Lieberman now says he regrets blackmailing the President and Senator Reid. Great, then put the public option back in.

I hope people aren't seriously looking at this as some kind of apology? The man just got everything he wanted, of course he's trying to cover his butt now. Read More......

Video: Howard Dean on why the Senate health care bill should be killed

Read More......

Obama thanked Lieberman today for saying he would only support the health care bill if Medicare opt-in and public option were dropped

Thanked him. Basically for extortion. And for killing the number one promise our President made during the campaign on this issue. And we wonder why people think our president is a push-over.

Obama thanked Lieberman privately for his statement issued earlier Tuesday pledging support for the bill as long as the Medicare expansion and public option were eliminated from the bill, Lieberman said.

Read More......

Drug industry's sweetheart deal survives Senate vote

NOTE FROM JOHN: So the Obama administration just helped guarantee that you get to pay three to five times more for you prescription drugs. Are you feeling the change?

There is another winner in the Senate health care bill, besides the insurance companies. That would be the drug industry. The Senate just rejected an effort led by Senator Byron Dorgan to allow for the importation of drugs:

The Senate has narrowly rejected a plan to allow Americans to import low-cost prescription drugs from Canada and other countries.

The amendment by North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan failed on a 51-48 vote. Sixty votes were needed to prevail.

The Senate roll call is here.

Way back in the old days, when he was a Senator (circa 2007-8), Barack Obama was the cosponsor of S. 242, an earlier version of Senator Dorgan's legislation to allow the importation of drugs. But, this year, the Obama administration opposed the very same legislation. (Several other of Obama's fellow cosponsors, including Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY), voted no on the Dorgan amendment today.) That's because top White House staffers cut a secret, sweetheart deal with the drug industry's lobbying arm, Pharma, last spring, which was exposed over the summer.

Progressives keep seeing provisions they support removed from the health care bill. Yet, the drug industry's deal remains intact. So, consumers get screwed again as a big industry with money and lobbying clout wins. That's not exactly change. Read More......

Evening document dump

Other stories from today that you might find interesting:

81% of Dems want Lieberman stripped of chairmanship.

Obama makes progress on closing Gitmo.

Glenn Beck and Orrin Hatch think health care reform is unconstitutional.

USA Today poll: Most back a treaty on global warming

GOP removes URL shortener following pornographic pranks.

160 villages in Alaska are threatened by not climate change, really, it's not.

FDL argues that an individual mandate is unfair without a public option.

Taylor Marsh says Obama is the problem, not Lieberman.

Three Germans and a Dane hid my TV remote.

Obama's approval numbers slipping overall and in key areas, per Wash Post poll. (Maybe he should move to the middle, I hear the voters like that, and it's worked so well so far.)

One writer at the NYT thinks Joe Lieberman "saved" health care reform. Seriously.

Oral Roberts is finally dead.

FDL is a tad ticked at Obama over HCR.

Americans would rather Obama stick to his promises than "be bipartisan."

Lieberman actually opposed Baucus' bill, which he now claims is a good bill and it's one of the reasons he opposed the Medicare opt-in.

British court issues arrest warrant for former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

Mike Lux leans against support Senate health care bill.

Progressive groups are pissed at Rahm over health care fiasco.

Conservatives are trying to milk the Teabaggers for their money. Read More......

Americans associate environmental action with jobs and economy

The numbers are getting closer to the 50% mark but it's surprising it's taken this long to get here. Even if you don't accept the science of climate change, it looks like a no-brainer since the rest of the world believes it's an issue. Who really isn't interested in leading business into an emerging market that is worth billions of dollars, if not trillions? As an American abroad, it looks un-American to ignore such an opportunity, but that's what the Republicans have done to the country.

More Americans believe steps taken to reduce global warming pollution will help the U.S. economy than say such measures will hurt it. It's a sign the public is showing more faith in President Barack Obama's economic arguments for limiting heat-trapping gases than in Republican claims that the actions would kill jobs.

In an Associated Press-Stanford University poll, 40 percent said U.S. action to slow global warming in the future would create jobs. Slightly more, 46 percent, said it would boost the economy.

By contrast, less than a third said curbing climate change would hurt the economy and result in fewer jobs, a message Republican members of Congress plan to take to an international global warming conference in Copenhagen this week.

Read More......

BREAKING... Howard Dean: "Kill the Senate bill"

A huge exclusive for the Plum Line:

“This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate. Honestly the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill, go back to the House, start the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill.”

