Newshoggers.com

Worshipping Mammon On Healthcare

By Steve Hynd

Marc Moore of Poligazette, the self-professed "moderate" group blog that somehow manages always to kiss the rings of it's far-right readership, reveals the truth about conservative opposition to single-payer healthcare.

It would be great if we could provide unlimited medical care to every man, woman, and child in America.  It really would.  But that’s unrealistic and a doctor like Murphy should know better than to get on his soap box and pretend that universal health care can be delivered without a massive transfer of wealth from the middle and upper classes to the poor and a corresponding reduction in the standard of care delivered to those who would be paying for the system.

Translation: "I've got mine!"

He's a callous son of a bitch, Marc Moore. Not for him the "greatest good of the greatest number". There's no sense of social responsibility, certainly nothing akin to "from each according to their means, to each according to their needs". That would be too socialist and his god, Mammon, might desert him - along with Poligaxette's wingnut, money-grubbing, "I'm alright Jack" readership. He just wants to have his healthcare and keep his money too.

But it's apparently a sin to say so, even if you're a doctor.

Even the debate over health care is not immune from commentators whose caustic, even violent rhetoric would be more at home at a third-world pit fight than in a democratic society...Doctor, please, your hatred of free enterprise is showing and it’s not pretty.

I personally think caustic, even violent rhetoric is perfectly justified when facing a drip of self-absorbed shit like Moore. He wants us to be nice to him because he's openly saying he's got his amd the rest of us can fuck off. And if you aren't then you must hate capitalism, not Moore's selfishness, even if the doctor he's aiming at is actually saying he'll support some level of exploitative capitalism if that's the only way to save a few more people.

Fuck that. I value respect more than snide politeness, and Moore's snide demand for politeness even as he reveals himself as a self-serving bastard deserves no respect.

/rant

Soccer is Un American

Commentary By Ron Beasley

OK, I'm a soccer fan.  It;s probably because I was brain washed  when I lived in Europe for three years.  My oldest son played soccer until basketball became a 12 month sport and I spent many a Saturday morning standing in the Pacific Northwest rain watching him play and loving every minute of it.  And if there was any doubt that I'm a internationalist American football and baseball bore the hell out of me,  I was thrilled to see that the US beat Spain in the Confederation Cup but not everyone was thrilled.  The criminally insane neocons think soccer is un American.  Gary Schmitt:

Well, yes, it is. As someone who didn’t play soccer growing up, but had a dad who did and whose own kids played as well, I can say unquestionably that it is the sport in which the team that dominates loses more often than any other major sport I know of. Or, to put it more bluntly, the team that deserves to win doesn’t. For some soccer-loving friends, this is perfectly okay. Indeed, they will argue that it’s a healthy, conservative reminder of how justice does not always prevail in life.

Well, hooey on that. And, thankfully, Americans are not buying it. In spite of the fact that one can drive by an open field on Saturdays and usually see it filled with young boys and girls playing soccer, the game’s popularity has not moved anywhere toward being a major sport here in the United States. It’s grown for sure but not close to where folks once expected it to be given the number of youth that have played the game over the past two decades.

For sure, there may be a number of reasons that is the case but my suspicion is that the so-called “beautiful game” is not so beautiful to American sensibilities. We like, as good small “d” democrats, our underdogs for sure but we also still expect folks in the end to get their just desert. And, in sports, that means excellence should prevail. Of course, the fact that is often not the case when it comes to soccer may be precisely the reason the sport is so popular in the countries of Latin America and Europe.

This is the neocon/conservative ideology in a nutshell.  Any sport or system where the biggest and baddest don't win is flawed. 

Faith, Fear and Christopher Badeaux

By Steve Hynd

I think it's a bit rich of Christopher Badeaux to be publishing stuff like this:

Like a real-life, hyper-garrulous Forrest Gump, Sullivan has been present for, or at least has shared his thoughts — stray, organized, rational, and delusional — on most of the major events of the last twenty five years, at a rate that has only increased since he began blogging (before it was cool) and taking long vacations after pledge drives (which has been cool forever). More impressive than his output is his utter lack of fear of self-contradiction, flights of laughter-inducing hyperbole, public obsessiveness, repeated self-contradiction, betrayals of utter ignorance, and failed attempts to mimic the Bard by coining bizarre neologisms to match his wandering moods.

