The GOP will stop at nothing when it comes to health care

It's too late to convince anyone on the Supreme Court (yeah, like they read Monster Island), since they already voted on Friday. But I've been thinking a lot about this lately... about free riders and why they necessitate mandatory participation, or twisted incentives that jack up rates, or we the insured footing the bill for the uninsured who walk into emergency rooms and get care that way, or the hundreds of thousands of medical-related bankruptcies that are a drag on the economy.

But all of that is sort of moot, because the Supreme Court has already decided. And they may have decided to scrap the insurance mandate, or the Affordable Care Act altogether. And then the ball would be in the GOP's court.

But here's the problem with the Republicans on health reform: it doesn't exist except in hot air form.

After the GOP killed Hillarycare in 1994 and then took control of the House and Senate, no serious effort was made to reform the system in a way that would rein in soaring costs, insure the tens of millions of people without insurance, or fix the problems (like being dropped or denied coverage) for millions more who had it. The Republicans did not even try seriously to implement their own Heritage Foundation-based reform plan.

They might have said that was impossible with Clinton in the White House (even though he was noted for his willingness to compromise with the GOP on key legislation, like welfare reform). But then in 2000, the Republicans gained control of the White House and both houses of Congress. The perfect opportunity to prove they were serious, yet nothing in six years was done to address those things (I say six, because the Democrats took control of the House and Senate two years before Bush left).

I would rather tweak Obamacare than scrap it, precisely because the GOP will stop at nothing (I mean that literally, as in stopping where nothing has been done). Right now, before us, we have a law passed that has a great many things prescribed by the GOP's Heritage Foundation plan in the mid-1990s and even modeled after the Massachusetts health care plan signed into law by Obama's likely opponent in November.

And that makes the ACA a good starting point.

Another thing about Obamacare is that states can opt out of it as long as they implement a system that achieves the same coverage. Instead of trying to strike down the law, those twenty-six states should be coming up with something better.

Okay, rant over.

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Romney wins in Puerto Rico... Could this be a harbinger of a Romney-Fortuño ticket?

Congratulations to former Massachusetts governor and Obamacare inspiration Mitt Romney for winning the delegates from a territory that doesn't actually have an electoral voice in the November election! (Actually, despite that little bit of snark, I think it's great that the two major parties include Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and Guam in the primaries.)

This got me wondering out loud again about the prospect, which I touted last summer (here and here), of Romney (if he wins the nomination) having Puerto Rico's GOP governor Luis Fortuño as a running mate. He's an intelligent leader, he meets all the criteria, and having a Hispanic on the ticket might tip the race in a lot of swing states and maybe even give the Democrats a run for their money in New York, where hundreds of thousands (millions?) of ethnic Puerto Ricans reside.

(I would suggest that Rick Santorum do the same, but he said he's not willing to have any Puerto Ricans on his ticket until they learn English. I kid! I kid! I kid because I love... to kid!)

Tapping Governor Fortuño might be a better move, strategically, than what the Ron Paul camp may have up their sleeves. Having not come in first in any race so far, the libertarian darling is angling to have himself or his son (US senator from Kentucky Rand Paul) in the VP slot of the Romney ticket.

This would bolster the conservative credentials of Mitt Romney in the eyes of Tea Partiers (or rather, counter the liberal credentials they perceive him to have) and prevent a lot of them from sitting out in November 2012 because they are loath to vote for a RINO (Republican in name only).

Ron Paul serves a useful purpose as the conservative conscience of a country that has been spending too much since the Reagan era (minus a few years of Clinton), but he is too naïvely simple and obstinate to handle complex issues, be they domestic or foreign. The idea of him a heartbeat away from the presidency is downright frightening (we probably wouldn't start any wars, but he'd be leaving a geopolitical mess for whomever comes after him). I'm not sure how many of his father's ideas Rand Paul shares, but if he's got more than half of them, no thank you.

I never really got the whole idea of the Ron Paul Revolution signs. I mean, the guy doesn't stand for love; he stands for standing on your own. I guess some might see that as tough love. As in, "You got problems? Tough!" Also, the whole LOVE spelling backward thing to fit in with the revolution wording is kinda creepy and a tad scary. I mean, in addition to advocating revolution (nothing like killing people so we can have the freedom to not buy health insurance! Woo hoo!), I remember learning that love spelled backwards sounds like evil. Really, did these people not run this by anyone other than fellow Paulbaggers? 

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Wake up, America!

From my inbox this morning, the kind of thing I get every now and again ever since I bought a die-hard Republican voter a gag bumper sticker. I found this one amusing (and simultaneously disturbing), so I thought I'd share (as I've done in the past).

Apparently, this is how the right sees America under President B. Hussein Obama (click to zoom):

Frankly, I had no idea that Kim Jong-il was behind The One's rise (see upper left corner). A good trick, considering that he's dead, but the Dear Leader is not the only dear departed to grace this artist's work:

Doß thou not see where thy standeß,
thou injudicious and chowderheaded Negroe?

Where's the outrage?! Our debt is $15 trillion and Obummer is responsible! And he's so arrogantly standing on the Constitution, while ignoring this poor White boy that has Reagan, Lincoln, Washington, and some other guy in a wig so concerned.

