Anonymous anti- health care reform callers spoofing Harry Reid

The irony here is that the Congress had the chance to pass legislation banning this practice, and didn't. Putting that aside, welcome to hardball politics. No one could have predicted the Republicans would play dirty and play mean. Sigh. Read the rest of this post...

Dear CNN "Talent," Read the Esquire piece about the Birthers. Your colleague, Lou Dobbs, is one of them.

It was only two weeks ago that birthers were all the rage. This week, they've been upstaged a bit by the deathers.

But, we haven't heard the last of the birthers. They're all part of the insanity bubbling around the country.

Lou Dobbs is probably the most prominent birther. That distinction must make CNN proud. All of the reporters and anchors at the network surely value having a colleague who serves as an on-air racist. But, there are other birthers who are getting attention, including their leader, Orly Taitz. Esquire's John Richardson profiled Taitz and some of her birther pals. These are the people who inform the thinking of CNN's Lou Dobbs. It's quite a trip Richardson took with Taitz. Here's some of what he learned:

There's a cemetery somewhere in Arizona where they just dug 30,000 fresh graves, which wait now for the revolution.

Baxter International — a major Obama contributor — developed a vaccine for bird flu that actually kills people.

Google Congressman Alcee Hastings and House Bill 684 and you'll see that they're planning at least six civilian labor camps.

Google an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about train cars with shackles.

And, this is key for everyone in the media, especially all of Dobbs' colleagues at CNN:

This is the stuff that the media never gives Taitz a chance to say because it's so focused on the news hook of the "birther" issue. (And, believe me, this has been merely a tiny sample of what I saw on my road trip this spring.) But this is the stuff that reveals who she really is, and what this movement really is.

This is the GOP base. They're extremists, no doubt. And scary. But, CNN gives them an hour of credibility in primetime every weeknight via Lou Dobbs. Read the rest of this post...

Former US Attorney on his Rove-abetted firing: "There were improper and potentially illegal—as in criminally illegal—reasons for my removal."

Despite what Karl Rove thinks, Karl Rove may not be quite in the clear:

The former federal prosecutor at the center of the controversy over the 2006 U.S. attorney firings said today that he feels fully vindicated by newly disclosed e-mails from the Bush White House showing that Karl Rove and his deputies were actively involved in arranging his dismissal from the Justice Department. "This confirms my worst nightmares," David Iglesias, the former U.S. attorney in New Mexico, said in an interview with NEWSWEEK.

His comments came shortly after the House Judiciary Committee released hundreds of pages of interview transcripts of Bush White House officials and internal e-mails that were obtained by the panel earlier this year and kept confidential until today. The material suggests, at a minimum, an often aggressive effort by Rove's office for more than a year and a half to have Iglesias removed as the chief federal prosecutor in New Mexico following a barrage of complaints from Republican Party officials and members of Congress that he was not doing enough to prosecute voter-fraud cases and bring indictments that would hurt Democrats and boost the GOP's prospects in the key swing state.

Iglesias said today that he was "surprised" last month when Rove insisted in a rare joint interview to reporters from The New York Times and The Washington Post that he was merely a "conduit" of complaints about Iglesias, rather than a driving force behind the decision to fire the prosecutor. "This doesn't sound like he was merely a conduit," Iglesias said about the newly released e-mails and testimony. "This sounds like he had a very active role."

Sure does. All of Rove's testimony and a slew of Bush White House communications on this scandal can be viewed here. (Thanks to the House Judiciary Committee for posting those documents.)

And, don't forget: there is an ongoing criminal investigation by Special Prosecutor Nora Dannehy. Rove wanted Iglesias to prosecute ACORN. How sweet will it be if Rove gets prosecuted because of ACORN? Read the rest of this post...

This is not politics as usual

Robin Wells at Huff Post:

Watching the drama unfold over health care reform, one can't help but have one's heart go out to Obama -- a fundamentally decent man, with good intentions, faced with an implacable foe. It appears that Obama is slowly overcoming the blind faith in bipartisanship that sabotaged his stimulus package, and today's attack on Republicans' "outlandish rumors" is a hopeful sign.

