No 11-Dimensional Chess

For all you Obamafans out there who were holding out for the health care “reform” bill to be “fixed” in conference:

There will be no conference committee.

House and Senate Democrats intend to bypass traditional procedures when they negotiate a final compromise on health care legislation, officials said Monday, a move that will exclude Republican lawmakers and reduce their ability to delay or force politically troubling votes in both houses.

The unofficial timetable calls for final passage of the measure to remake the nation’s health care system by the time President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address, probably in early February.

It’s all stagecraft.

Democratic aides said the final compromise talks would essentially be a three-way negotiation involving top Democrats in the House and Senate and the White House, a structure that gives unusual latitude to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.

Not that it matters…the conference committee is only for public consumption anyway.

These officials said there are no plans to appoint a formal House-Senate conference committee, the method Congress most often uses to reconcile differing bills. Under that customary format, a committee chairman is appointed to preside, and other senior lawmakers from both parties and houses participate in typically perfunctory public meetings while the meaningful negotiations occur behind closed doors.

So why not just cut to the chase?

In this case, the plan is to skip the formal meetings, reach an agreement, then have the two houses vote as quickly as possible. A 60-vote Senate majority would be required in advance of final passage.

Exactly how many campaign promises are being broken here? I count at least two, but it’s early and I haven’t had my second cup of coffee.

• Health care reform meetings conducted in front of C-SPAN cameras
• Allow at least three days for bill to be read

How’s that “transparent” government working out for you. Oh, yeah, I know, he’s opened up some records, but that’s shit that’s already happened and we or Congress wouldn’t have any say about it any way.

In the meantime, Democrats are bailing like rats deserting a sinking ship.

 

Jeez

Isn’t this a day late and a dollar short?

The C-SPAN television network is calling on congressional leaders to open health care talks to cameras — something President Barack Obama promised as a candidate.

Instead the most critical negotiations on Obama’s health plan have taken place behind closed doors, as Republicans repeatedly point out. In a Dec. 30 letter to House and Senate leaders released Tuesday, C-SPAN chief executive Brian Lamb asked for negotiations on a compromise bill to be opened up for public viewing, as Democrats work to reconcile differences between legislation passed by the two chambers.

 

How does your cat drink water?

Mine drinks from the faucet…but not like this.

 

Shooting

In Las Vegas at the Federal Building. (NYT)

 

I hear an echo

Funny.  How this… (H/T The Widdershins)

What’s costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.

…sounds an awful lot like what I’ve been saying all along.

Obama may be smart, but he’s no progressive. Nor is he a liberal. Many “progressive” Democrats assumed that because Obama had D after his name, and because he could give a good speech, that he was FDR, JFK , and MLK rolled up into one.  I never operated under that misconception. Why? Because I, like many others, looked past his rhetoric and looked at his record.  We listened to what he actually said, and didn’t WORM* his clear and unambiguous statements to fit some faith-based notion of Obama’s almighty progressiveness. We took his words at face value.  What’s happening right now, with health care reform going down in flames,  is a direct consequence of electing someone with no experience and no core convictions and who, like many of his generation, has internalized the Right Wing Noise Machine’s bullshit as having some essence of truth.

 

Why won’t the New York Times name “those?”

In today’s editorial, the NYT editors deservedly call out the Bush administration regarding their illegal actions, but they leave out One Important Player in the lack of torture prosecutions.

There are those who oppose trying to punish Bush-era lawlessness — some who argue that America should not look backward and some who excuse that lawlessness. But the rule of law rests on scrutinizing evidence of past behavior to establish accountability, confer justice and deter bad behavior in the future.

“There are those?”  And who would that be?

The editorial goes on to act as though Obama is acting under duress and blames the lack of prosecutions not on Obama himself, but on his DoJ:

President Obama, much to his credit, has forsworn the use of torture, but politics and policy makers change and democracy cannot rely merely on the good will of one president and his aides. Such good will did not exist in the last administration. And the inhumane and illegal treatment of detainees could make a return in a future administration unless the Supreme Court sends a firm message that ordering torture is a grievous violation of fundamental rights.

Anyone who doubts the degree of executive branch pliability in this realm needs to consider this: The party that urged the Supreme Court not to grant the victims’ appeal because the illegality of torture was not “clearly established” was the Obama Justice Department.

 

Living in fear

Everyone needs to read Greenwald’s latest: The degrading effects of terrorism fears 

The money quote:

Ever since I began writing in late 2005 about this fear-addicted dynamic, the point on which Brooks focused yesterday is the one I’ve thought most important.  What matters most about this blinding fear of Terrorism is not the specific policies that are implemented as a result.  Policies can always be changed.  What matters most is the radical transformation of the national character of the United States.  Reducing the citizenry to a frightened puddle of passivity, hysteria and a child-like expectation of Absolute Safety is irrevocable and far more consequential than any specific new laws.  Fear is always the enabling force of authoritarianism:  the desire to vest unlimited power in political authority in exchange for promises of protection.  

Word. Our founders would not recognize the people we have become.

 

Angelina

Keb’ Mo’ (again, because we missed his visit to Reno this year due to my medical issues)

 

Every Morning

Keb’ Mo’

 

Resolutions – 2010 (Updated)

I’m usually loathe to make resolutions because I tend to beat myself up when I don’t live up to them, but here are a couple.

1. Get back in shape – When just a simple Wii game can make my muscles hurt, I know I’m far from where I should be on the strong and fit scale.
2. Read the books I’ve already bought. That means spending less time on the Internet and more time with my reading glasses. Caveat: Permission granted to blog on books read, if desired.
3. Addendum to #2: No buying another book until I’ve read at least one, preferably two, from aformentioned stash.
4. Put in that vegetable garden that Sweetie and I keep talking about, but never seem to do.
5. Get outdoors more and bring the dogs with us.
6. And because I need to have something outside the home: Start a local Drinking Skeptically group in northern Nevada. Any locals wanting to join me in this effort, please pop me an email.

Updated to add a #7. I am embracing lambert’s #6

6. No legacy party involvement. No time, attention, or money to either legacy party. The opportunity cost of devotion to them is constructing anything new that will actually work on our behalf; the health care debacle shows — if FISA, TARP, Gitmo, Afghanistan, and the big nothings on housing and unemployment did not already — that both legacy parties, and Versailles, are irredeemable. The legacy parties are not resting. They are not stunned. They have passed on. They are no more. They have ceased to be. They have expired and gone to meet their makers. They are late parties. They are stiffs. Bereft of life, they rest in peace. Their metabolical processes are of interest only to historians. They’ve hopped the twig. They’ve shuffled off this mortal coil. They’ve run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible.

No supporting “good” legacy party members. No process fixes. No horse race coverage. No endorsements. No tempting scandal stories. No party line access blogger campaigns. No snark about Versailles public figures. No rewriting history. No oxygen. Why would something that’s dead need oxygen, anyhow?

Yes, to policy analysis. Yes, to policy advocacy. Yes, to setting the record straight. Yes, especially yes to local coverage and support for local candidates. Yes, to becoming a candidate. Yes, to movement stories on single payer, or food, or demands for justice of any sort. Yes, to learning to taste, and see, and feel again — all that the corporatists want to steal and then sell back to you.