Anyway, I think the young man in the foreground was inspired by Keanu Reeves:

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Huntsman has left the building

My favorite GOP candidate for president, former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, has decided to call it quits.

I am terribly disappointed by this. Governor Huntsman was by far my favorite, even if I don't agree with all his views. First of all, he did actually attempt health care reform, which is a far cry from the rest of the field, who just whine about Obamacare without acknowledging that their party has done nothing real to deal with this issue after killing Hillarycare back in the mid-1990s. (Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is an exception to this, of course, but in order to appeal to the far right, he's running on a platform of killing the same Obamacare that is modeled after his own Romneycare.)



Governor Huntsman also has shown not only that he can work with the other side (he was President Obama's ambassador to China) but also that he sees tremendous value in doing so. His quick response to Mitt Romney's absurd criticism of Huntsman for working with Obama was laudatory and downright inspiring: Romney's attitude of party over country is precisely what is wrong with this country (he says as much at about 1:20 or 1:30 in the above video).

In case you missed what I'm talking about, here's a post-debate piece from just before the New Hampshire primary:

Huntsman: “I was criticized last night by Governor Romney for putting my country first … He criticized me while he was out raising money for serving my country in China. Yes, under a Democrat. Like my two sons are doing in the United States Navy. They're not asking what political affiliation the president is. I want to be very clear with the people here in New Hampshire and this country: I will always put my country first.”

Here was Romney’s response: “I think we serve our country first by standing for people who believe in conservative principles and doing everything in our power to promote an agenda that does not include President Obama's agenda.”

Huntsman’s invocation of his two sons serving in the military is an essential reminder of a bedrock American tradition: our servicemen and women do not make their service contingent on the political persuasion of the president. That’s because they are patriots first, not partisans. Huntsman deserved the applause he received for that line.

Romney’s response seems to me at least as remarkable: “I think we serve our country first by standing for people who believe in conservative principles …” That is the opposite of John McCain’s 2008 campaign slogan, “Country First.” Romney’s answer is “Party First,” “Ideology First.”

But the right wing that has a chokehold on the Republican Party today has been fed so much red meat that they see that as weak, socialist, and un-American, among other things.

Like I said, I don't agree with everything Huntsman stands for, but neither do I feel the same about Obama. But with the exit of Huntsman, we're down to few or no candidates who I would feel comfortable with as president for the next four to eight years. In fact, the most disappointing thing about this is that Huntsman turned around and endorsed Romney, whose flip-flopping and running away from the best part of his record in order to pander to the right makes him a lousy choice for president.

The only good I can see from that move is the possibility that he might be picked as a running mate for Romney, but with the Religious Right being so concerned about Romney's Mormonism, I don't see Mitt doubling down on what is a major source of concern among many conservative voters.

This is terribly disappointing. He was by far my favorite, in part because (a) he actually attempted health care reform in his state and (b) he saw the value in going across the aisle to make things work.

Right now, if I were to have to choose someone to vote for, I guess I'd pick Newt Gingrich, mainly because he has shown, during the Clinton years, that he is able to hammer out important deals with the Democrats that get the country back on track. Pragmatism and country before ideology, at least on the budget deficit and the national debt (not so much on health care).

Frankly, though, Huntsman was the last truly electable candidate running. Mitt Romney faces an uphill battle with his own party because of his past support for universal health care, his Mormonism, and lately his history of laying off people. Gingrich faces an uphill battle with non-conservatives due to his abrasiveness and his history of infidelity (hypocritical infidelity, no less). Ron Paul has some great ideas but is a simplistic kook on others. Though he demonstrates flexibility over ideology, Rick Santorum holds tight to homophobic views that are at odds with independent and Democratic voters, while his own record of political advantage-making will likely come back to haunt him in the general election.

Well, there's still Gary Johnson, a former governor of New Mexico who was wildly popular with Republicans and Democrats with viable positions on a number of issues. Inexplicably and inexcusably, Governor Johnson has been excluded from all the Republican debates, as if he is not a serious candidate and as if he is not even running. In all seriousness, this is an absolute travesty of our democratic system. Perhaps he wasn't invited because he stands for drug legalization and believes same-sex marriage should be allowed, but is this all that different from Ron Paul?

If you find yourself flirting with some of Ron Paul's more sensible ideas but you're turned off by his wackiness on others, go check out Gary Johnson. With Huntsman gone, he's my next favorite candidate.

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Don't trust Americans who speak foreign languages

Well, that seems to be the message of this ad that attacks Mandarin-speaking former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, purportedly by a Ron Paul supporter:



As the Washington Post makes clear, we don't know for sure that this really was put together by a Ron Paul supporter, but given the way no small number of them think, it's not a stretch of the imagination to believe that.

Yeah, it might turn out that this is a not-so-terribly-elaborate attempt to hurt Ron Paul, not Jon Huntsman, but I've seen more ham-handed political ads or acts than this, so for now it seems plausible. What I think is more telling about it is how it underscores this persistent American traits of (a) distrust of those who are smart and well educated, (b) being proudly monolingual to the point that those who are fluent in other languages may be regarded as un-American, and (c) historically and hysterically loathing people from Asia as perpetual foreigners.

