsetting me, and others, I think, is that Obama appears to spend a lot of time worrying about being liked, and not nearly as much on substance. And if he doesn't care about substance, if he doesn't really care either way as to how every policy debate ends, so long as he can claim victory regardless, then his promises on this, and every other bit of policy making, are meaningless. Read More......

GOP candidate for Governor of NJ isn't tough on crimes, he's actually a "lawbreaker

Today's NY Times exposes the hypocrisy of GOP candidate for Governor Chris Christie:

Mr. Christie unveiled a 10-point plan for ethical reform, including expanding a ban on pay-to-play practices like contracts for political donors. Where Mr. Corzine tried but failed to enact similar measures, Mr. Christie said he would all but cram his plan down the throats of legislators if they objected.

“They will refuse to act at their political peril,” he declared.

His strategy is vintage Christie: A look at his career shows he has repeatedly used the whiff of corruption as a cudgel against political opponents. But his short-lived attempt to ban no-bid contracts as a freeholder raises questions over whether his zeal for an ethics overhaul is more than just campaign hype and would last if he became governor and met resistance from lawmakers he could not control.

According to Governor Corzine, despite Christie's tough-on-corruption rep, the Republican is really a "lawbreaker." Via Think Progress:

I was at the meeting where Amanda got this video of Corzine. He was very forceful and clear about this issue. And, although, Corzine is down in the polls right now, he's fighting back. Hard.

Christie is really a typical GOP scam artist. But, what else could we expect from someone groomed by Karl Rove? Christie's strategy is vintage Karl Rove, too. Read More......

Santorum thinks we think he's dangerous.

This is pathetically comical. George Bush's media guru, Mark McKinnon, thinks Santorum is dangerous. Ricky has extrapolated that to mean we all think he's dangerous:

"I'm sure the folks on the left see me as dangerous. They've always seen me as dangerous, and I take a little pride in that. People cannot see you as dangerous unless you're effective."

Um, we don't. As one reader put it:

An idiot? Yes. A bigot? Yes. An insufferable boor? Yes. A religious zealot who espouses very odd funeral arrangements? Yes.

But dangerous?

I'm not sure I'd go that far..

Me either. If Santorum really wants to know what the left really thinks of him, he should google "Santorum." The fact that two of the top three results are NSFW says it all. Read More......

Progressive House Members lay down the marker: The final bill "MUST contain a public option"

Game on. The pundits and politicos in DC (including Politico.com) have decided the die is cast against the public option. (Wink, wink, they knew it all along.) One "House leadership official" actually told Politico there would be an initial vote on the public option, but intimated it won't be there when the bill comes back from the conference committee (after the Senate and House pass their respective bills, a conference committee comprised of members from both bodies will come up with one final product.) And, the expectation is that the progressives will just go along with no public option (because progressive always just go along.)

Not so fast.

Jane Hamsher reports that 60 House progressives have sent a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius laying down their marker: No public option, no bill. Here's the last two important paragraphs from the letter:

To take the public option off the table would be a grave error; passage in the House of Representatives depends upon inclusion of it.

We have attached, for your review, a letter from 60 Members of Congress who are firm in their Position that any legislation that moves forward through both chambers, and into a final proposal for the President's signature, MUST contain a public option.

Got that? Everyone thought the progressives could be taken for granted. They can't be.

And, Jane adds:

It's pretty clear that they're not down with the kabuki play, and are serious about conference. Well played, progressives.

Only an arrogant nitwit would believe they could negotiate a deal that gave health care away to the pharmaceutical industry, the doctors, the hospitals and the insurance companies, tie everyone's hands and keep the government from being able to negotiate costs for the next decade and then jam it on progressives to sell in their districts at the end the end of the process.

D.C. is filled with arrogant nitwits. A lot of them work on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. And, some of them (Baucus, Conrad, Messina, Emanuel) actually thought progressives didn't matter in this debate. Read More......

Krugman explains our health care options

Very interesting, and clear, explanation of how things work in England, Canada, France, Switzerland, and Massachusetts:

In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false. Like every system, the National Health Service has problems, but over all it appears to provide quite good care while spending only about 40 percent as much per person as we do. By the way, our own Veterans Health Administration, which is run somewhat like the British health service, also manages to combine quality care with low costs.

