A former member of the Basij speaks to the UK's Channel 4:
Then we heard noise from the yard. We thought it must be the youngsters making trouble. We went there and saw there was no-one, just the forces. The sound came from the containers. The sound of screams and pleading and crying. We didn't understand what was going on. They were pleading: 'We're sorry, please, we regret our actions'. Or screams, or crying. We were confused. I couldn't believe that they would want to do such a thing: to rape."
A Mexican clown holds a statuette of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint, in Mexico City on December 16, 2009. Hundreds of clowns arrived at the Guadalupe Basilica as part of the clowns' annual pilgrimage to the sanctuary. By Luis Acosta/AFP/Getty Images.
[Carney's] argument isn’t that G.E. (or Pfizer, or Chevron, or Goldman Sachs) has a liberal agenda, necessarily; it’s that corporations have a rent-seeking agenda, and the rents in the age of Obama are very rich indeed.
Such rent-seeking doesn’t always translate into support for the administration’s policies. The business/government nexus is more potent on some issues than on others, and the “business community” is hardly a monolith. (Different industries have different interests, and rival companies often want different things from Washington.) Corporate America has been divided on cap and trade, for instance, and the health insurance industry has played a double game on health care reform (now trying to shape the bill to their liking, now trying to stir up public anxiety about it) that’s so complicated I’m not sure even they understand it. And of course, as Carney would be the first to admit, the Republican Party is hardly offering some pristine free-market alternative at the moment — and it certainly wasn’t in the Bush era. (See this exchange between Matt Yglesias and Carney for more on some of these issues.)
Keith Hennessey, who worked on policy in the Bush administration, updates his predictions:
I am lowering from 50% to 35% my prediction for the success of comprehensive health care reform. I now think the most likely outcome is a much more limited bill becomes law.
Pass a partisan comprehensive bill through the House and through the regular Senate process with 60, leading to a law; (was 30% –> 30%)
Pass a partisan comprehensive bill through the House and through the reconciliation process with 51 Senate Democrats, leading to a law; (was 20% –> 5%)
Fall back to a much more limited bill that becomes law; (was 15% –> 45%)
No bill becomes law this Congress. (was 35% –> 20%)
by Chris Bodenner A reader submits Joni Mitchell’s “River” – “a sad claustrophobic tale of wintertime loneliness in LA.” Lyrics after the jump:
Its coming on christmas Theyre cutting down trees Theyre putting up reindeer And singing songs of joy and peace Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on But it dont snow here It stays pretty green Im going to make a lot of money Then Im going to quit this crazy scene I wish I had a river I could skate away on I wish I had a river so long I would teach my feet to fly Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on I made my baby cry
He tried hard to help me You know, he put me at ease And he loved me so naughty Made me weak in the knees Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on Im so hard to handle Im selfish and Im sad Now Ive gone and lost the best baby That I ever had Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on I wish I had a river so long I would teach my feet to fly Oh I wish I had a river I made my baby say goodbye
Its coming on christmas Theyre cutting down trees Theyre putting up reindeer And singing songs of joy and peace I wish I had a river I could skate away on
James Poulos joins a conversation sparked a few days ago by Ezra saying that Lieberman was “willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.” Poulos responds to Douthat's comments:
Ross is too kind in allowing Ezra’s original language — Lieberman will cause people to die — to translate freely with the more accurate language of letting people die. This isn’t simply a matter of grammar or style.
Ezra did not attack Lieberman for supporting a bill which would merely get out of the way while some significant number of Americans happened to die. He attacked him for seeming “willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.” Anyone who doesn’t support the right bill, you see, is killing Americans. And since this is obvious, you see, anyone who doesn’t support the right bill wants to kill those Americans, and wants them to die.
This is more than moral grandstanding or shirt-waving. It’s an intentional distortion of an ethical precept at the very foundation of our philosophy of law. It’s a lie mobilized to discredit one’s political opponents, not just politically but morally. In truth, of course, to kill a bill that would prevent people from dying is not to kill those people — just as refraining from saving a person in mortal peril is not causing them to die.
To put it more bluntly, on a widening range of issues, Obama's critics to the right say he's engineering a government takeover of the private sector, while his critics to the left accuse him of promoting a corporate takeover of the public sector. They can't both be right, of course, and these critics would take the country in completely different directions if given a chance. But the tactical convergence is there if they choose to pursue it.
After watching that video, I actually feel sorry for Mr. Schock. He is clearly so over his head in that segment. This again goes to show a major problem with our politicians is that they are so painfully unself-aware. At some point, someone close to him needs to pull him aside and say "keep your head down, learn the issues before you go on television and start spewing things that can't be unsaid." The fact that he hasn't even toured the prison in his own district is pathetic.
Another writes:
At least he has the guts to admit what he's defending and advocating. And is not trying to deceive the American people into supporting something abhorrent. He's proposing it flat out, and woe doubly be unto us if we follow his proposals: we won't be able to hide behind our feigned ignorance of what torture is.
The Dish 