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Happy Thanksgiving, nation of the undocumented and their offspring! (A Gingrich post)

It's still Wednesday morning here in the Aloha State, but it's already Thanksgiving Day in Korea, so I might as well go ahead with what will pass as my Turkey Day post (though I might photoblog from my actually turkey dinner tomorrow, as I'm wont to do).

The New Yorker kicked off the holiday festivities with their yet another controversial cover this week, a reminder that even if they weren't illegal immigrants, they were undocumented.

Heck, I'm a Mayflower descendant (fourteenth and fifteenth generation from four voyagers) on one side of my family and I will proudly state that they entered North America without any papers. Never got them, either. Nor did they properly assimilate (they pretty much stuck with their own kind). Somewhere down the road I'm probably related to some other undocumented folks, but we won't get into that.

And that brings us to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has unexpectedly risen to the top of the heap in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. For months, it has been a tight race between Mitt Romney and whoever is not Mitt Romney, as conservatives who just can't stomach electing a closet moderate or a Mormon seek alternatives. And one by one they've championed losers.

Well, they weren't losers to start with. Rather they seemed to possess all the qualities prized by Tea Partiers and other conservatives (starting with, "He/She's not Mitt Romney"), but then their bright start fizzled out.

We had Sarah Palin (winning point: "She thinks like me!"; fizzling point: "She is dangerously uninformed — just like me."). Then Donald Trump (winning point: "He will prove Obama is a foreign-born Muslin!"; fizzling point: "He gave up on his search for the truth on Obama!"). Then Iowa straw poll winner Michele Bachmann (winning point: "No, she's the one who thinks like me!"; fizzling point: "Ooh, look! It's Rick Perry!"), followed by Rick Perry (winning point: "He's the quintessential Texas politician"; fizzling point: "Oh, crap, he's a Texas politician"). Rick Perry crashed and burned, allowing people to notice Herman Cain (winning point: "Nine-nine-nine"; fizzling point: women he worked with telling him, "Nein! Nein! Nein!")

And that brings us to Newt Gingrich (campaign slogan that sounds cool but actually makes little sense: "Old is Newt Again!"). This guy has actually managed to make it past Mitt Romney and hover in the low thirties. Lots of conservative voters love him for his tough talk against Obama and the Democrats, but moderate Republicans are kinda sort put off by some of his old school (medieval old) views on things. For starters, the little Dickens wants to bring back child labor. Give that fourth grader a mop, there are no free riders at this school!

There actually may be lots of Republican voters who agree with this position — for others' kids, like those in poverty, because, you know, it's a lack of work ethic instilled in nine-year-olds that's the problem in the inner city, not a lack of, you know, jobs and/or safe transportation to jobs.

I poke fun at Gingrich (I believe his campaign should run an ad essentially saying, "With a head this big, he's gotta be smart"), but I actually think were he somehow to make it to the White House, he is someone who could actually come up with the bold-stroke plans that would put the country back on the path of fiscal responsibility in a way that preserves much of what both Republicans and Democrats want — as he and then-President Clinton did in the mid-1990s, back before Bush43 trashed the budget with his tax cuts and misguided and grossly mismanaged war in Iraq.

Frontrunner Newt Gingrich shocks debate audience
when he states how big his next wife's rack should be.

But what I really want to say about Gingrich — and this is where it all ties in with the theme of immigration — is that he comes up with some principled and well considered ideas that buck the rest of his party (or at least the conservative wing). And he has done this with immigration.

Last night at Republican debate #892, which was to cover foreign policy, Newt spoke out in favor of compassionately dealing with undocumented residents, an issue that helped erode Governor Perry's popularity (the governor spoke out in favor of allowing those who came to the country illegally as children to get money for college).

From the Los Angeles Times:

And just like that, another GOP frontrunner is on the defensive after another debate. This time it's Newt Gingrich under the microscope after he seemed to advocate what critics call a form of amnesty for illegal immigrants.

The former House speaker weighed in during an exchange on illegal immigration and border security during Tuesday night's national security-focused debate on CNN.

"I do not believe that the people of the United States are going to take people who’ve been here for a quarter of a century ... [and] separate them from their families and expel them," Gingrich said. "I do believe we should control the border. I do believe we should have very severe penalties."

He continued, "I don't believe that the party that says it's the party of the family is going to say it’s going to destroy families that have been here for more than a quarter of a century. I'm prepared to take the heat in saying: Let's be humane in enforcing the law."

I do not support Newt's divorcing wife on her deathbed policy, but apparently I'm largely in agreement with him on immigration policy (penalties should be focused on the hiring of illegal immigrants, including imprisonment and heavy fines for the Americans who knowingly hire them). And I know that among Democrats and left-of-center moderates like myself I'm not alone.

Watching all these debates I've come to this conclusion: If you could take select pieces of each of the Republican candidates and put them all together, you'd have one damned fine Democratic nominee.

Yup, you'd have Mitt Romney and his health care plan while governor of Massachusetts, you'd have former New Mexico Gary Johnson and Representative Ron Paul's marijuana policy, you'd have Rick Perry's handling of undocumented youth and now Newt Gingrich's compassionate but tough-and-pragmatic ideas about curbing illegal immigration, former Utah governor and US Ambassador to Beijing Jon Huntsman's eyes-open approach to China, Representative Michele Bachmann's recognition that Pakistan is "too nuclear to fail" (I really had to scrape to find something Democrats would like about Michele "unproven HPV vaccination causes retardation" Bachmann), and Rick Santorum's something I haven't figured out yet.

