The Objective is Real Reform, Not "Winning"

Over the last couple of weeks during Obama's meetings with members of the Douche Caucus, several stories leaked out saying that he had assured them that opposed ads being run against them by progressive groups. I didn't write anything about it because like a few others, I assumed he was just bullshitting them to make them feel better and massage their martyr complexes, since if he really wanted to stop the ads, he would have made efforts to do so. Well it looks like I was wrong, those efforts have in fact been made:

The Politico’s Jonathan Martin reported this morning that Rahm Emanuel warned leaders of liberal groups in a private meeting this week that it was time to stop running ads attacking Blue Dog and “centrist” Dems on health care.

I’m told, however, that Emanuel went quite a bit further than this.

Sources at the meeting tell me that Emanuel really teed off on the Dem-versus-Dem attacks, calling them “f–king stupid.” This was a direct attack on some of the attendees in the room, who are running ads against Dems right now.

Tellingly, Rahm raised the specter of a loss on health care, sources at the meeting say — which suggests that the White House may be less certain about victory than officials allow publicly.

“He started out with, `We’re 13 and 0 going into health care,’” one source at the meeting said, meaning that Rahm was touting the White House’s string of pre-health care legislative victories.

I'm not going to rehash for the 500th time why he's wrong, so I'll just say it's "fucking stupid" to think that running ads against the douche caucus is "fucking stupid".

But if nothing else, it's a perfect example of how Rahm operates. He wants to win, and he doesn't care about the costs. And if you don't care about passing a good health care bill or a bad one, it makes it very easy to negotiate deals with your foes.

Make shady behind the scenes deals with insurance companies to get them on board?

Why not? It boosts insurance company profits and their support will help our chances of winning.

Drop the public option in favor of worthless "Co-ops" that can't actually compete with insurance companies?

Done! If it makes it easier to win the votes of Democrats who are bought and paid for by those same insurance companies, then why not? And who cares that we don't need their votes to pass the bill? If we take out the most meaningful section of the bill we can get 60 votes, and that's a far greater priority than actually crafting a good bill.

With Rahm's genius gameplan, there's no need to worry about any other legislative battles. If you just let the opposition get whatever they want and immediately surrender the most meaningful parts of the bill, you can win every time!

14-0!

Wooooooooooo!

Train of Thought Lounge: Street Sweeper Social Club

Previously mentioned in a Train of Thought Lounge by JN a few months back, this is the group's first single/video.

Street Sweeper Social Club: 100 Little Curses

Doubling Down on Stupid

Over the past few months, congressional Republicans have made it pretty clear that they won't support any real reform to the Health Care System. And regardless of their feelings on any specific bill, they've made it fairly obvious that it's more important to hurt Obama and the Democrats than it is to negotiate in good faith.

The Democrats have a large majority in the House, sixty votes in the Senate, so the Republicans are completely irrelevant, and there is absolutely no reason to deal with them for any reason. Maybe I should have started with that point.

So with the experiences of the last 7 months on their minds, I was rather stunned to read this report from Obama's meeting with the Democratic Senators:

Despite confronting near absolute opposition from the Republican side of the aisle on health care, President Obama and Senate Democrats stressed during a lunch on Tuesday that reform still needed to be done in a bipartisan fashion, a White House aide said.

With nearly the entire Senate Democratic Caucus at the White House for lunch, the president spoke for ten to fifteen minutes on insurance reform. He also insisted, according to an administration aide, that he remained committed to working with the Republican Party to get reform passed.

"I think there was just really a sense about the importance of making progress and getting a bill done," the aide, who was in attendance, said. "And that they are committed to working with Republicans to do it. The president believes that that is important."

It's as if they haven't learned a thing. Unbelievable.

And then there's this:

Aides said there was little talk of co-ops or public options at Tuesday's lunch. The entire meeting lasted about an hour, with all Senate Democrats in attendance -- except for Ted Kennedy (Mass.) and Robert Byrd (W.V.), both suffering from poor health. According to the aide, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid spoke first, for roughly five minutes. After Obama addressed the crowd, a lengthy question and answer session followed. Finishing up the meal with a bit of chocolate cake, Obama offered words of advice for how to handle the upcoming August recess.

"The president urged them to, as they were holding town hall meetings, to make the case pretty clearly about why this is important, why it is important to our economy, why it is important to our fiscal situation as a country and how it would benefit Americans," said the aide. "Both those Americans who are looking for health care and those who have it but would like to see lower costs."

I have another question: Why is this important?

Let me be clear, I'm not asking why actual health care reform is important, I'm asking why whatever "health care reform" mentioned in the paragraph above is important. Unless Barack starts speaking in anything other than vague benchmarks that could be used to describe virtually any bill, he's essentially giving a green light for the Douche Caucus to keep making the bill worse.

There's a serious problem when Max Baucus and Sherrod Brown can go back home and each explain why we need to pass two VERY DIFFERENT visions of what health care reform might look like. Sherrod Brown can explain why we need a strong public option to control costs and keep insurance companies honest while Max Baucus can talk about why we need to "reform" the system in a way that makes the insurance companies richer and more powerful than they ever were before. There can be no compromise between these two visions of health care reform, and that needs to be acknowledged.

Obama needs to realize at the end of the day the American people really don't care if the health care bill is Bipartisan or acceptable to all the parties he's brought to the table.

They care about if it works and if it improves the system.

And depending on whose description of "health care reform" you listen to, the question of whether or not this final product will improve the system remains very much unanswered.

Ed Rendell Lies, But Arlen Specter's Record Doesn't

I get the feeling we're gonna see a lot of this over the next 10 months. Ed Rendell:

Pennsylvanians know, and particularly Democrats, know what Arlen Specter has done. On every key gut issue that went to Democratic core values, he was with us.