The second route to universal coverage leaves the actual delivery of health care in private hands, but the government pays most of the bills. That’s how Canada and, in a more complex fashion, France do it. It’s also a system familiar to most Americans, since even those of us not yet on Medicare have parents and relatives who are.

Again, you hear a lot of horror stories about such systems, most of them false. French health care is excellent. Canadians with chronic conditions are more satisfied with their system than their U.S. counterparts. And Medicare is highly popular, as evidenced by the tendency of town-hall protesters to demand that the government keep its hands off the program.

Finally, the third route to universal coverage relies on private insurance companies, using a combination of regulation and subsidies to ensure that everyone is covered. Switzerland offers the clearest example: everyone is required to buy insurance, insurers can’t discriminate based on medical history or pre-existing conditions, and lower-income citizens get government help in paying for their policies.

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Obama's "pay czar" has binding authority to attempt to do something, maybe

Or at least give it the old college try, gosh darn it. Is is possible to slip in more weasel-words into his bold talk? Somehow I'm not feeling very confident in his ability to get much done besides calling himself the czar of something or other. His comment on the Citi trader who is about to receive a $100 million bonus doesn't sound like someone who is going to exercise much power. Reuters:

Feinberg told Reuters that Citigroup included the contract of energy trader Andrew Hall in submissions due Friday by seven major companies still locked in the federal government's TARP Program.

Feinberg said he hasn't looked at Hall's contract, which reports have said could pay him as much as $100 million this year.

"Whether I have jurisdiction to decide his compensation or not, we will take a look and decide over the next few weeks," Feinberg said after speaking at a public forum in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, part of a newsmaker series hosted by the Martha's Vineyard Times newspaper.

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Majority of Republicans either believe or are unsure about death panel claims

Maybe we should cave on pre-existing conditions and portability in order to make them more comfortable. Read More......

Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO) just makes things up about health care

It's so easy to be a Republican in the health care debate. All you have to do is lie. But, sometimes you'll get caught in the lies, like GOP Congressman/GOP Senate candidate Roy Blunt did:

As chairman of the House Republican Health Care Solutions Group, Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Springfield, knows a thing or two about health care. But some of what he knows just isn’t true.

“I’m 59,” Mr. Blunt said last week during a meeting with Post-Dispatch reporters and editors. “In either Canada or Great Britain, if I broke my hip, I couldn’t get it replaced.”

We fact-checked that. At least 63 percent of hip replacements performed in Canada last year and two-thirds of those done in England were on patients age 65 or older. More than 1,200 in Canada were done on people older than 85.

“I didn’t just pull that number out of thin air,” Mr. Blunt said in a subsequent interview. It came, he said, from testimony before the House Subcommittee on Health by “some people who are supposed to be experts on Canadian health care.”

Republicans are just pulling fake numbers and other falsehoods out of thin air. That's what they do. They lie. But, unfortunately, not everyone one fact checks. So, it seems to be working. Read More......

New Obama legal brief changes tune on DOMA, kind of

I guess this is a step in the right direction. I don't want to fail to praise the administration for doing better, but to some degree the only reason this is "good" is because of how "bad" they did on the previous brief. In the end, they're still defending a discriminatory law that the president himself has called "abhorrent." The fact that they're doing it more tactfully is, I suppose, nice - and they are no longer using language that undercuts us on a variety of other civil rights, so that's good - but again, we're praising them for no longer doing things that they shouldn't have done in the first place. And in the end, they're still defending discrimination.

Reply Brief

We had to find out via a friend on the outside because, apparently, even sharing good news is considered a bad thing by this administration. In any case, while they still are opposing a lawsuit to overturn DOMA, the administration's language has taken a 180 since the disastrous brief in which they compared gay marriage to incest and pedophilia. In this new brief, things are decidedly better:

With respect to the merits, this Administration does not support DOMA as a matter of policy, believes that it is discriminatory, and supports its repeal. Consistent with the rule of law, however, the Department of Justice has long followed the practice of defending federal statutes as long as reasonable arguments can be made in support of their constitutionality, even if the Department disagrees with a particular statute as a policy matter, as it does here.2

Still a bit of a bs answer - they don't have to defend a law that they think unconstitutional, but they choose to. Still, the language is markedly improved.