The problem, of course, is that each and every one of these positions earns them boos from the primary voters, even if they make them more electable during in November. Indeed, Newt Gingrich may find his fate sealed with a hiss as conservatives declare him the latest disappointment. I hope that's not true, though, since he makes an awful lot of sense on immigration and I don't want that viewpoint to become radioactive among GOP presidential hopefuls and the GOP congressional leadership, much in the way moderately raising taxes on the very rich to balance the budget has become.

Besides, who's left? We're still a month and a half from the first primary and all we have left from the debates are Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman (I like the latter but don't care much for the former). Will they be the next shooting stars? What if they rise and fall before January? Will Ron Paul finally be given a serious look (the guy's a kook)? Will they actually start inviting Gary Johnson to the debates?

The winner in Iowa and New Hampshire might very well be whoever is on top of the "not Romney" pile when the actual voting begins. Right about now, I'm guessing, Tim Pawlenty is trying to figure out how to get back into the race (recap: the guy quit because Michele Bachmann won that Iowa straw poll).

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Obama a disaster for civil liberties?

In a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley writes that "the election of Barack Obama may stand as one of the single most devastating events in our history for civil liberties":

However, President Obama not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them. The earliest, and most startling, move came quickly. Soon after his election, various military and political figures reported that Obama reportedly promised Bush officials in private that no one would be investigated or prosecuted for torture. In his first year, Obama made good on that promise, announcing that no CIA employee would be prosecuted for torture. Later, his administration refused to prosecute any of the Bush officials responsible for ordering or justifying the program and embraced the "just following orders" defense for other officials, the very defense rejected by the United States at the Nuremberg trials after World War II.

Obama failed to close Guantanamo Bay as promised. He continued warrantless surveillance and military tribunals that denied defendants basic rights. He asserted the right to kill U.S. citizens he views as terrorists. His administration has fought to block dozens of public-interest lawsuits challenging privacy violations and presidential abuses.

But perhaps the biggest blow to civil liberties is what he has done to the movement itself. It has quieted to a whisper, muted by the power of Obama's personality and his symbolic importance as the first black president as well as the liberal who replaced Bush. Indeed, only a few days after he took office, the Nobel committee awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize without his having a single accomplishment to his credit beyond being elected. Many Democrats were, and remain, enraptured.

It's almost a classic case of the Stockholm syndrome, in which a hostage bonds with his captor despite the obvious threat to his existence. Even though many Democrats admit in private that they are shocked by Obama's position on civil liberties, they are incapable of opposing him. Some insist that they are simply motivated by realism: A Republican would be worse.

Hmm... I didn't vote for Obama (but will do so in 2012 if any but maybe two of the current crop of Republican candidates gets the nomination), but I can see this is a case of selective memory. Let's see, he ended Don't Ask, Don't Tell, effectively ended the executive branch's defense of the Defense of Marriage Act's proscription of same-sex marriage. Indeed, I see some expansion of civil liberties in the Obama universe.

Y'know, the guy's not Superman. He can't do everything and still have political capital to win the other battles. The guy passed a major health care reform bill that, though imperfect and in need of tweaking whether it works well or not, everyone knew would bring out the opposition in full force at midterm elections. If a Republican is elected, we can say bye-bye to the Affordable Care Act and sit back while the Republicans do the same thing to fix the gaping head wound that is our healthcare "system" after they defeated Hillarycare in 1993-94: absolutely nothing.



So, yeah, maybe the civil libertarians will get more of what they want in a second term, but probably not all of it. Wait until the two wars have wound down and see what can be revisited. Like it or not, that's the way it works.

In the meantime, don't even pretend, as Ralph Nader did, that there is no difference between the Dems and the new crop of Republicans* that have taken root since the new millennium. The Iraq War to vanquish al Qaeda (remember that justification?!) — rabidly opposed by the man Ralph Nader helped defeat, Al Gore — is Exhibit A of that.

* The Republican Party has lurched so far to the right you can't see them because of the curvature of the Earth. I want back the fiscally conservative but socially responsible and pragmatist GOP of old. Bring back Nixonian Republicanism so that I don't have to fear for the country's future survivability when/if the Democrats lose!

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UPDATED: Republican Debate at the Reagan Library

Every voter in America should watch these things, particularly this one where Rick "Galileo" Perry made his national debut. I haven't finished watching, but none of the Tea Party-supported candidates strikes me as anything less than sorta terrifying to have in the White House. I like intellectually curious people who can form opinions on their own but who rely on solid evidence to come to conclusions.

I like people who aggressively study things they don't know about, not politicians who talk about things they've merely heard of. I think a lot of the Republican field don't get why and how we got into the economic mess we're in, and thus they have no real clue how to get out of it. Instead they've subscribed to bogus notions that demonize unions, teachers, Obamacare, Medicare, and social programs in general, and lately Social Security as the cause of our ills. Instead, it's money politics and deep-pocket special interests, lack of effective regulation of the finance industry, expensive wars, worship of the rich as supposed "jobs creators," etc.