But it's nowhere near enough. That's made clear by Obama's statement that his opponents are "exploit[ing] differences or concerns for political gain. That's to be expected. That's Washington." No, this is not politics as usual. There's no "as usual" with a foe bent on utter destruction. In contrast, Palin understands the nature of the battle, when she states that adopting Obama's health care reform amounts to "a point of no return" for America. Underestimating this challenge means losing the battle.

So what does Obama need to learn from Palin? First, he needs to really hear her. This is no longer a question of getting the facts straight. Granted, getting the facts straight about health care reform is necessary, and those who provided those facts performed an absolutely vital service. But we've moved beyond that point now. As Palin has said, the place we're at now is about good and evil.

Read the rest of this post...

Kuttner: What if...

Robert Kuttner:

What if Wall Street got too much of the aid and Main Street too little? What if mounting home foreclosures continue to sandbag household net worth? What if we are in for a health reform in name only, a financial reform that leaves the casino model of crony capitalism largely intact, and a jobs recovery that leaves working Americans even more insecure than they were before this financial collapse?

What if Obama had a chance to be Roosevelt, and settled for being Clinton?

Read the rest of this post...

Passengers held 9 hours on small plane as result of flight delay

A plane that seats 50. Stuck on it, not moving, for 9 hours. That's insane. Why does this keep happening? Read the rest of this post...

Arianna on the secret deal that was, then wasn't

From Arianna Huffington at Huff Post:

[I]t's not like the drug industry somehow pulled a fast one on the president. During the 2008 campaign, Obama was unequivocal on the issue. Here are some of the flashback quotes we put together for HuffPost's Obama vs. Obama story:

-- "Congress exempted Medicare from being able to negotiate for the cheapest available price. And that was a profound mistake."

-- "We will break the stranglehold that a few big drug and insurance companies have on the health care market."

-- "We're not going to get change unless we can overcome the resistance the drug companies, the insurance companies, the HMOs, those who are making a major profit from the system currently."

And from his campaign documents:

Allow Medicare to negotiate for cheaper drug prices.... Barack Obama and Joe Biden will repeal the ban on direct negotiation with drug companies and use the resulting savings, which could be as high as $310 billion, to further invest in improving health care coverage and quality.

"We'll tell the pharmaceutical companies 'Thanks but no thanks for overpriced drugs,'" Obama said in October. "We'll let Medicare negotiate for lower prices." From now on shall we just assume that "thanks but no thanks" really means "thanks"?

Obama also promised to hold all negotiations on C-SPAN. He hasn't. Instead we've had a week of White House statements, followed by anonymous White House briefings, followed by contradictory anonymous White House briefings, accompanied by the PhRMA drug lobbyists touting their agreement, followed by the lobbyists issuing "no comment" comments on their agreement, followed by the lobbyists walking back their touting of their agreement.

Read the rest of this post...

Teabaggers: “The goal is not compromise, and ANY bill coming out this year would be a failure for us.”

The President did a Town Hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire today. He is going on the offensive to fight the right wing lies on health insurance reform. He has to:

Obama opened his speech by saying Americans are too often "held hostage" by insurance companies that deny or drop their coverage or charge fees they cannot afford.

The teabaggers did a conference call today. They have been on the offensive to kill health insurance reform. Greg Sargent got the details of this call from the AFL-CIO. They have a simple goal: Kill reform. They don't want a solution. And, lest we forget, this is the base of the GOP (which should force the White House to reconsider its bizarre obsession with bipartisanship):

The call consisted of representatives of top conservative groups, such as the American Liberty Alliance, the “Tea Party Patriots,” and RecessRally.com, the AFL-CIO’s notes say.

The moderator on the call, whose name could not immediately be determined, told listeners that bipartisan compromise on the Senate Finance Committee, where senators are holding talks, must be stopped at all costs, AFL-CIO’s notes say. The moderator called on members to pressure GOP Senators seeking compromise with Dems, like Chuck Grassley, Mike Enzi, and Olympia Snowe, to stop the negotiating.

