US & UK discuss safe passage for Assad

Assad needs to be held accountable for the violence and crimes against humanity, though nobody needs a protracted war where even more people die needlessly. The current rumors suggest Putin recognizes that Assad may have a limited future, so it open to finding a resolution. More from The Guardian:

Britain and America are willing to offer the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, safe passage – and even clemency – as part of a diplomatic push to convene a UN-sponsored conference in Geneva on political transition in Syria.

The initiative comes after David Cameron and Barack Obama received encouragement from Russia's President Vladimir Putin in separate bilateral talks at the G20 in Mexico.

A senior British official said: "Those of us who had bilaterals thought there was just enough out of those meetings to make it worth pursuing the objective of negotiating a transitional process in Syria."

In light of the Syrian air force defection today, time may be running out for Assad and his options. Read the rest of this post...

Comcast joins Verizon in rejecting file-sharing policing

It's not often that either ISP does the right thing, but this time they are. Let's not kid ourselves into thinking they're doing it because they like their customers because if they did, they would bring their prices and services down to industrialized world standards. It's also doubtful that they care much about privacy, but if that's the line they want to try, go for it.

Since they're now looking at tiered pricing models, they probably even like file-sharing if that helps them get customers paying more. In all likelihood, the larger issue for the ISPs is that the monitoring cuts into their otherwise highly profitable business model. Where else can you have such little competition, the ability to deliver a sub-standard product and charge huge fees?

If you remove the time consuming RIAA and MPAA lawsuits, life is pretty good for US ISPs. ExtraTorrent has more:

Earlier, the ISP complied with all the subpoenas, but now gave up and told the Illinois District court that it wants them quashed. First of all, the Internet service provider claimed that the court didn’t even have jurisdiction over some of the defendants, since those didn’t reside in the district where they were being sued. In addition, the company argued that the rights owners had no grounds to join this bunch of the defendants in a single lawsuit. The claims were that the copyright holders were exploiting the court in order to force defendants into paying settlements.

Read the rest of this post...

How the left lost the ObamaCare message war

There ought to be a bloodletting.

There's really no excuse for the failure of the campaign to pass, and then defend, President Obama's health care reform.  If Democrats can't win the war on something as simple as health care, then whoever was in charge of that war, then and now, deserves to lose their jobs.

I'm sorry, I know public relations and messaging isn't easy, but it's also not as hard as some people would have you believe.  Often, PR campaigns fail because the "client" tries to rein in the message.  "You're being too mean, you'll offend someone," they say.  So we ratchet back the response while the right ratchets things up.

In the case of health care reform, the client was the President.  And he reined in the messaging because he didn't want to offend players (Republicans, conservative Dems, pharmaceutical and insurance companies) that he hoped would eventually support the reform effort.  The hope was naive, and it was a huge mistake.

But that doesn't explain why the effort to defend the law, once passed, has been so non-existant.  It's almost as if someone advised the President to stop even talking about health care reform, but even that doesn't explain why outside groups haven't done a better job of defending the law.

I mean, how hard is it to demonize insurance companies?

How hard is it to educate Americans about the injustice of big drug companies charging us five times what they charge for the same drugs in Europe?

Why, after two years, do we still not have an answer to two simple questions: Will health care reform lower my premiums and increase my benefits?

A lot of people share the blame for health care reform bombing in the polls.  And it's simply too easy to complain that the Republicans are too good at messaging.  Yeah the Republicans are good.  But our guys absolutely suck.

Maybe it's time we figured out who it was who lost the health care reform message war, get rid of them, and replace them with people who understand how to sell a message and win. Read the rest of this post...

GOP Rep. Issa says Obama admin wants increased gun violence to justify crackdown on gun owners

There is no different between what Issa - the Republican House member leading the charge on the "Fast and Furious" issue - and 9/11 Truthers. Their conspiracies are identical: The President let people die on purpose, wanted people to die, so he could justify a policy that would otherwise be unpopular.

This is the way the leadership of the Republican party thinks.  It's insane.

