Month: October 2009

Bust Them If They Filibuster

Rachel Maddow reported last night that “two major power brokers” from the left, presumably from outside the Senate,  are insisting that Democratic Senate leadership require all Democrats to vote against a Republican filibuster of health care reform. Any Democrat who joins the GOP to block health care reform should lose their committee chairmanship or subcommittee chairmanships as punishment. In effect, it’s time for the Senate leadership to bust some heads and show recalcitrant conservative Democrats that they simply will not be allowed to join a Republican filibuster of health care reform.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has a petition up to Senator Reid calling on him to revoke the chairmanship of any senators who join the Republicans to filibuster health care reform. Sign it here.

Bob Herbert Is Shrill

Apparently the lack of ideas to drive job creation is something of a buggaboo for Herbert.

A massive long-term campaign to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure — which would put large numbers of people to work establishing the essential industrial platform for a truly 21st-century American economy — has not seriously been considered. Large-scale public-works programs that would reach deep into the inner cities and out to hard-pressed suburban and rural areas have been dismissed as the residue of an ancient, unsophisticated era.

We seem to be waiting for some mythical rebound to come rolling in, magically equipped with robust job creation, a long-term bull market and paradise regained for consumers.

It ain’t happening. …

The Obama administration seems hamstrung by the unemployment crisis. No big ideas have emerged. No dramatically creative initiatives. While devoting enormous amounts of energy to health care, and trying now to decide what to do about Afghanistan, the president has not even conveyed the sense of urgency that the crisis in employment warrants.

Urgency is most certainly needed, but beyond urgency — which, last time it was present about a year ago resulted in a massive bailout for Wall Street speculators who created the financial crisis — we need a commitment to infrastructure and to creating real jobs on real projects that improve the quality of life in America. Trying to do this on the cheap, with money going to the private sector but no public works, will not create jobs nor will it solve the looming infrastructure crisis of a country that runs on systems that are nearly 100 years old or more.

Obama, China & Tibet

Some right wing blogs have found a recent Washington Post article that lays out the decision by the Obama administration to not meet with the Dalai Lama during his visit to Washington this week. The justification offered by the administration is basically that they are prioritizing Obama’s November visit to China and have many key issues that they want to discuss then and worry that Obama meeting with the Dalai Lama, as every recent American president has when HHDL is in Washington, would piss off the Chinese government and impede negotiations on other issues.

Moe Lane of RedState writes in response to the question of whether it’d be worse to have the Obama administration shun the Dalai Lama at the request of the Chinese government or of their own volition:

to answer Doug’s confusion as to which is worse; it’d be if this was done unilaterally. If we negotiated to this it’d at least imply that we got a concession in return, which would be something, from a realpolitik point of view.

Welcome to the Obama administration and the frustrations that come with it Moe! The Obama administration, along with key Democratic leaders like Max Baucus and Harry Reid, have defined their negotiation strategy by compromising before even sitting down at the negotiating table, ensuring that we make concessions when none are guaranteed in return from the GOP. I guess it’s unfortunate that some Republicans are now finding that what’s good for the goose isn’t good for the gander.

Sadly, this decision regarding HHDL’s visit to DC is not the first time the Obama administration put human rights and democracy on the back burner when it comes to China. The WaPo story notes:

Before a visit to China in February, for example, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said advocacy for human rights could not “interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate-change crisis and the security crisis” — a statement that won her much goodwill in Beijing. U.S. Treasury officials have also stopped accusing China of artificially deflating the value of its currency to make its exports more attractive.

There you have it.  Of course the flip side of this is that Obama’s decision regarding this visit by the Dalai Lama isn’t really a change of policy course with regards to US-Sino-Tibetan relations. Clinton already charted that. What is new is that now the right is choosing to make hay about an issue that they’ve been silent on…until it’s possible to take a hit at President Obama on it.

Obama is fundamentally wrong to forestall US action on the Tibetan question. He should meet with the Dalai Lama now and he should do it not at the Capitol or in some lesser room in the White House, but in the Oval Office itself — something no American president has done with the Dalai Lama. Obama will have that opportunity shortly after his visit to China in November and whether or not he takes that important step will be determinative, in my view, of whether this administration will fail  in its responsibility to further the cause of human rights and freedom for Tibet and in China.

Rooting Against America

The Republican Party and the conservative press, led by Glenn Beck, are going all in with their opposition to Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics. Media Matters has put together a great compilation of these assaults against what would be one of the most profitable and distinguished events in the next decade in the United States.

Of course, President George W. Bush supported this bid. From a White House press release:

THE PRESIDENT:    I want to thank the members of the 2016 Chicago bid to get the Olympics. Listen, Mr. Mayor, you and your committee have put together a great plan. It’s a plan that will make America proud.

They say that the Olympics will come to Chicago if we’re fortunate enough to be selected, but really it’s coming to America, and I can’t think of a better city to represent the United States than Chicago.

This is a well thought out venue. There will be — the athletes will be taken care of.    People who will be coming from around the world will find this good city has got fantastic accommodations, great restaurants. It will be safe.

And so I — this country supports your bid, strongly. And our hope is that the judges will take a good look at Chicago and select Chicago for the 2016 Olympics.

Well it turns out Chicago just got knocked out of consideration for the 2016 Olympics. It’s what it is. But what is most shocking is how the Republican Party actively and forcefully rooted against America from winning the honor and treasure that comes with hosting these Olympic Games. They rooted for America to fail and that’s what happened.

Grayson, Republicans & the Press

Bravo, Representative Alan Grayson. Grayson is speaking truth to power and standing up for what he believes in.

What’s particularly sickening is how offended, how incensed Wolf Blitzer and his pundit colleagues at CNN are that Grayson had the gall to actually challenge Republicans for bald-faced opposition to any reform. But beyond that, what makes me want to pull my hair out is that the press is freaking out over Grayson’s words, but never once said a peep when Republican members of Congress said similar things. The Huffington Post reports:

By contrast, charges that the opposition’s health care plan will kill people have been about as common on the House floor lately as resolutions naming post offices.

Take Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Fla.), who said in July: “Last week, Democrats released a health care bill which essentially said to America’s seniors: drop dead.”

Or Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.), a doctor, who reviewed the public health insurance option in July and diagnosed that it is “gonna kill people.”

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), not one to pull punches, suggested on the House floor that Congress “make sure we bring down the cost of health care for all Americans and that ensures affordable access for all Americans and is pro-life because it will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government.”

July was a busy time for House floor death sentences. Also that month, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), noted: “One in five people have to die because they went to socialized medicine…I would hate to think that among five women, one of ’em is gonna die because we go to socialized care.”

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) had a similar assessment. “They’re going to save money by rationing care, getting you in a long line. Places like Canada, United Kingdom, and Europe. People die when they’re in line,” he said on the House floor in July.

So far, none of the members of Congress who made such charges have apologized.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/30/despite-outrage-many-hous_n_304175.html

Of course they haven’t, because it would never occur to either the press or Democrats to demand apologies for the lies and smears Republicans have used to obstruct reform. But as soon as a Democrat finds the spine to say something that is functionally correct, all hell breaks lose. No one could have predicted…