“The goal is not compromise, and ANY bill coming out this year would be a failure for us,” the moderator said, according to AFL-CIO’s notes. The moderator added that “the Democrats will turn even a weak bill from the Senate Finance Committee into Canadian-style single-payer through underhanded implementation.”

Another organizer on the call, according to AFL-CIO, added: “The purpose of Tea Parties is not to find a solution to the health care crisis — it is to stop what is not the solution: Obamacare.”

The GOP base isn't going to let GOP leaders in Congress cut a deal. Won't happen. Read the rest of this post...

Why everyone is so up in arms over the Swine Flu

My friend Chris (not in Paris), as usual, chimes in with a good explanation for why scientists are so ga-ga over the Swine Flu even though it doesn't seem to be much more deadly than the regular flu.

You asked why they’re treating swine flu as such a high priority. Two reasons:

First, because they’re having fun getting to use all the new toys that were developed for tracking avian flu (they’re getting close to real-time monitoring and prevalence reports at a level public health authorities have never had before). That may turn out to be a blessing in disguise even if this virus never develops into anything worse – the chance to put all of these new tracking protocols through a “live-fire” exercise is going to pay dividends. Also, all the policy controversies (quarantine or not, isolation or not, school closings or not – and how long on each of those) are getting a real-life airing and debate. And all the career people are shaking out their working relationships. And the system for rapid vaccine development is also getting put through its paces for the first time.

So, some of it is just driven by the fact that they have more data than before, but even if this turns out to be a false alarm, we may be grateful for the dry run.

Second, viruses swap genes with each other when they infect an organism.

This is why so many new human flu viruses show up in China: because there are so many birds, pigs, and humans living in close proximity. Pigs are a bridge – they can catch both avian flu strains and strains that infect humans. So something really new to which humans aren’t susceptible can hang out in a pig and possibly pick up the keys to the human immune system. (Which is likely how the bird flu virus came about.) (The fact that this new one popped up in Mexico and out-of-season also caught the experts by surprise.)

Now this one is mild, but it’s highly contagious and no one has any immunity to it. It could hand off that ability to something really, really nasty. It wouldn’t even necessarily be something new. It could be something that’s been around for awhile that is mild because we’re resistant to it (in which case the resistance would disappear), or something we’ve been vaccinated against (in which case the vaccination just became worthless).

That’s why you’ll see some doctors worrying about someone being infected with both this and the seasonal flu at the same time. We don’t want them “comparing notes.”

Read the rest of this post...

Ezra on death panels

First Ezra Klein, then me:

The fact that an idea as loony as death panels has found even the slightest purchase in the public consciousness shows how distant the minority feels from our democracy. Members of Congress are terrified of voter backlash and industry opposition. They are leaving virtually the entire health-care system untouched. They will scuttle the bill if a rural hospital in their district doesn't receive sufficient reimbursement or if a local device manufacturer is harmed. Yet there is a certain portion of the country that believes that Max Baucus and Mike Ross are willing to vote for death panels and defend them before their constituents in the following election.

It's not as much an issue of a segment of society being disconnected from its government. America has always had loons. You can always find 20% to 30% of the population to support some crazy idea in a survey. I remember in the 1990s reading that one-third of Americans supported outlawing gay kisses in public.

The problem isn't that some Americans are disconnected, or nuts. The problem is that the Republican party, and its apparatus on FOX News and talk radio, is fostering and empowering the crazies. While far-right GOP extremists used to send a letter in all caps to Washington, between gulps of lithium, now they have Rush and Glenn and John Boehner (and the religious right) egging them on, and telling them how and where to express their lunacy - and worse, find kindred spirits. The problem isn't that America has crazies. It's that the crazies are being given the political equivalent of fertility pills. It's bad enough the GOP gave America the religious right (a monster they created). Now they're giving us Joe McCarthy's just as paranoid, and just as un-American, grandson. Read the rest of this post...