The funny thing about that quote is that if you look at Specter's actual votes rather than a bullshit rep that he created for himself, then pretty much the exact opposite is true. Kos:

I never realized backing President George Bush over three quarters of the time to be in line with gut Democratic core values. He voted with his party 76% in the 107th Congress, Bush's first, 85% in the 108th, 77% in the 109th, and 70.5%, after Bush's popularity had plummeted, in the 110th.

Apparently, that's all TOTALLY in line with Democratic core values.

One of the few key votes against his party -- voting for EFCA a few years ago -- is now moot, since he betrayed labor with new opposition to card check at the beginning of this Congress. Sure, he was moving right trying to head off the primary challenge by Pat Toomey, but he's still on record against EFCA. (Had Specter reversed himself again on EFCA, his state's powerful labor unions would've likely headed off any primary challenger.)

Oh yeah, and it's good that he's still talking about voting for John McCain and Sarah Palin. That's just what democratic votes are pining away for.

The good news is that against Rendell, Biden and Obama's wishes, Specter will not be allowed to simply douche his way through the primary process. Joe Sestak is officially running, and will provide Pennsylvania voters with the option of voting for actual Democrat in the Democratic primary. You wouldn't think that would be a big deal, so far this race has pretty much thrown common sense out the window.

Just How Good is Brian Orakpo?

I am willing to admit it right here and now: I officially have a man-crush on Brian Orakpo.

The rookie defensive end the Redskins selected 13th overall in this past April's draft seems like exactly the type of player we need at the moment. He reminds me of the type of impact player on defense that LaVar Arrington was before his dip in form, then his ultimate decline. The Redskins plan to use Orakpo as a linebacker/d-end hybrid, dropping him back on most first and second downs and rushing him at the QB on third down. With early reports of him routinely beating experienced veteran and near-perennial Pro Bowler Chris Samuels on drills early during training camp, one has to wonder if he is already that good or if we're reading into things too early to know for sure.

The concern here is this: what if Samuels is just that bad? I've thought for a while now that he was named to his last couple of Pro Bowls on reputation alone and that he really hasn't played to the level he once did for a few seasons. Of course, he's battled multiple injuries and played through them, which I'm sure has affected his abilities, but the simple truth is that he isn't getting any younger and that's what generally happens to old aging football players. At some point, they start sucking.

Ultimately, I feel that the answer lies somewhere in between. Orakpo may be very good and this may not be a total indictment on Samuels, either (ooh, maybe indictment isn't the right word. Sorry, Plaxico). It's just very hard not to get excited for the defense this season after hearing so many positive reports, having him healthy, signed and participating almost from the get-go, and especially after seeing videos like this. Upon seeing it, my roommates bought chains, a tire and a sledgehammer, and I'm not joking.

I admit that the roster is still full of holes and that the 2009 Redskins may be undone in the end by a crappy offensive line. But it's possible that Orakpo could turn out to be one of those X-factor performers that help get the Redskins over the 8-8 hump. I'm very encouraged by what I'm hearing about him, as well as Chris Horton, Albert Haynesworth, and even... (*gulp*) Devin Thomas. I said before that it's going to take people from within the organization stepping up in order for us improve at all. That includes, but is not limited to Jason Campbell. While there is a lot of uncertainty as to whether or not that will actually happen, adding smart, likable guys like Orakpo makes me feel better about our situation.

Blackwater... Even More Evil Than You Thought

Even for Blackwater, this is pretty appalling stuff:

A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."

In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting "illegal" or "unlawful" weapons into the country on Prince's private planes. They also charge that Prince and other Blackwater executives destroyed incriminating videos, emails and other documents and have intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies. The identities of the two individuals were sealed out of concerns for their safety.

Not that fucked up things can't (and don't) happen in our actual military, but I'm pretty sure there's no better case against mercenaries than simply taking a close look at Blackwater. They are a living example of literally everything that people who oppose the use of mercenaries (like myself) worry about.

And that was before their CEO allegedly killed some guys to keep them quiet. I really didn't see that one coming.

Southern Men Driving the Birther Movement

On Friday night I joked with DCJonesy and J.N. that my usual yelling of "SEGREGATION!!!! YEAH!!!!!!!!!!" any time "Sweet Home Alabama" is played doesn't seem to be catching on as a trend.

And while you can't paint whole regions of the country with a broad brush, stuff like this is simply not acceptable:

Dave Weigel asked some further questions to the pollster, and there seems to be a few problems with Southern Men (actually just white southern men, to be more specific than Neil was in song):

So what proportion of Southern whites doubt that Obama is an American citizen? While Ali did not release the racial breakdowns for the the South, and cautioned that the margin of error in the smaller sample of 720 people would be larger than the national margin of error (2 percent), the proportion of white Southern voters with doubts about their president’s citizenship may be higher than 70 percent. More than 30 percent of the people polled in the South were non-white, and very few of them told pollsters that they had questions about Obama’s citizenship. In order for white voters to drive the South’s “don’t know” number to 30 percent and it’s “born outside the United States” number to 23 percent, as many as three-quarters of Southern whites told pollsters that they didn’t know where Obama was born.

One thing to keep in mind, if only a quarter or a fifth of white Southerners believe Obama was born in the United States, that’s more than voted for him last year in some states. Obama won 14 percent of the white vote in Louisiana, 14 percent in Mississippi, and 10 percent in Alabama.

Those numbers are simply terrifying. Although the birthers can be seen as nuts by any rational observer, it's pretty staggering when you realize that they make up a sizable chunk of the modern day Republican party.