And they still stand by some of their discriminatory arguments by referring to the offending brief without quoting it directly:

Plaintiffs' equal protection and due process claims raise several issues, all of which were addressed in the United States' motion to dismiss. As established in the government's opening memorandum, federal courts have unanimously upheld the constitutionality of DOMA.5 Plaintiffs' only response to the government's arguments in favor of dismissal is to assert, without elaboration, that "same gender marriage is a . . . fundamental right" such that DOMA is subject to "heightened scrutiny," and to imply that DOMA constitutes "gender discrimination" (Doc. 40 at 4, 5). The United States refuted these assertions in its opening memorandum.

I'm also not sure it's appropriate for the Obama administration to bet yet again arguing that it's rational for a court to uphold DOMA's constitutionality:

Courts have held that challenges to DOMA are subject to rational basis review.6 Under that deferential standard of review, this Court should find that Congress could reasonably have concluded that there is a legitimate government interest in maintaining the status quo regarding the distribution of federal benefits in the face of serious and fluid policy differences in and among the states. That there is now a debate taking place in this country about same-sex marriage does not make Congress's belief in this regard any less rational.

Then there's this excellent paragraph:

Unlike the intervenors here, the government does not contend that there are legitimate government interests in "creating a legal structure that promotes the raising of children by both of their biological parents" or that the government's interest in "responsible procreation" justifies Congress's decision to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman (Doc. 42 at 8-9). Since DOMA was enacted, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Medical Association, and the Child Welfare League of America have issued policies opposing restrictions on lesbian and gay parenting because they concluded, based on numerous studies, that children raised by gay and lesbian parents are as likely to be well-adjusted as children raised by heterosexual parents.7 Furthermore, in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 605 (2003), Justice Scalia acknowledged in his dissent that encouraging procreation would not be a rational basis for limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples under the reasoning of the Lawrence majority opinion – which, of course, is the prevailing law – because "the sterile and the elderly are allowed to marry." For these reasons, the United States does not believe that DOMA is rationally related to any legitimate government interests in procreation and child-rearing and is therefore not relying upon any such interests to defend DOMA's constitutionality.

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Howard Dean: There is no health care reform without the public option

Amid indications that the Obama administration plans to drop the public option (did it ever really embrace the public option?), Howard Dean is now saying that you can't have actual health care "reform" without it. Health Care reform groups may soon find themselves in a very interesting situation. While everyone has been worrying that the Republicans will rally their forces over the recess to kill health care reform, who exactly on our side is going to spend August advocating for the detritus of what was once Obama's biggest campaign promise?

UPDATE: Actually, the scary part is quite the opposite. What Democratic organization or member of Congress actually has the backbone to stand up and call BS on all of this? I predict not many. They'll all support whatever garbage Obama, Baucus and Grassley eventually come up with. It is, after all, only another trillion dollars. Who cares if it actually doesn't do that much. Read More......

The tale of Arack Boama and the shiny new car

Nate Silver writes that the White House's move, in signaling yesterday that it is going to drop the public option from health care reform, was a wise, necessary and inevitable move politically. I think Nate may be right, but that hardly exonerates the White House from charges of gross negligence in handling the health care issue. First Nate:

If [the White House is] hedging a bit now [on the public option], it's probably because they're hoping to temper the reaction some in the blogopshere. I don't blame them for wanting to do so. And I don't blame the blogosphere for being angry -- the White House did not provide much in the way of leadership on this issue. But that doesn't mean it isn't the right time for the White House to (at least mostly) cut bait. There's likely going to have to be some sort of "regrouping" moment in September for health care to pass -- some sense of momentum that the White House can sustain for two, three, four weeks. If you'd waited until then to table the public option, such a moment would be less likely. There also probably has to be some effort to sell the public on the virutes of the plan as is -- and if the Administration can't convince the liberal blogopshere of that over the next 2-4 weeks, they almost certainly can't hope to do so to the general public.

Okay, he's not horribly wrong. But let me explain. Of course the White House is talking about dropping the public option. As Nate points out, it increasingly seems that not enough Senators are willing to vote for it. The question, of course, is why aren't enough Senators willing to vote for it? The answer, as Nate points out, is because the White House failed to lead on the health care issue and now the issue is a big fat mess.