...To say that Sullivan has focused his laser-like mind on human reproductive organs is to engage in an understatement worthy of the master himself. We could simply look at Sullivan’s relentless, years-long focus on circumcision (a relentlessness not well-captured by the internet tubes, as Sullivan’s archives traditionally become difficult to search when he moves from site to site), an unusual genre for a man who will never have children and who is not Jewish or Muslim, though perhaps not so unusual given his general interest in the member in question. One could focus on his decision to start calling a 4,000 year old religious tradition “male genital mutilation,” thus cleverly calling untold generations of Jews child abusers and torturers, a decision that marks the sort of intellectual territory into which only a man bravely unwilling to live in Israel can tread.

When he's responsible for pretentiously written crap like this, in what is ostensibly a simple book review. 

I think it’s fair to say that Cormac McCarthy’s novels increasingly reflect a deeply disordered universe.

That requires some elaboration, and a brief excursion into natural law. A full exposition on that topic is beyond the scope of this essay, and frankly beyond my abilities, but in brief: The Lord made the Universe according to a set of hidden but largely discernable rules, and those rules produce specific, predictable outcomes once the rules and variables are known. Furthermore, all things are made ordered—oriented, if you prefer—to not only the Lord, but also to decent and right outcomes.

This is reflected in little things, like two plus two always yielding four; and in such obvious things that we’ve lost the ability to rationalize them, such as a man and a woman together yield life, where a man and a man together are sterile. In other words, there is not only the obvious physical event, but good things come of the act because it satisfies the underlying order God instilled in things. This order lies not merely in individual acts, but in an interconnected web that binds all things together in ways immediately detectable, often predictable, and usually inexplicable.

Our consciences and our natural inclinations are manifestations of this intrinsic order; disregarding them gives rise to disorder. Indeed, even doing things that are right and good can be taken to extremes that place one outside of that natural order. When we step outside of that order, as anyone who has lived with someone suffering through, say, anorexia or alcohol addiction can tell you, the disorder radiates outward in a spiderweb-crack pattern of pain. Sin itself is definitionally an intrinsically disordered act, because it puts one apart from, and against, God. In a sense, Original Sin is the greatest intrinsically disordered act of all, and we deal with its ripples to this day. [Emphasis mine]

One has to wonder if Badeaux's problem with Sullivan is that he's not succinct enough, not Catholic enough, not conservative enough...or simply not straight enough.

Just Saying.

Michael Calderone, Your Black Helicopter Is Waiting

By Steve Hynd

Nico Pitney of Huffington Post has been far and away one of the best blogging sources on the Iran elections. Like FDL owned the Scooter Libby trial or TPM owned the AG firings, Nico. alongside Robert Mackay at The Lede, has been there first and mostest with news and views, often from Iranians as well as Western sources, as the Iranian election protests and crackdown have unfolded.

So, Obama's staff noticed Nico's coverage and contacted him to say they'd like for him to maybe ask a question of the President at today's presser. He was duly called, and didn't ask a softball question.

“Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad, and if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn't that a betrayal of the — of what the demonstrators there are working towards?”

Obama replied:

Well look, we didn't have international observers on the ground, we can't say definitively what exactly happened at polling places throughout the country. What we know is that a sizeable percentage of the Iranian people themselves, spanning Iranian society, considered this election illegitimate. It's not an isolated instance, a little grumbling here or there. There [are] significant questions about the legitimacy of the election. And so ultimately, the most important thing for the Iranian government to consider is legitimacy in the eyes of its own people, not in the eyes of the United States. And that's why I've been very clear, ultimately this is up to the Iranian people to decide who their leadership is going to be and the structure of their government. What we can do is to say unequivocally that there are sets of international norms and principles about violence, about dealing with peaceful dissent, that spans cultures, spans borders, and what we've been seeing over the Internet and what we've been seeing in news reports, violates those norms and violates those principles. I think it is not too late for the Iranian government to recognize that there is a peaceful path that will lead to stability and legitimacy and prosperity for the Iranian people. We hope they take it.

