Perhaps the best health-insurance op-ed ever

Titled "If You Don't Want the Public Option, Get the Hell Out of the Way", but the content is actually so much more.

Elect Tony Woods!

My congressional district (CA-10) will probably have a special election this year, as Ellen Tauscher will be confirmed to a job in the State Dept. I'm backing Tony Woods, who was promoted today by the big-name AmericaBlog.

Fair, balanced, and full of ****

In the world of Faux News, there are no bad Republicans.

Mark Sanford?

The news today that South Carolina gov. Mark Sanford went AWOL from family and office because of an extramarital affair causes two questions to rattle around in my head:

• When will the American public realize that a Republican officeholder who pounds the "family values" drum is probably having a sex scandal, divorce, or affair?
• Would it have been less harmful for Sanford if the original rumor of his whereabouts—namely, hiking the Appalachian Trail on Naked Hiking Day—had turned out to be true?

How many "lone" wolves make a pack?

The right says it's not responsible for people shooting up churches, murdering doctors, and shooting everyone from college students to police officers. We on the left say differently: when your policies and propaganda produce monthly terrorism, you can no longer write them off as "lone wolves." Where the left protested against Bush's policies with words, the right is doing it with guns, spurred on by the words of the right-wing media that dominates this country. I strongly recommend you click the link and read the post. (And if you have time, read the one that "follows" it—above it, blogwise—the one that asks the critical question, "Are you deliberately trying to start a civil war?")

"Sweet Mother of Abraham Lincoln!"

I guessed Grover Cleveland:

Are you ready to have your mind blown? Who might you guess is the earliest president, chronologically, to have a grandchild alive today? Don’t cheat. Guess.

Correct answer is at the usually excellent blog Gin And Tacos.

We -- Americans -- will torture again

Don't fool yourself. We will do it again. And we will claim it's legal, and we will suffer as a result, but we will not hold the culprits culpable. Republicans are now telling us that torture has only stopped because of a Democratic executive order, not because of any law, and it will be done again.

Torture -- and more importantly, the insane "unitary executive" theory that underpinned it and a thousand other abuses -- remains a viable and so-far undisputed weapon in the Republican toolkit. It will return, as surely as the Republican theory of total executive supremacy survived Watergate and Iran-Contra.

Consider the odds. Beginning with the 1968 election of Richard Nixon, Republicans occupied the White House for 28 of 40 years, reelecting three Presidents to second terms, each of whom -- Nixon, Regan [sic] and George W. Bush -- presided over scandalous escalations in the executive supremacy theory. Democrats have reelected just one during this time. And he was impeached.

We get the government we deserve. You and I, my fellow citizens, are to blame if we don't investigate and prosecute:

As tiresome as it can sometimes be to see people frame matters so that it all comes down to one issue and one issue only, I find myself returning to this one again and again. Whether or not torture is your issue. Or wiretapping. Or indefinite detention. Or signing statements. Or anything, really -- environment, global warming, abortion, health care, taxes, terrorism, the war. No matter what your issue is, at heart, you're dependent on a continuing and consistent respect for the law. Because without it, none of your work on politics and policy is worth anything the moment the White House falls to someone who's not you.

The Sith lord we've been looking for

Everything depends on establishing a constitutional right for cloning. Then all that will be left are the outer rim territories...

No pardons for torturers!

A post on Daily Kos is a wonderful expression of my own feelings about how Americans should not be expected to take to the streets just to convince the government to prosecute crimes.

I can only fathom that we are supposed to beg.

I think we are supposed to get down on our knees, even grovel for it, and beg that our nation act in accordance with its own laws, with international laws, and with basic decency. We among the more expendable classes are supposed to write passionate editorials; we are supposed to form grass roots movements; we are supposed to make the usual dozens of phone calls, and be ashamed, and debase ourselves -- and then, perhaps, if we are very lucky, and if beg enough and with the right arguments and place enough pressure in the right, most uncomfortable spots, then our own government will relent, and our laws will be followed, and investigations conducted, and if warranted, those responsible will be prosecuted. And we will finally as a nation, at long last, reject torture in practice as well as in words. [...]

Whether or not any of the parties involved are actually convicted, whether even a single one of them see a day of jail time is not the question. Whether we preclude that possibility, as policy of government, is the more damaging question. For in precluding even the possibility of justice, we immunize the act, and if we immunize the act then it is not, in any meaningful sense, actually illegal.

We should not have to beg to have crimes by powerful people treated as seriously as crimes by the powerless. We should not have to campaign to have crimes by Americans treated as seriously as the same crimes committed by people in other countries. And yet that's what the national politicians and commentators are telling us.

Perhaps, in Frank Luntz fashion, we simply lack the correct frame. Perhaps we simply don't have the right word, catchphrase, or slogan to enable people to understand that by not investigating and prosecuting torture, we have made it legal. I realize that there are honest differences of opinion; some people know how our civil rights have been trampled over the past decade and yet believe that that's a good thing. But many more people are simply unaware of what has happened, and that's what framing is for. So after reading that Kos post, consider brainstorming: what phrase on earth will it take to make people realize that we have legalized the unthinkable?

My contribution: "No pardons for torturers!" Refusal to investigate, and pre-emptive refusal to prosecute, is effectively the same as a pardon. If Obama pardoned Bush, Cheney, and everyone else involved in American torture, I think there might be an actual outcry; so let's oppose this by naming it what it is. "No pardons for torturers!"

Dead Wrong in Public for 2009

Angels, Twins, Red Sox, and Rays to make the playoffs in the American League; Diamondbacks, Cubs, Phillies, and Mets in the NL. Cubs beat the Rays in the Series (my heart says Rays, but my brain thinks the Sox will be there instead). The Dodgers and Giants slug it out for second and third in the NL West; the A's would have a terrific season if it weren't for all the injuries to fragile veterans and fragile young pitching arms.

We're long past numb

This Associated Press analysis connects some dots that need connecting: Something is horribly wrong in this country, and we're ignoring it:

The mass shootings that left 14 people dead in Binghamton, N.Y., on Friday were horrifying, depressing, nationally wrenching. They were also, to some extent, unsurprising in a society where the term "mass shooting" has lost its status as unthinkable aberration and become mere fodder for a fresh news cycle. [...]

People are of course responsible for their actions, but it's hard to avoid wondering what's afoot in the darkest recesses of what we like to call American exceptionalism. For so long, the national narrative has been so bullish about equality of opportunity, so persuasive in its romance of possibility for all. Is it so subversive to speculate, then, that when the engine of possibility runs into roadblocks, people can't cope?

Immoral, in any culture

We are propping up a government in Afghanistan that is becoming more and more oppressive. Now that we have finally stopped the steady deterioration of civil rights in the U.S., isn't it time to speak out against eliminations of freedoms in countries we are responsible for?

Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, has signed a law which "legalises" rape, women's groups and the United Nations warn. Critics claim the president helped rush the bill through parliament in a bid to appease Islamic fundamentalists ahead of elections in August.

In a massive blow for women's rights, the new Shia Family Law negates the need for sexual consent between married couples, tacitly approves child marriage and restricts a woman's right to leave the home, according to UN papers seen by The Independent.

"It is one of the worst bills passed by the parliament this century," fumed Shinkai Karokhail, a woman MP who campaigned against the legislation. "It is totally against women's rights. This law makes women more vulnerable." [...]