This also shows the power of the NRA in American politics, and how it controls the Republican party (and far too many Democrats).  The notion that the Bush administration started this policy, and the Obama administration continued it, in order to hope that Mexican drug cartels would get weapons and kill Americans, so that the administration could then crack down on all Americans and their guns, is beyond bizarre.

Not to mention, the deaths happened.  So where was the Obama administration's power grab to repeal the Second Amendment?  At least the 9/11 Truthers, for all their craziness, claim a post hoc that actually happened, we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan.  Where's Issa's post hoc?

From RightWingWatch:

Issa, speaking to the NRA faithful, advanced the baseless and reckless conspiracy theory that the Obama administration intentionally lost track of guns sold through the program in order to boost gun violence and clear the way for an assault weapons ban. Issa posed this as a rhetorical question and then answered it:

They've never answered the question, "What were they thinking of?" Could it be that what they really were thinking of was in fact to use this walking of guns in order to promote an assault weapons ban. Many think so. And they haven't come up with an explanation that would cause any of us not to agree.

Later in the interview, Issa suggested that the Obama administration let people die in order to promote gun control and then described Fast and Furious explicitly as part of a larger assault on the Second Amendment:

We have to expect law enforcement to hold us accountable under fair laws but also hold the bad guys accountable rather than allowing bad things to happen and justifying new laws against law-abiding citizens. […]

This administration has trampled on the Constitution, on the First Amendment, on religious rights, and if you don’t think that this Fast and Furious and things like it are the beginning of an attack in the second term on the Second Amendment, you really haven’t evaluated this president.

Oh, right it won't happen until the second term. Right. The fact that Democrats haven't done squat to take away your guns - and they should take them away - is proof that they're trying to take away your guns.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Brilliant.

And freaking nuts. Read the rest of this post...

23 Senate Dems vote against restoring $4.5 billion in Food Stamp aid

Your "progressive" Democratic senators at work.

Here's the amendment mentioned in the title (kudos to Kirsten Gillibrand for pushing it):

Amendment Number: S.Amdt. 2156 to S. 3240 (Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2012)

Statement of Purpose: To strike a reduction in the supplemental nutrition assistance program and increase funding for the fresh fruit and vegetable program, with an offset that limits crop insurance reimbursements to providers.

Here's the vote (note that it failed):

Vote Counts:
YEAs 33
NAYs 66
Not Voting 1

And here are the Senate Democrats voting NO (I've bolded the "special" ones):

NAYs ---66
Alexander (R-TN) Ayotte (R-NH) Barrasso (R-WY) Baucus (D-MT) Bennet (D-CO) Bingaman (D-NM) Blunt (R-MO) Boozman (R-AR) Burr (R-NC) Carper (D-DE) Chambliss (R-GA) Coats (R-IN) Coburn (R-OK) Cochran (R-MS) Collins (R-ME) Conrad (D-ND) Corker (R-TN) Cornyn (R-TX) Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) Durbin (D-IL) Enzi (R-WY)	Franken (D-MN) [!!] Graham (R-SC) Grassley (R-IA) Hagan (D-NC) Harkin (D-IA) Hatch (R-UT) Hoeven (R-ND) Hutchison (R-TX) Inhofe (R-OK) Inouye (D-HI) Isakson (R-GA) Johanns (R-NE) Johnson (D-SD) Johnson (R-WI) Klobuchar (D-MN) Kohl (D-WI) Kyl (R-AZ) Landrieu (D-LA) Lee (R-UT) Lugar (R-IN) Manchin (D-WV) McCain (R-AZ)	McCaskill (D-MO) McConnell (R-KY) Moran (R-KS) Nelson (D-FL) Nelson (D-NE) Paul (R-KY) Portman (R-OH) Pryor (D-AR) Risch (R-ID) Roberts (R-KS) Rubio (R-FL) Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Stabenow (D-MI) Tester (D-MT) Thune (R-SD) Toomey (R-PA) Udall (D-CO) Vitter (R-LA) Warner (D-VA) Webb (D-VA) Wicker (R-MS)

I count 23 Democrats in that list. Let's see, 23 + 33 (carry the 0) ... golly. That's enough Democrats to pass the thing.