Stephen Hawking, proud American

Paul Krugman:

[H]ere’s the latest in the “Obama’s health reform will kill people” news: Investor’s Business Daily — which poses as a reputable source of financial information — opines that:

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

That would be Stephen Hawking, British professor, who was born in the UK and has lived there for his whole life.

Read the rest of this post...

GOP rebranding effort flames out

I wrote about this rebranding effort last May. The problem is that the Republicans don't know what they want to be when they grow up. They started this campaign to rebrand themselves as kinder and gentler, then turned around and started inciting gun-toting mobs to disrupt Democratic health care forums. Lack of focus is usually a Democratic problem. Now it's theirs too.

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) generated the kind of buzz other politicians covet when he launched his bid to help rebrand the Republican Party last spring.

Television crews and reporters wedged themselves among the crowd of party faithful to cover the National Council for a New America's first event at a packed pizza parlor in an Arlington, Va., strip mall. The resulting coverage dominated cable news chatter for the next week. Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney were also on board.

But the council has since flamed out – at least publicly.

Since its launch, the National Council hasn’t held a single public event, despite more than 5,000 invitations to take their show out on the road.

Read the rest of this post...

Eunice Kennedy Shriver: A True Champion

Eunice Kennedy Shriver died today at 88. Yes, she was the sister of a president and two Senators. But, this woman has one proud legacy all her own. Almost single-handedly, she changed the way the world treated people with developmental disabilities. A close friend of mine, Michael "Mickey" Gardner, worked with Mrs. Shriver on the first Special Olympics back in July of 1968. That was her vision. Mickey has many great stories about their work together - and I can listen to his stories endlessly. Today, he told me:

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, more than any of her siblings, changed the world forever by proving that mentally challenged youngsters and adults can make an important contribution to society. Her tenacious dedication to the Special Olympics has insured her lasting legacy for future generations who otherwise would be on the sidelines and in the shadows of societies around the world.

I've heard him say something along those lines for years. This woman really believed in what she did and she made the world better for it. Read the rest of this post...

Big Pharma now denies secret White House deal that Big Pharma and the White House both already confirmed

A bit tough to backtrack now that both the head of Big Pharma and the Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House both already confirmed the deal's existence.

Just to remind folks, this was a deal where the White House agreed not to include in the health care reform package any provisions permitting the government to negotiate down Medicare drug prices with Big Pharma. In other words, they agreed to let Big Pharma continue charging older Americans four times what the same prescription drugs cost in Europe. Candidate Obama repeatedly promised to stop giving Big Pharma this sweetheart deal. Now he's agreed to it. Secretly. That's why people are upset.

And for that matter, why not give the government the power to negotiate across the board for cheaper drug prices, not just in Medicare? European drug companies charge 1/3 to 1/5 the price that American companies charge for the exact same drugs. Yet the European drug companies do just fine surviving. The other day I spoke to someone who works for a pharmaceutical company in Europe. I asked them why drugs were so much more expensive in America. Was it due to the R&D; costs that we hear so much about, the billions that American drug companies invest in creating new drugs, so thus they simply must charge us a ton to recoup their investment?

His answer: They charge you four times as much because you're willing to pay four times as much. Read the rest of this post...

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

The president is back in DC today. He should probably call Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer for throwing them under the bus yesterday. (Tthere are a lot of Obama supporters under that bus -- including the whole LGBT community.) But, still, it was a stupid move.

Health insurance reform could have been passed in the House already if Rahm Emanuel hadn't empowered the Blue Dogs. Same for the Senate. Rahm and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Jim Messina have turned Senator Max Baucus into the most important person in Washington. And, if Baucus is the most important person in Washington, Obama isn't. Great work by Rahm and Messina to make their boss look weak. Ridiculous.

Also, Tim Horton dumped the National Organization for Marriage. Bad bigot, no donut.

Let's get it started... Read the rest of this post...

Myanmar's Suu Kyi sentenced to house arrest again

Big surprise there. The thugs running Myanmar would have found some way, some reason, to imprison her again. Read the rest of this post...