At this point, if I had to vote for someone in the primaries, it would be Huntsman or Romney. But if the election were held today, I'd have to vote for Obama over any of them.

Oh, and Ron Paul is clueless on public health. Despite being a physician (practicing when?) he apparently has no understanding of "herd immunity" and the importance of things like HPV vaccination. I have respect for Ron Paul's consistency and largely agree with him that it is desirable to have the states or private sector do much of what the Federal government does, but we probably wildly disagree about what those things are that the Feds do better because of scale, streamlining, and the cross-border nature of so many problems.

Where he and I might find common ground is on the need to get money out of politics so we don't have politicians beholden to corporations and special interests in order to get elected or re-elected, so we can drastically reduce their influence on our laws and policies.

UPDATE:
I'm reminded why it's better to experience something firsthand than to just get the highlights from a news program. From the sound bites I'd heard, health care was hardly mentioned, but it was in fact a major issue in the Reagan Library debate.

On health care, frankly, the Republicans are a mix of gross hypocrisy and profound ignorance. Gross hypocrisy because they are all against Obamacare when in fact Obama's Affordable Care Act is made up of elements once supported by GOPers, before Obama started to praise them. Also, from the time when the GOP killed Hillarycare in 1993 and 1994, through the period when Republicans controlled the House and Senate and the Bush43 years, no healthcare reform was attempted. Even now, their major healthcare legislative push is the repeal of Obamacare, with nary a word of what they'd replace it with.

And then there's the profound ignorance, because worship of the free market has blinded most of the field — with the possible exceptions of Romney, Huntsman, and possibly Gingrich — to the market failure that is health economics. This is the kind of thing that necessitates individual mandates.

At least no one talked about America having the greatest health care in the world, or else I'd have to get into a long screed about my uncle's Alzheimer's condition forcing my aunt to go bankrupt, America's abysmally bad infant mortality rate, or the large number of uninsured people who clog up the Emergency Room for regular medical conditions because they can't afford regular doctor's visits.

They've now moved onto energy policy. It's quite brazen that they can say with a straight face that Obama is "strangling the American economy" by supposedly putting the kibosh on new efforts in oil, coal, and nuclear, when they fail to acknowledge things like the Gulf oil spill, the Yellowstone River spill, or the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

We've even got Bachmann saying (34:13) the Federal government should "pull back on all the regulatory restrictions" so we can create more jobs. Well, Ms Bachmann, what about all the jobs lost in the fishing, crab, tourism, and recreation industries when the Gulf oil spill happened? I'm sorry you think that protecting lives and the environment is such a nuisance. She still thinks $1.93 gas is merely a function of Obama policies and not, say, due to the Arab Spring.

Gingrich says (around 62:45) he agrees with Obama (!) on charter schools and gives him kudos for taking on the teacher unions in that regard. This reminds me of why I have considered supporting Gingrich in the first place: he is adept at seeing common ground and coming together for a grand compromise, à la the great budget agreement with Clinton back in the mid- to late 1990s. Gingrich also hit (around 67:00) a lot of the same things I feel about curbing illegal immigration (tough line on employers but also a humane approach to deportation). Bachmann ducked the question about what to do with the 11 million illegals once the border is secure.

I like Huntsman's pledge of no pledges (78:00).

And I'll have more on Ron Paul's HPV remarks (49:00) later. It went on for several minutes, with Bachmann and Santorum going on about parents' rights versus government's rights, when in fact it's about public health and saving lives versus parental rights (MSNBC has a piece on that, knocking her assertion, based on a voter coming up to her, that the HPV vaccination may cause mental retardation. Bachmann is an uninformed politico recounting the unvetted stories of random strangers, and she wants to use this knowledge base to propel herself into the White House.

Governor Rick Perry (around 45:00) calling Social Security a "lie" and a "Ponzi scheme"... wow. Just wow.

Governor Perry also (around 82:00) gave props to Obama for getting Osama bin Laden. But then he went and ruined the good impression I was getting by saying that spending wasn't creating even one job. This is patently false. We can see in the recent job numbers that strong job creation in the private sector is being offset by job losses in local governments because of budget cuts. It's the budget cuts that are causing us to have zero net job growth.  Perry, like so many other Obama critics, does not see as the possible outcomes of stimulus or no stimulus that we might have continued to hemorrhage jobs without the stimulus. They see lackluster job growth as a failure of the stimulus, when the absence of a stimulus and bailouts and what-not might have been far fewer jobs. Really, is that so hard to understand?

Bachmann complained that Obama's support of the rebels in Libya might lead to a global caliphate, part of the fantasy on the right that everyday Muslims and Islamists are interchangeable and fundamentally dangerous. This is another one of those things that irks me about the presidential candidates in the Republican field: the gross hypocrisy when it comes to things they oppose that Obama has done vis-à-vis what they supported that Bush43 and past Republicans have done.

Obama's actions in Libya have been a cake walk compared to what Bush43 has done in Iraq, and if there were any place we've gone into where those who would want a caliphate would rise up, it would be Iraq. But it's the same issue regarding raising the debt ceiling or having a budge deficit under Bush43 or Obama: when the former does it a lot, it's acceptable, but if the latter does it at all, it's the end of the world!