Some pure speculation:

■ Why did it fail? Maybe because of the offset?

... with an offset that limits crop insurance reimbursements to providers.

High-dollar agribusiness farms can't eat on no money. Can't have that.

■ Why did so many Midwest "progressive" senators vote No?

Let's imagine, you and I. We're in the Senate, we're voting on a bill no one is watching, so it's a freebie.

It's going to lose anyway (that's why the Party has Ben Nelson & Ilk in it — to do the dirty work), so why not just suck up to our past and future campaign contributors and vote No? After all, we can't keep on doing this great work of conscience without them.

But you and I, we're not pure of heart like our "progressive" senators. They're like the falling snow. White. Opaque. Cold. With their hands out. That's why we vote for them.

Food stamps. Children. Conscienceless, say I. Your "progressive" Democratic senators at work.

UPDATE: More here. And here.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius Read the rest of this post...

It's always 4:20 in Montevideo. Uruguay to legalize pot to stop drug violence.

There are a number of good reasons to legalize marijuana and this is one of them. The war on drugs has been a lost cause since the beginning and after decades of fighting this supposed war, we are still spending massive amounts of money and the violence continues to get worse each year.

Besides the obvious tax receipt benefits, this is a smart move by Uruguay. Who needs to create a police state that is out-gunned and out-manned? It only escalates the violence and leaves innocent people dead for no good reason. More from the BBC:

Uruguay has unveiled a plan to allow state-controlled sales of marijuana to fight a rise in drug-related crime.

Under the bill, only the government would be allowed to sell marijuana to adults registered on a database.

Defence Minister Eleuterio Fernandez Huidobro said this was part of a plan to remove profits from drug dealers and divert users from harder drugs.

Read the rest of this post...

Five Questions: Josh Orton of Feingold's Progressives United (Netroots Nation interview)

Today's Five Questions interview, recorded at Netroots Nation 2012, is with Josh Orton, a progressive Democratic activist who works with Russ Feingold's Progressives United.

In case you've forgotten, Feingold and Progressives United were responsible for the recent dust-up over Nancy Pelosi's surprising change of support for the Bowles-Simpson "Catfood for Gran" recommendations.

She implied (and still does) she would be open to cutting social safety net programs, and Feingold took her to task publicly for that. (Story here.)

Don't underestimate the importance of Feingold's public slap — it's a perfect example of a career Democrat having to decide between serving either the Party or serving the progressive movement.

Feingold took on the Party (in the form of its House Leader) and took flak for that — from other "progressives" in the House. Our House Progressive (Statement) Caucus — or at least its leaders — lined up behind Pelosi, making yet another statement, this time the wrong one.

To all appearances, that statement was — "Party first." (Violates rule 3, but who's counting.) I often don't get stuff, and I sure don't get that. We could use a few more like Feingold.

Back to Josh Orton and this good interview. We spoke near the end of the conference, in a semi-quiet hallway off the "gathering bar" in the "gathering hotel" — the bar that seemed to collect the most wandering people with conference badges and time to kill. Some background noise, but a very listenable interview. Orton is typically smart and on-topic.

Five Questions: Josh Orton with Gaius Publius, recorded at Netroots Nation 2012. Enjoy:



The full list of "Five Questions" interviews includes the following. Links to names will take you to previously-published interviews.

• Alan Grayson, former (and perhaps future) U.S. Congressman
• Marcy Wheeler, of emptywheel.net
• Cliff Schecter, who comments regularly with Sam Seder at Majority.fm among many other places
• Tom Tomorrow, cartoonist with DailyKos and This Modern World
• Alex Lawson of StrengthenSocialSecurity.org
• Josh Orton, with Russ Feingold's Progressives United
• Frances Causey, producer–director of Heist, the documentary
• Chris Pearson, a Progressive Party Vermont state legislator
• Susan Smith, Progressive Caucus chair of the Florida Democratic Party
• Sarah Burris, labor activist and progressive youth organizer

These interviews will be presented in some order in the upcoming days.

(If you have trouble with this audio, please let me know in the comments and I'll address it as quickly as I can. Thanks.)

