Month: July 2009

Health Care Cocktails?

Mike Murphy isn't wrong here:

The Obama plan to date has been an over-sweetened cocktail of sugary promises and fudged math. The president has not explained where he really, ultimately stands on the big details. You can’t lead the country as a policy cipher, hoping to spring your specific views on the matter at the last minute, after months of ugly Congressional sausage grinding.

But he isn't entirely right, either. Look: the Congress has a role in the US system. In some ways, Obama is returning governance to its rightful balance. He is a community organizer remember? He's not The Decider. We had one of those for eight years and we don't need another.

The Clintons tried the specific views approach and that didn't help much. The truth is: this is a very, very hard political issue. We have to choose between a healthcare sector simply destroying the US economy on current trends, and being prepared to get our healthcare rationed, cost-tested and less technologically sophisticated. The downside is obvious; the upside is hidden. At some point in the last few years, it seems to me, the balance shifted against sustaining the status quo, if we really want to provide near-universal care and don't want to bankrupt us even further.

I think Obama will get something real, modest and very weak when it comes to cost-cutting. The American political system simply does not have the capacity to deliver anything more. It will when we have no choice. We're very close to that. But disaster is necessary for this country to do anything that might actually work.

Quote For The Day

Weddingflowers

Megan has an announcement to make:

It’s outre, I know, but I sort of believe in marriage.  I believe in the act of committing for life to another person.  I believe in the power and the joy of facing your life as a team.  I think you can have a very happy, fulfilled life without being married, and before I met Peter, I was preparing to.  But my life is even happier and more fulfilled with him.  So naturally, I want to start building that life as Team McSudelman.

There’s a reason for the social role of “spouse”.  And there’s a reason for all of the legal and social systems that have grown up around that role:  they reinforce and strengthen it.  It would be much harder to do many of the things we want and intend to do, for and with each other, without that useless little piece of paper.

Since Aaron and I got married, we’ve both grown more domestic, happier, calmer. His rock-solid emotional support has allowed me to venture further and further into the kind of intellectual and political terrain that requires the nerve and self-criticism it’s hard to sustain emotionally alone. And since we’ve been together, he has been able to start an acting career he couldn’t have managed financially alone – and his work is extraordinary. (If you are in Ptown this summer, check him out in “Take Me Out” at the Provincetown Theater – Wednesdays and Thursdays through August 20). To watch someone you love blossom and grow and mature and thrive is what my Jewish friends call a mitzvah.I love Aaron unconditionally; but every day I somehow love him more.

Of course, our marriage is invalid as far as the US government is concerned. And Megan’s description of her choice to marry or not is denied many. For Megan, not getting married can seem a silly riposte to the religious right. For many gays, getting married offends the religious right. But marriage should be embraced for no political reasons (and mine certainly wasn’t). It should be embraced because you love another human being and want to be with them and support them and hold them for the rest of your life.

And that is a good thing for all of us. Mazel tov, Megan and Peter. May the McSudermans love long and prosper.

Ending The HIV Ban

There's still time to add your name to the online petition supporting repeal. It takes a minute. The comment period ends August 17. If you'd like to help the group doing much of the legwork, Immigration Equality, you can donate specifically for this effort – and helping HIV-positive people navigate the legal process ahead – here.

Charting The Extremes

ChartRassmussen
This chart has been making the rounds on the conservative blogs. Eric Kleefeld asked Mark Blumenthal about it:

"If Obama now has more strong detractors than strong supporters, that is politically meaningful (though contrary to the results of the recent ABC/Washington Post polls, to pick one example)," said Blumenthal. "But to report only those who strongly approve or strongly disapprove of Obama while neglecting mention of the aggregate numbers strikes me as more political spin than analysis."

And he also talked to Rasmussen himself:

Scott Rasmussen defended the index to me. He said he began breaking out the strong approval-disapproval numbers late in 2008, originally for the simple purpose of differentiating himself from Gallup after they got in on the daily tracking gig that had previously been his sole domain. And while he agrees that overall approval will be by far the more important number in 2012, he also thinks that for now the intensity of feeling can have a serious impact on policy discussion and political outcomes.

Dissent Of The Day

A reader writes:

It's embarrassing to watch you/this site jump on the bandwagon to the 'tear Obama down' bonfire. Wow! High expectations lead to disappointment?! Breaking news, dude.

You know what hasn't changed? You and the rest of your professional class – seeking stories to feed the beast on a twitter schedule. As for healthcare, there are no "setbacks" when drafting legislation and running through committee because it's a negotiation, but the media blasted those words out hundreds of times a day, while using the word "progress" just a fraction of the time. I guess that means it's true, right?

Watching CNN and countless other "mainstream" news sources display blatant anti-healthcare reform bias has been like a punch in the gut. Where are the journalists decrying the "rationing" of healthcare by income? Where is the Cronkite of our time who calls hypocritical politicians on the carpet to denounce "socialist roads, socialist police forces, socialist mail delivery" and so on? What about the Republicans who are wholesale abandoning their responsibility over this "socialist" experiment, when everyone knows that they'll vote for corn, oil and corporate subsidies as reliably as an atomic clock? I think the Obama administration and Congress are doing what needs to be done, and the media establishment's response just proves that if they hadn't set the deadlines and led [as they have], the decades-long "setback" of healthcare reform would continue.

But wait, you're right! Nothing has changed because the extreme minority of Americans who are gay and chose to serve in the military can't go out on date. Oh the humanity! Like it or not, that's how your site reads these days: small and snarky.

My main concern is with the looming fiscal collapse. But I have every reason to believe that Obama will indeed get near-universal healthcare in his first year in office, and that it will be as modest in its current scope and architectonic in its longer-term impact as his climate change law. But I am not a cheer-leader and I don't think Obama wants cheer-leaders. He wants and deserves criticism when merited.

The Id Of The Fox Right

Here it is, a fascinating glimpse into the actual attitudes and beliefs of a segment of American society, the part that strongly disapproves of Obama, the Palin base, the Fox News core. The full email from Boston police officer Justin Barrett is after the jump. I note two things that stand out to me. The first is the crudeness of the racism. "Banana-eating jungle monkey" is the baseline description of Gates, coupled, as it always is, with "I am not a racist". He also thinks it's real cool to use "ax" instead of "ask". Then this description of policing in his riposte to a journalist:

Your defense of Gates while he is on the phone while being confronted [INDEED] with a police officer is assuming he has rights when considered a suspect. He is a suspect and always will be a suspect. His first priority of concern should be to get off the phone and comply with police, for if I was the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC deserving of his belligerent non-compliance.

Notice the Cheney view: that a suspect has no rights; and is always a suspect, always at the mercy of the state and government, with a duty to obey police and military power or face brutal consequences. Notice the use of pepper-spray as a response to mere verbal complaints of mistreatment.

And the more you read, the more you realize how deep the Bush-Cheney legacy runs and how the torture and 'enemy combatant' state, celebrated nightly on Fox, easily seeps into domestic law enforcement. Notice how Cheney actually wanted to use the military against "suspects" in America. And how proud he is of that move. And notice in the email how all of this is bound up with a defense of God. Notice the classic Christianist line to the journalist:

You are an infidel.

This man is also in the National Guard. Maybe Norm Geras has a better idea of what worries me about recent trends in America. Here's the full email:

Email-barrett_20090729182951_0_0