I think the most telling thing was Ron Paul saying he believed in the message of Ronald Reagan but not how it turned out. I think the same could be true with just about any of the Tea Party-supported candidates. I want a principled pragmatist, and just when I've been mulling voting Republican at the presidential level (I did vote to re-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger), the GOP has lurched so far to the right you can't see them because of the curvature of the Earth.

Finally, I thought the tribute to Ronald Reagan and the introduction to the Reagan Library (around 42:00), with the focus on the nonagenarian Nancy Reagan, who was in the audience, was a very nice touch. I need to visit that place the next time I'm in California.

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Obama's jobs speech: We are tougher than the times we live in

I was going to tweet some of my thoughts, but Twitter seems to be overwhelmed with people trying to do the same.

I'm watching it online at the Los Angeles Times website (which annoyingly refreshes itself every five minutes, forcing me to miss about fifteen seconds of speech). [UPDATE: The Telegraph has the transcript of the speech, which I may put snippets of in the text below.]

I'll tell you, it's essentially State of the Union 2011-1/2. A lot of good points, many of the reiterations of things he's called for in the past (e.g., taxes done in a way where everyone pays their fair share), but the highlight — and the opener — was his America Jobs Act (?) full of such things as building up infrastructure, giving tax breaks to those who hire new people, helping veterans get jobs, etc. It has a lot more in it than I'm laying out here — and he insists it will be paid for — so I'm not doing it justice. Go read up on it.

As I expected him to do, he called for quick passage of the FTA with South Korea, but also with Panama and Colombia (I wasn't so sure he'd include those two). That's a great point, but again he says that if people in America are going to drive Hyundais and Kias, he wants to see people in Korea driving Chryslers and Fords and Chevys (I hope he realizes they already drive Chevrolets!).

His regulation-reducing effort was also highlighted. We need to make sure that regulations are there to protect the health and welfare of the country. At the same time, he says, we should resist the desire to deregulate completely, getting rid of things that provide environmental protections, protections for workers. "We shouldn't be in a race to the bottom, ... but a race to the top." Dismantling protections to make the corporations stronger is not the way to go, he says.

That was, in fact, not his only nationalism-infused statement. American will be #1 again, we'll be top in the world, there's no reason we can't beat China, etc., etc.

Overall, a good and timely speech, one that emphasizes bipartisanship (he emphasized over and over how his proposed jobs bill was a litany of things supported by both Dems and Republicans) and is filled with a bunch of points that I generally agree with. Now just get on it. As you said, the people who elected "us" don't have fourteen months to wait.

Of course, with House Speaker John Boehner not applauding at things one would think Republicans would support — like how the GI Bill helped a whole lot of people go to college who otherwise couldn't have — I expect something of an uphill battle (some Republicans who weren't even going to attend dismissed the speech before it was even made, some even boycotting it).

And why not? If the Republicans want to re-take the White House next year, it's better for them if the unemployment rate remains high, and it seems that gridlock to block Obama's plans to fix the economy in order to keep it high actually is their strategy. But Boehner may have been listening to that speech and thinking, at some point, that maybe his job will be more secure and he can effect more of the changes he wants, if he remains head of the House in a second Obama administration. But that's just a thought; I can't read his mind, nor he mine.

...

Jon Stewart on Rep Ron Paul: How has "Tea Party Patient Zero" become the media version of the 13th floor in a hotel?

I'm no fan of Ron Paul, who I think is hopelessly and scarily naïve on both foreign policy and domestic policy* and whose followers I've met typically (but not always) make up in enthusiastic certainty what they lack in knowledge of how things work.

But I think Jon Stewart makes a very good point that the mainstream media — including Fox and CNN — are doing a disservice to that presidential candidate from Texas and to voters by pretending he doesn't exist, especially when he is doing pretty well so far.



Of course, I'm still bitter that my main man Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico, was all but ignored by the same mainstream media during the 2008 Democratic primary process, even though he was probably the most qualified and most electable of the bunch.

* I'm not in complete disagreement with Ron Paul on everything (see here and here), but I think he's wrong on things like the Pax Americana being a bad fiscal decision. I agree with various Republicans on other things as well. For example, I do not think Christine O'Donnell is a witch, and Romney was right on the money with Romneycare. 

China tosses the US down the A-hole

Now that the debt ceiling "crisis" is over, we all thought the US dodged a bullet with its credit rating being downgraded. Welp, we thought wrong:

Although the United States narrowly avoided an unprecedented default following congressional approval of a last-minute compromise plan to raise the debt ceiling, China's leading credit rating agency Wednesday downgraded U.S. sovereign debt after putting it on negative watch last month.

The Dagong Global Credit Rating Company, which lowered the United States to A+ last November after the U.S. Federal Reserve decided to continue loosening its monetary policy, announced a further downgrade to A, indicating heightened doubts over Washington's long-term ability to repay its debts.

It said the gloomy assessment -- much lower than the AAA ratings given by the so-called "big three" Western agencies Moody's, Fitch, and Standard and Poor's -- was inevitable given the level of market concern generated by the stalemate between Democrats and Republicans over the debt ceiling.

"The squabbling between the two political parties on raising the U.S. debt ceiling reflected an irreversible trend on the United States' declining ability to repay its debts," Dagong Chairman Guan Jianzhong told CNN.