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
Read the rest of this post...

Would you abort your Facebook friend?

Allison Benedikt at Slate reports that there's now an online trend of pregnant women having their sonograms photoshopped onto photos of their pregnant stomachs (I am seriously in the wrong business).  I've looked at a few, it's a bit odd, but whatever.

Benedikt makes an interesting observation about impact of anthropomorphizing the fetus:

[I]t got us thinking about how the more we treat fetuses like people—including them in our family photo shoots, tagging them on our Facebook walls, giving them their own Twitter accounts—the harder it will be to deny that they are people when the next, say, personhood amendment comes up, with legislators and activists arguing that “the unborn child” inside a pregnant woman’s womb should have the same rights as the living among us.

What I want to know is whether it's immoral to un-friend your fetus in the first trimester. Read the rest of this post...

Supreme Court puts off health care reform decision until next week

The decision wasn't released today, so it's expected next week instead. Read the rest of this post...

Romney upset that economy improving, tells governors to stop talking about it

Because the truth is not always convenient for the Republicans.

Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign asked Florida Governor Rick Scott to tone down his statements heralding improvements in the state’s economy because they clash with the presumptive Republican nominee’s message that the nation is suffering under President Barack Obama, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Scott, a Republican, was asked to say that the state’s jobless rate could improve faster under a Romney presidency, according to the people, who asked not to be named.

What’s unfolding in Florida highlights a dilemma for the Romney campaign: how to allow Republican governors to take credit for economic improvements in their states while faulting Obama’s stewardship of the national economy. Republican governors in Ohio, Virginia, Michigan and Wisconsin also have highlighted improving economies.

Read the rest of this post...

Darcy Burner on Progressives and power

I hope it's been evident in the last couple of "progressive coalition" posts — here and here — that I'm talking about power as well as effectiveness.

In fact, there's no way to be effective if you don't understand and use power.

To that end, I offer Darcy Burner's keynote address at Netroots Nation 2012. Ms. Burner is running for Congress again this year, in Washington's 1st district. She's also executive director of ProgressiveCongress.org.

In her keynote, she talks about power and progressives. It's geek heaven for people like me. Watch (click here to see it large):



I hope you agree this is really exciting stuff. She focuses on power and the women's movement, but this is one of the best presentations about power itself I've seen.

Notice the comment about using power to "change behavior" (3:25), or that great iPhone app idea (start at 4:55). And the phrase "sue the bejesus" out of Fortune 50 companies for equal-pay violations (8:00 and following) gets me every time. That section alone is worth the price of admission; it's an excellent idea.

She also touches on a personal favorite of mine — the absolute importance of non-violence in protest movements (12:05). Like me, she argues the practicality. See what you think.

This is the kind of presentation that's worth coming back to. But let's bottom-line it. Darcy Burner is a progressive candidate.

• We need progressives who are willing to use power.
• Here's a progressive who is willing to use power.

Blessings and praise upon her just for that.

A second point — I was lucky enough to spend over an hour with Ms. Burner one-on-one, just two people talking. She's entirely sincere. This is not a sham.

If you agree that Darcy Burner would be a valuable asset in Congress, good. This is a very winnable race, but she needs as much help as she can get — boots on the ground and contributions.

To support Darcy Burner, go here. Unless you've bailed entirely on electoral politics, I hope you agree that she's a must-have in Congress. Please help if you can. Thanks!

Previous pieces on Effective Progressive Coalitions:

      Four rules for managing an Effective Progressive Coalition
      Goals of an Effective Progressive Coalition

Progressively yours,

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
  Read the rest of this post...

Insurance companies owe $1 billion in rebates, if ObamaCare not struck down

That evil Obamacare strikes again.

First, it very likely lowered my health insurance premium by 10% this year - the first decrease I've seen, ever.

Then it created affordable insurance for people with pre-existing conditions, as a filler between now and the day in a few years when it will be illegal for insurance companies to turn away anyone for a pre-existing condition.

