Politics: August 2009 Archives

When I heard that our former Gov. Tom Ridge had written, in his memoir of working in the Bush administration, that he was pressured to raise the terror threat level immediately before the 2004 election, I though, well, duh.

We knew that.

Still, loads of people are shocked, just shocked by the revelations in Ridge's new book. Are these people idiots? I mean, anyone who was paying attention knew that the administration was playing political games with our safety.

To his credit, Ridge resisted the efforts of others in the administration to do their bidding. He quit not long after that.

Just one thing, though, you know, it would have been helpful to know this stuff five years ago, Tom.

The headline from today's Onion:

Congress Deadlocked Over How To Not Provide Health Care

From the story:

"'Both parties understand that the current system is broken,' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Monday. 'But what we can't seem to agree upon is how to best keep it broken, while still ensuring that no elected official takes any political risk whatsoever. It's a very complicated issue.

"'Ultimately, though, it's our responsibility as lawmakers to put these differences aside and focus on refusing Americans the health care they deserve,' Pelosi added.

"The legislative stalemate largely stems from competing ideologies deeply rooted along party lines. Democrats want to create a government-run system for not providing health care, while Republicans say coverage is best denied by allowing private insurers to make it unaffordable for as many citizens as possible.

"'We have over 40 million people without insurance in this country today, and that is unacceptable,' Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said. 'If we would just quit squabbling so much, we could get that number up to 50 or even 100 million. Why, there's no reason we can't work together to deny health care to everyone but the richest 1 percent of the population.'

"'That's what America is all about,' he added.

"House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said on Meet The Press that Republicans would never agree to a plan that doesn't allow citizens the choice to be denied medical care in the private sector.

"'Americans don't need some government official telling them they don't have the proper coverage to receive treatment,' Boehner said. 'What they need is massive insurance companies to become even more rich and powerful by withholding from average citizens the care they so desperately require. We're talking about people's health and the obscene profits associated with that, after all.'

Sometimes the best humor is the truth and vice versa.

Read the whole thing here.

Today's Paul Krugman column in the Times nails it:

It begins:

"'"I am in this race because I don't want to see us spend the next year re-fighting the Washington battles of the 1990s. I don't want to pit Blue America against Red America; I want to lead a United States of America.' So declared Barack Obama in November 2007, making the case that Democrats should nominate him, rather than one of his rivals, because he could free the nation from the bitter partisanship of the past.

"Some of us were skeptical. A couple of months after Mr. Obama gave that speech, I warned that his vision of a 'different kind of politics' was a vain hope, that any Democrat who made it to the White House would face 'an unending procession of wild charges and fake scandals, dutifully given credence by major media organizations that somehow can't bring themselves to declare the accusations unequivocally false.'

"So, how's it going?"

Not so well.

Later, Krugman observes:

"Some pundits claim that Mr. Obama has polarized the country by following too liberal an agenda. But the truth is that the attacks on the president have no relationship to anything he is actually doing or proposing."

Read the whole thing here.

The Post's Steven Perlstein, who has written lucidly about the financial crisis, takes on health care today.

He writes:

"The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.

"There are lots of valid criticisms that can be made against the health reform plans moving through Congress -- I've made a few myself. But there is no credible way to look at what has been proposed by the president or any congressional committee and conclude that these will result in a government takeover of the health-care system. That is a flat-out lie whose only purpose is to scare the public and stop political conversation."

Good stuff.

Read the whole thing here.

And, as always, the New York Times' Paul Krugman brings it, this time explaining the mobs that have been showing up at health care town hall meetings.

"For the most part, the protesters appear to be genuinely angry. The question is, what are they angry about?

"There was a telling incident at a town hall held by Representative Gene Green, D-Tex. An activist turned to his fellow attendees and asked if they 'oppose any form of socialized or government-run health care.' Nearly all did. Then Representative Green asked how many of those present were on Medicare. Almost half raised their hands.

"Now, people who don't know that Medicare is a government program probably aren't reacting to what President Obama is actually proposing. They may believe some of the disinformation opponents of health care reform are spreading, like the claim that the Obama plan will lead to euthanasia for the elderly. (That particular claim is coming straight from House Republican leaders.) But they're probably reacting less to what Mr. Obama is doing, or even to what they've heard about what he's doing, than to who he is.

"That is, the driving force behind the town hall mobs is probably the same cultural and racial anxiety that's behind the 'birther' movement, which denies Mr. Obama's citizenship. Senator Dick Durbin has suggested that the birthers and the health care protesters are one and the same; we don't know how many of the protesters are birthers, but it wouldn't be surprising if it's a substantial fraction.

"And cynical political operators are exploiting that anxiety to further the economic interests of their backers."

Nails it. Read the whole thing here.