Good for Nico. Kudos! I wish there were many more, just like him, working for mainstream outlets. But...

Cue a bunch of puffed up drunken popinjays with their veinous noses out of joint (you don't get nose vein breakout like that from Diet Coke, folks) because the White House didn't follow the established order of things and called upon an unwashed blogger type before the guy from Reuters.

Cue Michael Calderone at Politico, who manages to get not one but two posts out of the ridiculous premise that Nico and the WH "coordinated" their exchange so that Obama knew what question was coming.

And Cue a slew of slavering rightwing conpiracy believers jumping on Calderone's black helicopter for a ride.

Ridiculous. "Gotcha" kindergarten games of the lowest level.

Update: Dana Milbank of the WaPo gets in line for that helicopter too, in a really dishonest bit of reporting. At no point does he actually quote Nico's question, simply writing that:

Pitney asked his arranged question. Reporters looked at one another in amazement at the stagecraft they were witnessing. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel grinned at the surprised TV correspondents in the first row.

Then adding:

As if to compensate for the prepackaged Huffington Post question, Obama went quickly to Fox News for a predictably hostile question from Major Garrett. "In your opening remarks, sir, you said about Iran that you were appalled and outraged," Garrett said. "What took you so long?

"I don't think that's accurate," Obama volleyed testily, calling his toughening statements on Iran "entirely consistent."

Thus giving the impression that Nico's question was a tough one without actually quoting it so that his readers could decide for themselves if asking about a possible betrayal of the demonstrators was a softball for Obama.

D-day already posted this You-Tube today in a post that wasn't about this snit in a teacup:

And writes:

I don't think you can find a more perfect summation of the traditional media inside Washington than this - Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza dressed like fops in bowties and smoking jackets - or more likely, dressed like their own mental projection of themselves - smugly discoursing, with CHAMBER MUSIC in the background, about Beltway gossip.

...I think at this point, we can stop asking "If only the media would cover such-and-such story in THIS way..." For that to be successful, we would have to get such a story covered by someone like these two. That's just not going to happen.

Who does Dana Milbank think he is? This guy?

Andy McCarthy Loses It

By Steve Hynd

Wow. Andrew McCarthy at National Review is hearing black helicopters stuffed full of Islamic Communists coming to hide under his bed. And President Obama is the pilot!

The key to understanding Obama, on Iran as on other matters, is that he is a power-politician of the hard Left : He is steeped in Leftist ideology, fueled in anger and resentment ... It would have been political suicide to issue a statement supportive of the mullahs, so Obama's instinct was to do the next best thing: to say nothing supportive of the freedom fighters.

...Obama has a preferred outcome here, one that is more in line with his worldview, and it is not victory for the freedom fighters. He is hanging as tough as political pragmatism allows, and by doing so he is making his preferred outcome more likely.  That's not weakness, it's strength — and strength of the sort that ought to frighten us.

All this from a man who has previously argued that locking people up forever, without trial, without habeas rights but with torture, is as essential to preserving our freedoms as the right of (Republican) presidents to assert state secret privileges over anything they care to. Who's the real totalitarian hiding his true inclinations under a thin veneer of political pragmatism here?

Kevin Drum writes:

to his credit, [Rich] Lowry does respond to McCarthy here.  Remarkably (or not, perhaps), McCarthy then digs himself in even deeper here.  "I detect in your post a sense that I'm this close to the fringe," he says.  Well, there's no need to sense what I'm saying in my post, Andy.  You are batshit crazy.

Chris Orr at TNR has a post worth quoting in full for it's delicious snark in the service of Logic 101:

What I find most hilarious about the Andy McCarthy post Jason linked to is that, rather than try to situate Obama somewhere on the spectrum between fanatical ideologue and bloodless pragmatist, McCarthy simply asserts that the president resides at one extreme--except when he resides at the other. Though nonsensical, this description is, in its clumsy way, unfalsifiable: Any data point that conflicts with Obama's presumed "hard leftism" is evidence of his craven pragmatism, and vice versa.