Read More......

D.C. City Council passed marriage equality

Great news.

The D.C. City Council just passed the marriage equality legislation by a vote of 11 - 2. The bill now heads to Mayor Fenty to be signed into law.

More here. Read More......

Huff Post: Lieberman still isn't ready to support health care reform. But he's closer.

All you can do is laugh at this point. I'm sure the President and Senator Reid will find something else to gut for him. Then we wait for all the other conservative Dems to start demanding their pound of flesh too. And why not? The President and the Senate Majority Leader have lost control of this entire effort, if they ever had any in the first place. Read More......

Health care "experts" still want to pass the Senate health care bill

A number of sources are reporting that the "experts" on health care reform all seem to want to pass the current Senate "compromise," while "activists" do not. The implied criticism, between the lines (and perhaps not even intentional), is that activists don't know the substance of the debate, so of course "they" think the bill is bad. But the "experts" know better.

Maybe. But there's another big difference between activists - or political experts, I'd call them - and policy wonks. Policy wonks have no sense of the possible in politics, they simply know their arcane issue inside out. Political experts know how to win issue campaigns, so they can smell weakness and missed opportunity faster than you can say "Yes we can."

I would argue that the reason so many people are so upset with what the Senate did to the health care bill, at the bidding of the White House, is that we know that had the White House chosen to lead on health care reform, had the Congress not chosen to take a back seat to the White House's non-strategy for victory, we could have had a significantly better bill, and it would have passed. It's all well and good to say that the current bill still has some positive things in it - let's be kind and give it a C. But when you could have had an A, and you started out the gate gunning for a C, you don't get our praise.

George Bush never settled for a C.

And there's another reason political experts are more upset about the capitulation to Joe Lieberman than are policy experts. Political experts know a thing or two about moral hazard - the concept in economics that says that if you cover someone's ass, they'll make the same mistake over and over again. If we let Democrats get away with being weak, with refusing to lead on health care reform, with refusing to defend and fight for the President's own campaign promises, and instead settle for a mere shadow of what he promised, and what we could have had, then we should not be surprised when the same capitulation happens on immigration, climate change, gay rights, and every other issue that someone out there cares about. Any parent can tell you what happens when you reward bad behavior.

(I mean, hey, being 4/5ths a man is better than only being 3/5ths a man, isn't it? And on gays in the military, how about we only let half of you serve openly, but we segregate you in separate barracks - I mean, George Bush would never have gone even this far, would he? And finally climate change - if we delay the destruction of mankind for 300 years instead of the current trajectory of, say, 150 years, I'd call that a victory.)

The White House and the Congress did a crappy job running the campaign for health care reform. And if we simply give them a pat on the back, and agree that "something is better than nothing," then like the definition of insanity, we're going to get the same half-assed results from the White House and Congress on every single issue from now until the day that Sarah Palin replaces Barack Obama in the White House.

If you don't want Democrats to ever keep their promises, if you want Barack Obama to sell out your constituency from the git-go and undercut your effort to hold him to his promises every step of the way, then please do heartily endorse this health care reform "compromise." I'm sure the bill helps some small fraction of Americans somewhere, maybe. But I know that it's going to screw my people when our issue comes up for a vote, and it'll screw yours too. Read More......

The GOP had at most 55 Senators during Bush's presidency

I've heard people say that it's not fair to criticize the Democrats for botching health care reform because the Democrats never truly had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Sure, they have 60 votes in principle, the argument goes, but with Lieberman, Nelson, Landrieu, and Bayh counted as four of those votes, it's not really a solid 60.

Perhaps. But then how was George Bush so effective in passing legislation during his presidency when he never had more than 55 Republicans in the Senate? In fact, during Bush's most effective years, from 2001 to 2005, the GOP had a grand total of 50, and then 51, Senators. The slimmest margin possible.

And look at what George Bush was able to accomplish in the Congress with fewer Senators than the Democrats have today:

- John Ashcroft nomination
- Iraq war resolution
- Repeated Iraq funding resolutions
- 2001 & 2003 tax cuts
- Patriot Act
- Alito
- John Roberts
- Medicare Part D

I'm sure some people will argue that Bush had September 11, and used it to pass lots of laws. Yes. But September 11 had nothing to do with the Ashcroft nomination, the 2001 tax cuts, with the Alito and Roberts nominations, nor with Medicare Part D. And in each case, Democrats rolled over and gave the Republicans the votes they needed to ensure there would be no effective filibuster. (And let's not forget, Obama had the economic meltdown and the recent memory of the failed Bush presidency to use as his rallying cry to smother opposition, and he didn't.)