Perhaps an allegory might help.

Chapter 1: Arack takes you for a ride.

It's a beautiful Sunday afternoon and the world is your oyster. Everything is going great in your life, and in fact, you're happier than you've been in eight years. Your new friend Arack Boama calls and invites you to take a ride in his big fancy new car. Things quickly go bad as, for some reason, while approaching a busy intersection, your friend Arack thinks it would be a good idea to close his eyes and try to navigate the intersection blind. Inevitably, your car crashes and you're all badly injured. The doctors tell you that they have to amputate both your legs, lest the gangrene that has set in kill you. You're understandably quite upset, not the least of which with your friend Arack. Arack, confused, looks at you and says: Hey, don't blame me - the experts all agree that losing your legs is the only way to save you.

And he's right. It is the wise, necessary, and inevitable choice. But let's not forget how you got into this mess in the first place.

Stay tuned for more upcoming chapters in the story of Arack and his new car....

Chapter 2: Arack invites his gay friends to take a ride in his new car. (Actually, this was the foreword to the book.)

Chapter 3: Arack invita a sus nuevos amigos latinos a dar una vuelta en su coche.

Chapter 4: Arack is surprised when nobody wants to ride in his car any more.

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No title necessary

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Monday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

So, the White House is willing to drop the public option. That, in my opinion, makes the White House look a little weak and desperate. They're negotiating with themselves. And, someone at the White House needs to remember that there are a lot of liberals in the House who only want a bill with a public option. 64 was the latest count. Rahm and Messina have been so obsessed with kissing the butts of conservative Democrats on the Hill, they've forgotten that there are many members who actually expect the President to keep his commitment to real health insurance reform.

The game is on. Let's make sure we thank the members who are standing up for good policy. The White House may take them for granted. We can't.

Let's get it started. This is going to be an interesting week... Read More......

Wall Street: bonuses are great, but forget about health care

Perhaps there's a bit of "angst" among the rest of the country about Wall Street pay that has bounced back quite nicely during the recession, no? CNBC again sides with the greed of Wall Street that caused the recession instead of appreciating what is good for the country as a whole. If times are so tough and the economy so delicate, how can CNBC not spend every waking minute attacking the bonus culture that is stronger than ever? Read More......

Japan moves out of recession

But like France and Germany who did the same last week, it's debatable whether this will last or if it's a timeout before the next dip. Reuters:

Japan's economy grew 0.9 percent in the three months to June, marking the first expansion in five quarters on the back of exports and government stimulus spending, but analysts say it will be a long road to a sustained recovery.

The growth in the world's No.2 economy provided further evidence that the worst of the damage wrought by a global financial crisis may be over, but analysts and policy-makers are wary about the outlook, which depends on a recovery in world demand.

The preliminary figure, which fell slightly short of a median market forecast of a 1.0 percent increase, puts Japan in the first camp of G7 countries that have pulled out of recession, along with Germany and France.

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International bank bonus reform?

Clearly there are benefits to an EU-US coordinated program to bring the real world back to banker bonus payouts. If nothing else it would help limit any significant movement from one country to another. I'd be much less concerned about the banks moving beyond the US/EU as I don't see the customers wanting that nor would I see the bulk of the bankers wanting to resettle their families in less stable environments. The banks will make threats, most definitely, but a move to somewhere in the Middle East or Latin America is not feasible.

Even without such a coordinated effort though, something needs to give. Soon. The British Treasury is being pushed much harder to reform the system and may get that ahead of the US. The Independent:

Under the Treasury's plans, new laws would give the Financial Services Authority power to control bonuses at all British banks, not just at those institutions receiving state support.

But a spokesman for the BBA said: "The next move towards any potential legislation would have to be done at an international level, otherwise you run the risk of [investment] moving from one financial centre to another."

While there was scepticism about whether such a plan would come to fruition, it is understood the Government is serious about the measure.

Mr Darling's comments came in a weekend of fresh revelations about big bonuses in the City. Barclays Capital, the high street bank's investment banking arm, reportedly offered five investment bankers a bonus package worth a total of £30m. It also emerged that in the peak bonus season between December and April, British banks paid out £7.6bn in bonuses, although this was 40 per cent lower than the £13.2bn handed over last year.

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