I just wish that, as long as McCarthy was offering such a pointless analysis, he'd been a little more creative with his opposing categories. Something on the order of, "The key to understanding Obama is that he is a hybrid of delicate, magic unicorn and ravenous zombie. He will frolic in the woodlands, spreading pixie dust and joy, until his hunger for human brains begins to rise..."

It's definitely time that Lowry, National Review's editor, asked McCarthy to take a leave of absence and maybe get some therapy - or failing that to go join WorldNetDaily instead.

Put Up or Shut Up, Wingnut Haters

By Steve Hynd

Regular readers know I love to read a righteous rant. And they don't come any more righteous than this from my pal Sara Robinson - Memo to the Right Wing: Put Up or Shut Up. A big blockquote is very definitely in order, but go read the whole thing.

Dear Conservatives:

Your fellow Americans demand an answer -- and we want it now. Just one simple question:

Are you deliberately trying to start a civil war?

Just answer the question. Yes or no. Don't insult us with elisions, evasions, dithering, qualifications, or conditional answers. We need to know what your intentions are -- and we need to know NOW. People are being shot dead in the streets of America at the rate of several per month now. You may not want responsibility for this -- but the whackadoodles pulling the triggers make no bones about who put them up to this.

You did.

The assassins themselves are ratting you out. They're telling us, straight up, that they were inspired to act by the hate radio talkers that you empowered -- one of whom is now the de facto head of the Republican party. They got it from media outlets owned by your biggest donors. They got it from bloggers who receive daily talking points faxed in from the GOP. They got it from activists representing causes that would have never become causes in the first place if the issues hadn't been politically expedient for you.

...We are demanding an accounting from you. We are demanding that you take responsibility for the situation you've created. We are looking you straight in the eyes and demanding a straight answer:

Are you deliberately trying to start a civil war?

If your answer is yes, then stop this cowardly half-assed screwing around. You speak the language of war and honor; but the honor code of the warriors you pretend to revere demands that you declare your intentions. If you really believe that the only way to get the America you want is to negate a fair election, shred the Constitution, and violently cleanse the country of everyone who doesn't agree with you, then man up and get on with it. If it's a shooting war you want, do not doubt that there are plenty of progressives who will oblige you. If this goal is so important that you're really willing to kill for it, please don't forget that you will also need to be willing to die for it. Because, like martyrs Greg McKendry and Steven Johns proved, we are willing to do whatever is necessary to stop you.

If your answer is no, then you have just one other choice. Knock off the tantrums, grow up, rebuild your party, come back to the table, and sit down and govern with us. (We know this will be a stretch, but we think some of you are capable of it.) You will need to learn, many of you for the first time, to get your way as adults do -- without fear-based politics, polarizing rhetoric, on-air threats against those who disagree with you, and repeating outrageous lies in the face of stone facts and irrefutable evidence.

And most of all: you need to stop feeding the crazies. You need to disavow them in every way possible -- sincerely, emphatically, and with full awareness that every time one of these people acts, it destroys the credibility of "conservatives," "Republicans," and "the right wing" in the eyes of the country.

It will, of course, fall on mostly deaf ears. Even though they've been actively talking about violence and even a civil war for a long time now, the wingnuts have already exonerated themselves. They know who to blame.

Petraeus: "No Concerns At All" About Miranda Rights For Detainees Of FBI

By Steve Hynd

Spencer Ackerman was there to hear Gen. David Petraeus speak to the CNAS annual conference today, and liveblogged the speech. In amongst some very interesting COIN-related stuff, Petraeus took a moment to puncture the Republican outrage de jour.

Spencer quotes the man who the Right have made into a modern early-career Caesar:

A Fox News reporter asks about a Weekly Standard report that detainees were getting read Miranda rights. Petraeus says he has “No concerns at all. This is the FBI doing what the FBI does. … The real rumor yesterday is whether our forces were reading Miranda rights to detainees and the answer to that is no.” Sorry, Steve Hayes.