So what's the difference? Why with 60 votes are Democrats so ineffective, but with 50 votes Republicans excel?

What the GOP lacked in numbers, they made up for in backbone, cunning and leadership. Say what you will about George Bush, he wasn't afraid of a fight. If anything, the Bush administration, and the Republicans in Congress, seemed to relish taking on Democrats, and seeing just how far they could get Democratic members of Congress to cave on their promises and their principles. Hell, even Senator Barack Obama, who once famously promised to lead a filibuster against the FISA domestic eavesdropping bill, suddenly changed his mind and actually voted for the legislation. Such is the power of a president and a congressional leadership with balls and smarts.

How did they do it? Bush was willing to use his bully pulpit to create an environment in which the opposition party feared taking him on, feared challenging his agenda, lest they be seen as unpatriotic and extreme. By going public, early and often, with his beliefs, Bush was able to fracture the Democratic opposition (and any potential dissent in his own party) and forestall any effort to mount a filibuster against the most important items in his agenda.

It's not about the votes, people. It's about leadership. The current occupant of the White House doesn't like to fight, and the leadership in Congress has never been as good at their jobs, at marshaling their own party, as the Republicans were when they were in the majority. The President is supposed to rally the country, effectively putting pressure on opposition members of Congress to sit down and shut up. And the congressional leadership is supposed to rally its members to hold the line, and get the 51 votes necessary for passing legislation in a climate where the minority is too afraid to use the filibuster. When you have a President who is constitutionally, or intellectually, unable to stand for anything, and a congressional leadership that, rather than disciplining its own members and forging ahead with its own agenda, cedes legislative authority to a president who refuses to lead, you have a recipe for exactly what happened last night. Weakness, chaos, and failure.

We lost real health care reform not because we don't have a "real" filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. We lost health care reform because we don't have a real leader anywhere in our party. It's not going to get better if we elect more Democrats to the Senate and it's not going to play out any differently should we try to revisit this issue in the future.

And one final point. What do you think is going to happen if, during the House-Senate conference, a combined bill is returned to the Senate that even vaguely improves upon the garbage they're currently debating? Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and Evan Bayh will threaten the same filibuster. We're not getting anything better than the crap they just came up with last night. It's over. The next three years are going to be about mediocrity, broken promises, and striving for second best. That's not the America I grew up in. And it's not what I voted for, or was promised. Read More......

Climate change impacting wildlife from Arctic to Australia

As bad as it may be for the polar bears, similar problems exist across the globe on land and in the sea. MSNBC.com:

Polar bears get most of the attention when it comes to climate change and threatened species, but a new study finds they're not alone.

Clownfish, koalas and many other species are in danger too, according to a report released Monday by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the largest association of species experts in the world.

“Humans are not the only ones whose fate is at stake here in Copenhagen — some of our favorite species are also taking the fall for our CO2 emissions,” said report co-author Wendy Foden.

In Copenhagen, Al Gore reported that the Arctic could be ice-free in summers as soon as 2014. Read More......

Wall Street is back in charge

Wall Street has regained its role as top dog in the country again. That was evidenced yesterday when three of the nation's top bankers phoned in to the big meeting at the White House with Barack Obama. Or as The New York Times put it, "Putting Obama on Hold, in a Hint of Who’s Boss" :

President Obama didn’t exactly look thrilled as he stared at the Polycom speakerphone in front of him. “Well, I appreciate you guys calling in,” he began the meeting at the White House with Wall Street’s top brass on Monday.

He was, of course, referring to the three conspicuously absent attendees who were being piped in by telephone: Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs; John J. Mack, chairman of Morgan Stanley; and Richard D. Parsons, chairman of Citigroup.

Their excuse? “Inclement weather,” according to the White House. More precisely, fog delayed flights into Reagan National Airport. (In the “no good deed goes unpunished” category, the absent bankers were at least self-aware enough to try to fly commercial.)

That awkward moment on speakerphone in the White House, for better or worse, spoke volumes about how the balance of power between Wall Street and Washington has shifted again, back in Wall Street’s favor.

I have to admit, I thought the same thing when I saw the clip of Obama talking into the phone. Then, I saw the list of the three who didn't make the meeting: CEOs of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup.