"The two parties acted in a very irresponsible way and their actions greatly exposed the negative impact of the U.S. political system on its economic fundamentals," he said.
Ironically, Dagong's move could hurt not just the United States but also China, the largest foreign owner of U.S. debt with holdings worth almost $1.2 trillion.

I've long been saying that the debt ceiling “crisis” is a completely manufactured one. Yes, there is a serious problem with the national debt and the current deficit (not the same thing, by the way), but the August 2 deadline itself was a completely manufactured crisis under the complete control of the people holding the gun to the head of the American people and the economy (i.e., the GOP leadership).

In short, there was never any real chance that that default was going to occur, and China knows that. This is nothing but a political move, designed to poke the US in the eye for various things (e.g., allowing the Dalai Lama to visit, criticism about China's abysmal human rights, etc.) and domestic consumption (i.e., see how bad things get when you have a full-blown democratically elected republic?).

The US should seriously consider revisiting demands that China properly value its currency (i.e., let it appreciate to its natural value) and consider retaliation if it doesn't. If anyone's going to let the US economy go down in flames, it's going to be Americans, dammit! (And yeah, I do partly blame the Republicans for this one, as they've acted as if their dangerous gambit would have no consequences.)

Costly military action gives Republicans the vapors

From the Los Angeles Times:

House Republicans charged forward Wednesday with a plan to try to scale back U.S. military engagement in Libya, a move intended as a rebuke of President Obama's handling of the mission.

GOP members agreed in a private meeting to hold a vote on a bill that would cut off funding for "hostilities" in Libya, while continuing to support noncombat activities by the NATO-led operation, including intelligence-gathering and support.

The measure, which is not expected to pass the Senate, could come up for a House vote as early as Friday.

The focus on hostilities is a pointed rebuff of Obama, who has chosen not to seek congressional authorization for the mission under the War Powers Act. The White House has argued that the U.S. involvement does not meet the legal definition of hostilities, as described in the act.

Both Democrats and Republicans have expressed frustration with the president's decision, saying it sets a dangerous precedent for expanding executive power and undermining Congress. That frustration is most concentrated, however, in the Republican-led House, where skepticism of the president is intense and concern over the financial effects of international interventions is a hot topic.

House Republicans were quick to voice frustration Wednesday. Some complained that the U.S. had no clear mission or endgame in the conflict, and worried that it could escalate quickly. Others cited monetary concerns: More than $700 million has been spent so far to support the mission.

Really, while I get the concern that the situation in Libya may necessitate Congressional approval, weren't some of these Republicans the same ones who were questioning the patriotism of various Democrats when the latter opined negatively about how Bush's people were executing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the need for going into Iraq in the first place?

And whisky tango foxtrot, when did the Republicans — who until 2009 were utterly unfazed by the financial disaster that was is the Iraq War — get so upset over a mere $700 million? (Come to think of it, SCHIP funding to give medical insurance to kids was too expensive when it would have been a tiny sliver of the Iraq War budget, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.)

Rick Perry...

Is it just me, or does current Texas Governor Rick Perry seem like he's doing an imitation of Josh Brolin doing an imitation of George W. Bush in the movie W.?

Now you know why no birth certificate

Um, yeah. Pretty offensive. It's not mine, of course, but it does come to us courtesy of someone else from OC. In this case, it's a Republican official in OC, who says it was just a joke.

To their credit, other California Republicans are saying that it's not acceptable as "just a joke":

Among Davenport’s detractors (including, one would hope, “everyone else”), local news station KCAL caught up with former California Republican chairman Michael Schroder, who correctly posited: “no average person would send this out and feel comfortable with this, that this was just a joke.” Then again, Schroder also notes Davenport doesn’t come into this embarrassment with a clean slate– among the people in Orange County Republican politics she has defended are an official who sent an email with an illustration of the White House covered in watermelons and an official who opposed the installation of grass near beaches on the point that “grass attracts Mexicans.”

Ah, yes, the watermelon controversy, by a local mayor who simultaneously claimed that his watermelon-themed Obama email was just a joke and that he didn't know about stereotypes involving Blacks and watermelon. But Obama seems to bring the worst out in some Republicans (see this for another example).

But I try to look on the bright side. If they're busy sending racist emails to each other, that leaves less time for Orange County Republicans to intimidate Hispanic American voters at polling places or suppress their vote with targeted mailings.

And now it gets political

In the aftermath of the tsunami whose effects were mitigated in Hawaii, Guam, and California, by an effective tsunami warning system, someone dug into Republican budget-cutting plans and noted that the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center here in Hawaii is a target.

From AP, via the Honolulu Star-Advertiser:

A spending plan approved by the House would slash funding for a tsunami warning center that issued an alarm after the devastating earthquake in Japan.

The plan approved by the GOP-controlled House last month would trigger deep cuts for the National Weather Service, including the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii.

A union representing workers at the tsunami center said the proposed cuts could result in furloughs and rolling closures of National Weather Service offices.

Barry Hirshorn, Pacific region chairman of the National Weather Service Employees Organization, said the GOP bill would affect the center's ability to issue warnings similar to those issued after Thursday's earthquake in Japan.