Meanwhile, the Anonymous Liberal notes that the Bush administration had FBI teams "read rights similar to a standard U.S. Miranda warning" to detainees too, and, via A.L., Greg Sargent has a statement from the Obama D.O.J. to the effect that there's been no overall change in policy and Miranda warnings are simply used to "preserve the quality of evidence obtained". As A.L. writes:

This makes complete sense. If you know you may want to prosecute someone eventually, it's malpractice not to mirandize them. It's a very simple measure that helps preserve evidence. I'm sure its standard FBI practice and has been for decades, including during the Bush years.

So to summarize: just another p.o.s. scary story created out of whole cloth for political gamesmanship.

Emotions and power

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Those in power or wish to be in power use human emotions.  Perhaps the two strongest emotions are fear and sex. Religious hegonomists have long used sex but the political hegemonists use fear.  And as we all know the neocons and the Bush/Cheney administration have used fear with success.  Now the fear factor is not really working all that well now but the few right wingers still around are still driven by it.

Glen Greenwald: The paralyzing fears of the Right. The latest thing that is terrorizing those on the right are 17 Chinese Uighurs.  They have been imprisoned at GITMO for seven years in spite of the fact that the Pentagon does not consider them a threat.  The Island of Palau has agreed to take them (for a price) and the wingers have wet their collective pants.

Writing on Michelle Malkin's blog Hot Air today, war-supporting tough guy Ed Morrissey is petrified about this development and, as a result, he has announced that he is now too fearful to consider visiting that island:

Of course, with a recidivism rate for released Gitmo detainees of around 14%, odds are that a couple of the Uighurs might not be quite as cuddly as Obama promises. Hopefully it will work out all right for Palau and its tourists, but if I were making decisions on expensive South Pacific vacations, I’d start looking elsewhere.

It's hard to put into words how inebriated with irrational fear someone has to be in order to be so scared of 17 Uighurs -- who were never guilty of anything -- that they would avoid traveling to whatever place this handful of persecuted individuals is located.  But this is the right-wing movement at its core:  its leaders cynically ratchet up fear levels as high as possible to justify whatever they want to do (invade Iraq, torture people, spy on Americans with no warrants) and their adherents (along with plenty of others) become more and more paralyzed by their fears of anything Muslim. 

These of course are the same people that were indignant with DHS listed right wing extremists as a terror threat.  But are they afraid of the the man who killed Dr Tillman or the white supremest who opened fire at the holocaust museum today.  No they don't - the powerful are very good at directing the fear.  It's those Muslims and brown people you need to be afraid of.  And don't forget the people who aren't Christian - not evangelical Christians. 

Uh Oh

By BJ Bjornson

Obama has went out and made some rational sounding statements regarding Iran, noting that they may have the right to nuclear energy, (under the NPT, it is very clear that they do have that right), and that their energy concerns and aspirations are valid.

Predictably, this has driven the wingnutosphere into a frenzy.  Among my favourites are Pam Geller saying there's an enemy of free men in the White House and Dan Riehl telling Israel to warm up the bombers.

For myself, I'm looking at the statement in full, which after Obama says the Iranians might have some right to nuclear power, continues to say:

provided it proves by the end of the year that its aspirations are peaceful.

This sounds disturbingly similar in my mind to the Bush administration's demand that Saddam prove he didn't have any WMD's.   How do you prove peaceful intentions?  I mean, it is quite possible to put into place sufficient safeguards to ensure none of the nuclear material is diverted away from civilian use, which I would say is more than prudent.  But intentions?  How exactly do you measure such things in a quantitative fashion so that the Iranians could, in six months, prove their peacefulness, apparently for all time?  This leaves Obama an out so wide you could drive an aircraft carrier through it sideways.

No, this is mostly just a conciliatory-sounding gesture most likely aimed at boosting the moderate factions in the upcoming Iranian presidential election.  Nothing wrong with that of course, and it gives us another opportunity to bask in that special brand of right-wing moronosphere frenzy over how Obama's sounding a little nicer while deviating only small iotas from Bush's foreign policy is dooming the country and selling out to the enemy.  And they wonder why people have a hard time taking them seriously?