So, that didn't take long. Just a year after Wall Street destroyed the economy for most Americans, things couldn't be better for the financial titans. Nice work, Tim Geithner and Larry Summers.

I bet you didn't think this would be the case a year ago at this time. I sure didn't. Read More......

Darcy Burner: The Senate bill is a recipe for national disaster. If it's that bill or nothing, I prefer nothing.

Rahm Emanuel, in all his wisdom, expects liberals to cave in order to pass health care reform, no matter how bad the bill gets. In the Senate, that's exactly what happened despite the months of tough talk we heard from the likes of liberal Senators Sherrod Brown and Tom Harkin. They learned a tough lesson this week: They don't matter to the White House. Lieberman does.

Over the past couple weeks, we've gotten indications that the Senate bill will be the final bill. It won't be fixed in conference, as promised. Instead, the House will be expected to pass the Senate bill as is.

Emanuel is expecting the House progressives to cave, too. But, not all progressives are toeing Rahm's line. If the Senate bill is the final bill, Darcy Burner, the Executive Director of the ProgressiveCongress.org, says kill it:

The first rule of medicine is, "Do no harm." The post-Joe Lieberman version of the Senate healthcare bill fails that basic criterion. Unless Democratic leadership steps up to fix this misguided proposal, our only recourse will be to kill it.

The fundamental failing of the newest Senate proposal is that it requires individuals to purchase health insurance, but does nothing to rein in what insurance companies charge. There is nothing to stop spiraling health costs from eating up an ever-increasing percentage of our national productivity.

The House bill has two major cost-control mechanisms: the public option and the 85% medical-loss ratio requirement. The Senate bill is on track to have neither, and nothing new to replace them. The Senate bill is a recipe for national disaster. If it's that bill or nothing, I prefer nothing.

The House can still use its power to fix the bill. But, that would require the use of power, something liberals aren't so good at.

Democratic leaders are going to have to explain how forcing a mandate on people to buy private health insurance, without controlling the insurance industry, makes sense. That concept might appeal to Joe Lieberman, but it doesn't sit well with everyone else. Read More......

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Well, it's pretty clear by now that this is Joe Lieberman's country. The Democrats have ceded power to him. I guess campaigning for John McCain really worked out well for Joe.

That other, less important leader of the nation, Barack Obama is meeting with Democratic Senators this afternoon. Apparently, Joe Lieberman has deigned to meet with Obama and the other Democratic Senators so he can explain what they can and can't do in the health care bill. It's all about Joe.

I really didn't think I'd be so annoyed in 2009. I thought this year was going to be fun. Boy, was I wrong.

Let's get threading the news. Read More......

Italian far right upset over black nativity

I think we all know that Jesus had long blond hair, fair skin and may have even been Swedish. Some even think he was a champion cross country skier. How could anyone possibly think that Jesus would look any other way? Reuters:

A nativity scene featuring a dark-skinned Jesus, Mary and Joseph that has gone on display in a Verona courthouse has created heated debate in a city with strong links to Italy's anti-immigration Northern League party.

The nativity's appearance coincides with the League's controversial operation "White Christmas," a two-month sweep ending on Christmas Day to ferret out foreigners without proper permits in Coccaglio, a small League-led town east of Milan.

The Christmas scene -- featuring a dark-skinned baby Jesus dressed in a red shirt and lying in a manger -- was the idea of Mario Giulio Schinaia, the chief Public Prosecutor in Verona.

"History teaches us that baby Jesus and his parents were very probably dark-skinned," Schinaia told Reuters. "This nativity belongs to a universal Christmas tradition that brings together the whole of Christianity in celebration."

Read More......

Copenhagen talks breaking down

Will they be able to bounce back from the dead or is it all just part of the spin to build pressure? Or perhaps some of both? The Guardian:

A fraught day in Copenhagen yesterday saw disputes cause the loss of five vital hours of negotiating time and the UN and Danish organisers accused of sidelining developing nations by holding informal consultations with selected countries.

"The disaster has already begun because we have not closed the gap an inch. We have not moved," a senior Asian negotiator said. "We are just trying to paste over it with political rhetoric."

The rancour that has run through the summit between developed and developing nations broke out again when the Africa group of countries and others accused the UN chair of the conference of trying to "kill" the Kyoto protocol. The issue is that Kyoto is the only legal treaty compelling rich nations to slash their greenhouse gas emissions. But rich states complain that Kyoto makes no demand on developing countries, particularly China and India, whose carbon emissions have risen fast and will dominate future growth.

Read More......