Democratic Rep. Colleen Hanabusa of Hawaii called the GOP cuts reckless and even dangerous.

Hawaii is a blue state, but we occasionally elect Republicans to the governorship (Linda Lingle) or send one to Washington (Charles Djou). Both of them may be vying for the seat of Senator Daniel Akaka, who has announced he won't run for re-election in 2012. Unless they come out against things like this, it's doubtful they will win.

I realize the budget is busted and we need to do something. I think we need to take a good hard look at what happened to bring us from debt-reducing budget surpluses in the late 1990s to an accumulation of more than $5 trillion in debt into the latter years of the Bush administration. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan do not account for most of that.

Instead of balancing the budget on the backs of people who are so poor they need heating fuel, or children who suffer (and bring the older folks with them) when they are in overcrowded classrooms, or people who are placed in danger by weather emergency services being slashed, we need to look at the real things that are causing the towering deficits.

Over at the Tea Party groups and elsewhere in some corners of the Republican Party, there are folks hoping for a government shutdown. While there is no doubt waste and corrupt quid-pro-quo in the Federal budget, what these folks don't realize is that there are a lot of essential services that, were we to be without them for too long, would lead to a lot of crap we don't actually want. Sure, few are going to die from a tsunami or cold snap or whatever, or fall into a pothole on the Interstate, if the government shuts down for just a week or two, and that simply reinforces their view that "most of what the Federal government does is unnecessary."

Rant mode off.

And now it's the Republicans' turn to muck up the KORUS FTA

For several years, it has been the Democrats and their traditional ties to labor, along with powerful US Senator from Montana Max Baucus being in the pocket of Big Beef, that have been the biggest threat to ratification of the Korea-US free trade agreement. As the Democratic nominee for president, then-Senator Barack Obama bashed the deal so feverishly — often with bogus notions about the contemporary state of trade with South Korea — that I withheld my vote for him in 2008.

So when the Obama administration's painstaking renegotiation of the KORUS FTA was finally over, it was assumed that the KORUS FTA would sail through the US Congress: Obama and a slew of moderate Democrats went to bat for this new deal, and with a new Republican majority in the House come January 5, there should be no problem getting the votes needed for approval, right? Right?

[source]

But now the wheels may be coming off again. While the case has successfully been made that the free-trade agreement with South Korea would mean more trade, jobs, and opportunities for Americans (and other benefits, like cheaper quality South Korean goods), no such sell has been made about Panama or Colombia, which also have Bush43-era FTAs pending.

But following the success of the GOP in holding hostage tax cuts for the middle class so they could push through the far less popular (and far less fiscally responsible) tax cuts for incomes earned beyond a quarter million dollars, Republicans have decided that they will hold up the KORUS FTA in order to push through the FTAs with Colombia and Panama

Senate Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

From politico.com:

Republican congressional leaders say they will use a new trade deal with South Korea as leverage to move a long-delayed agreement with Colombia, a strategy that could galvanize Democratic opposition to free trade and force the White House to choose between its liberal base and the business community.

Some Democrats are expected to support the South Korea deal, after labor unions split on whether to endorse it, but there is less of a prospect for that with Colombia, where drug violence and an armed insurrection have led to one of the worst records of repressing union organizing in the Western Hemisphere over the past decade.

Republicans, who have supported Colombia’s conservative government, have long pushed for implementation of the free-trade pact despite the history of anti-union violence in the country. They now see linking South Korea and Colombia as a way to make President Barack Obama’s new embrace of trade politically costly for him with his own party, which overwhelmingly opposes free-trade pacts, according to an aide to a top House Republican and an outside trade adviser to Obama.

One of the things that hurt the KORUS FTA was the (inaccurate) perception that South Korea and China were same-same. That is, China is a huge polluter and abuser of human rights whose use of dirt-cheap labor and currency manipulation has helped it amass a tremendous trade deficit with the US, and those who don't know Seoul from Shanghai assumed that South Korea was pretty much a carbon-emitting copy.

[source]

The gripe about the Colombia FTA was along much the same lines. The United Auto Workers bashed South Korea over labor and environmental issues (even though Detroit's desire to foist gas guzzlers onto the South Korean market was a major holdup for the FTA), as if their complaints about Colombia and South Korea were same-same.

This cynical ploy by the Republicans to lump these incongruous FTAs together will only serve to strengthen that unfair association, possibly to the point of galvanizing Democratic opposition (and possibly even voter opposition) against all the FTAs, including the KORUS FTA. (Thankfully, though, the UAW now supports the KORUS FTA.)

Look, the KORUS FTA is a stand-alone FTA. It was a hard-fought but ultimately reasonable agreement that should be passed for the good of both countries. I'm not so sure, however, if the conditions in Colombia warrant the same description or treatment. Maybe the criticisms about a lack of labor freedom in Colombia are valid. Maybe the worries that an FTA with Colombia will have a deleterious effect on American jobs more akin Mexico via NAFTA are something to pay attention to. Maybe Bogotá shouldn't be rewarded for its human rights abuses with an FTA.

All I know is that these concerns about Colombia need to be addressed, and the KORUS FTA should not be held hostage to it. If the KORUS FTA really is a plus for the US economy and American workers, it shouldn't be held up.