More on the Tiller Murder

By BJ Bjornson

Police have arrested a man, believed to be Scott Roeder, for the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Roeder is apparently connected to the group Operation Rescue, whose founder came out today to call Tiller, "a mass murderer".

Justin Gardiner has a couple of pieces of information about Roeder up on his blog, the second concerning his criminal record over having bomb components and tax protests. Bastard.logic also found this little gem from the man.

It seems as though what is happening in Kansas could be compared to the "lawlessness" which is spoken of in the Bible. Tiller is the concentration camp "Mengele" of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgement upon our nation.

Earlier today, Dr. Slammy offered a bet:

Here’s the wager: the murderer will turn out to be a right-wing Christian terrorist. I’ll also offer a side bet: his media consumption includes the like of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Bill O’Reilly and/or Glenn Beck.

If I’m wrong, check this space. I’ll gladly post an update noting my mistake. But as of this moment, would you bet against me?

I wouldn't have bet against him, and it is fairly clear he would have won against all takers.

In the comments to my earlier post, Steve pointed to this post on The Brad Blog, pointing out much of the same sentiment.

Tiller was better known to Fox "News" viewers as "Tiller the Baby Killer", as he's long been described by Bill O'Reilly who has spent years targeting Tiller on the most-watched show in cable news. O'Reilly has long demonized him with allegations of performing illegal late-term abortions, characterized as murder by O'Reilly and his guests.

Of course, it's no more O'Reilly's fault when a lunatic takes action to murder someone the Fox host has targeted for years on his popular television show, than it was when another lunatic gunned down church-goers in Tennessee last year claiming in his pre-murder "manifesto" that it was "a symbolic killing", and that he had "wanted to kill...every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book." Goldberg is a regular featured guest on O'Reilly's show, and the author of 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken is #37).

Jim David Adkisson, the Knoxville, TN murderer, also advocated the murder of "liberals" in his manifesto, echoing comments frequently made by O'Reilly that "The Major News outlets have become the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party. Liberals are evil, they embrace the tenets of Karl Marx, they're Marxist, socialist, communists."

Those are all merely coincidences, of course. Nobody, other than the murderers themselves, should feel it necessary to take any personal responsibility whatsoever when such events occur.

Personal responsibility isn't something the right-wing excels at. Any time one of their more extreme elements takes it upon themselves to follow through on their hate-mongering, they wash their hands of it and offer half-hearted condolences while going right back to the rhetoric that inspired the violence in the first place. And from browsing the right-wing blog headlines at memeorandum, there is not a little bit of subtle celebration going on.

RIH: Baby Murderer George Tiller Shot Dead - Macsmind

Abortionist George “Baby Killer” Tiller Shot Dead In Kansas - theblogprof

George Tiller (Child Murderer) shot to death at Wichita church - freerepublic

Report: George Tiller Shot To Death [Child Murderer Killed At Wichita Church] - also freerepublic

Child Killer George Tiller Killed - La Shawn Barber

Many of the rest include "partial-birth" or "late-term abortionist" in their title, and no, I'm not linking to any of them. Go forth and find the filth yourself if you're of mind to.

It all reminds me nothing so much as their response when it was disclosed that Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheik Muhammad where waterboarded a couple of hundred times. As in, sure it was illegal and everything, but they're really evil and therefore deserved it.

They won't come out and defend Roeder, probably. They don't want to be that closely linked to him. But they are making it quite clear that they aren't too distressed about his assassination of the "child murderer" Tiller. Or, as deBeauxOs puts it:

Pity the poor abortion criminalizers for they cannot rejoice out loud.

Shed a tear for their plight; Bill Donohue and Jill Stanek stewing in their venom, silenced because their noisy jubilation could attract unwanted FBI attention.

Consider their dilemma: for years they've directed murderous hatred towards health care practitioners who provide abortion and now they're not able to claim the glory.

So sad for the members of the Vulture Culture who want to embrace the man who shot Dr George Tiller dead in the lobby of his church.

Life is unfair, they cannot trumpet that this is a MASSIVE victory for their side, lest they be charged as co-conspirators in this public assassination.

I'll point you to this post as well. Go down to where she's got the Twitter round-up. It's f**king unbelievable.