And it's getting rid of annual limits like the one I face on my CareFirst BCBS that just ran out my prescription coverage for the year, less than half a year into the year, due to my asthma drugs and my various eye drops for my cataract surgery that are outrageously expensive.

And now Americans are actually getting a billion dollars back from the insurance companies.

So evil, that ObamaCare. Too bad that no one on the right who thinks it's a bad plan can actually explain anything that it actually does that's bad.

Any day now the Supreme Court is due to rule on the constitutionality of the new law.  God help us.  The law wasn't perfect by any means, but it did do some good things - not nearly enough - but it did do some good.  This is absurd that the Supreme Court could reverse even these meager advancements.

I don't see how anyone under the age of 50, who doesn't have a government job, is ever going to be able to afford to retire in this country. Read the rest of this post...

What's next, Blackwater to run the UK police?

Just imagine Blackwater running your local police office and then let me know who might be OK with that besides the political class that's establishing the contracts. This is an idea that has been kicked around more and more since the Tory government came to power. Those on the right are always convinced that privatizing security is a great idea, whether it's in Iraq, Afghanistan or at the airport.

Too many on the left either ignore the new developments and some even go along with it in the hope of sounding modern and flexible. In the case of Blackwater, they were so popular that they changed their corporate name. How's that for private industry showing everyone how much better things are than the government?

As we've argued before, it's unclear how privatization will help anyone outside of the politicians who help coordinate these deals. Citizens will now have an extra layer - responsive to no one - when there are complaints. If you think asking for answers is difficult now, just try and ask one of these private companies. Think how responsive Blackwater was when questioned.

What we're seeing is the continued assault on unions and government workers. Ultimately, it's about the continued assault on the middle class and all efforts to negotiate fair and reasonable wages. The forces on the right won't be happy until we're back to having no middle class, with just the ultra-rich and then everyone else.

In the meantime, the plan is to make it sound efficient and cost effective. You know, just like the privatized prison system in the US. Do we really want prisons, war and now the police to be revenue generating businesses? Talk about a conflict of interest. The only surprise now is that we're not seeing more of this talk in the US, but the day is still young.

Scary thoughts about the future via The Guardian:

David Taylor-Smith, the head of G4S for the UK and Africa, said he expected police forces across the country to sign up to similar deals to those on the table in the West Midlands and Surrey, which could result in private companies taking responsibility for duties ranging from investigating crimes to transporting suspects and managing intelligence.

The prediction comes as it emerged that 10 more police forces were considering outsourcing deals that would see services, such as running police cells and operating IT, run by private firms.

Taylor-Smith, whose company is in the running for the £1.5bn contract with West Midlands and Surrey police, said he expected forces across the country to have taken similar steps within five years . "For most members of the public what they will see is the same or better policing and they really don't care who is running the fleet, the payroll or the firearms licensing – they don't really care," he said.

Really? People don't really care about private police? It's also not obvious to anyone other than Taylor-Smith how or why private police would be "better" at policing and running investigations. I can't even imagine how stressed communication would be between these rent-a-cops and real police forces during an investigation that crosses into different geographical locations. Read the rest of this post...

55 percent say Romney out of touch

Only 55%? It's interesting to see that even after campaigning for years, opinions about Mitt Romney have not changed much to help his cause. Maybe people really do know the real Mitt Romney.

More on the latest presidential polling from Bloomberg:

Obama leads Romney 53 percent to 40 percent among likely voters, even as the public gives him low marks on handling the economy and the deficit, and six in 10 say the nation is headed down the wrong track, according to the poll conducted June 15- 18.

The survey shows Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, has yet to repair the damage done to his image during the Republican primary. Thirty-nine percent of Americans view him favorably, about the same as when he announced his presidential candidacy last June, while 48 percent see him unfavorably -- a 17-percentage point jump during a nomination fight dominated by attacks ads. A majority of likely voters, 55 percent, view him as more out of touch with average Americans compared with 36 percent who say the president is more out of touch.

Taken together, the results suggest an unsettled political environment for both Obama and Romney five months from the November election, with voters choosing for now to stick with a president they say is flawed rather than backing a challenger they regard as undefined and disconnected.

Read the rest of this post...