Hitler and the Dining Room Table

I like Barney Frank. He says what he feels, usually in a way that makes his argument better. But it's almost a no-brainer to do a comeback on the idiocy with which he was faced in Dartmouth, Massachussetts this past week. I mean, what do you say to someone who thinks it's a valid statement to compare Obama to Hitler? A woman carrying a poster with Obama's image modified with a Hitlerian mustache stepped up to the microphone to ask why Frank supports a Nazi policy. There are so many things wrong with this it boggles the mind where to begin. Frank's response was probably the most effective. "On what planet do you spend most of your time?" he asked. Then: "Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table." He then commented that her freedom to carry that poster and make such lamebrained statements was a tribute to the First Amendment and Freedom of Speech. I salute his restraint. To compare any president of the United States to Hitler is a stretch, even with the likes of Obama's predecessor. (I might consider it for Cheney, but even he does not match the level of malignancy achieved by Adolph, nor does our system allow for such people to act with unrestrained impunity, hard as that might be for some to accept.) But to compare Barack Obama to the man man of the 20th Century is such a profoundly ignorant mischaracterization that it is tempting to write off this whole experiment in potential civilization as a failure. Where does this shit come from? The Republican Party, what is left of it, is grasping at straws, sinking in the quicksand of its own inanity. We must take care to not be pulled into the quagmire in some misguided attempt to rescue it through well-intentioned but doomed bipartisan sentiments. The Republican Party has devolved into a nasty cadre of ideologues, a shrinking room of hydrophobic screechers who claw and scratch at anyone who tries to do this country a service by bringing it back to some semblance of decency. They have fed on their own conspiracy-fevered viscera for so long that they cannot even hear the words much less the sentences of opposing viewpoints. We should perhaps let them sink and drown. It would be a kindness. The fear-mongering is reminiscent of everything we've seen since 2000. Rachel Maddow, who is one of the most able of contemporary analysts on television, shows the process and the connections here. Shouting, screaming, inane blather---noise filling the spaces in which rational discourse might take place if only the decibel level could be reduced. Platitudes, sloganeering, slander, and lies are flooding these so-called town hall meetings and shoving aside reason and discovery and thought. These are not people who are interested in understanding anything, they are people bent on stopping something they've been told---been told---they should not allow.

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Did Obama fall for Big Pharma sales hype?

Did you hear that Obama has been cutting some secret deals with Big Pharma after his campaign filled with promises that health care reform would be a big open book? I don't quite know what to think of this. Maybe Obama is leading Pharma on, and he's gonna stab them in the back at the last minute. That ploy has the advantage of freezing the Pharma advertising money in place for now. This is important because Pharma has enough advertising money to destroy what's left of health care reform. So three cheers for the possibility that Obama is a shrewd guy who is keeping his enemies close to keep them at bay, at least for now. I'd give that about a 2% chance of being the case. What I'm assuming is that Obama knows that the system is so utterly corrupted by legalized bribery (campaign contributions) that Congress is incapable of giving us real health care reform. That's why Obama is unwilling to promote the single payer system that most Americans want. In this more likely scenario, Obama has already given up on any meaningful health care reform. Instead, he's working hard to spin the illusion of health care reform, and the final plan will actually be a few trinkets and whistles. Maybe the government will subsidize dentists to give out candy to their patients. Maybe it will be nothing at all, but all of the Congressional Leaders will nonetheless pose and smile with their 3,000 page health care reform bill that no one will have actually read and for good reason. As many progressives are arguing, with increasing volume these days, why not take the profit out of health care insurance? Why not essentially expand medicare to all Americans? The experts I trust say that single payor is the only legitimate reform. Everything else is throwing tax money at a corrupt and inefficient system. I wasn't a big fan of single payor until I started learning how many other countries are making it work. The benefits are many (In addition to the obvious improvement that sick people won't be thrown on the street, employed people won't be locked into terrible jobs just for the insurance). Really, why should we have for-profit health insurance any more than we might have for-profit fire departments and for-profit libraries? Except that we have a for-profit Congress and a for-profit military (e.g., Blackwater and all those private soldiers earning $100,000 to be in Afghanistan). It's getting downright un-American to be duped into doing something because it's RIGHT. But I'm still obsessing about the deal Obama cut with Pharma. We heard how Pharma would save Americans $80 Billion over the next 10 years. Did you see what the written deal is: It's "up to $80 Billion." pharma-memo Now what is Obama thinking? When I see that a store is offering "up to" 80% off, I know (because I'm not a total idiot) that this means the store might be offering 2 items at 10% off and everything else at 0% off. That's the meaning of "up to." Signing an agreement with "up to" is stupid, truly idiotic. My question (which I raised in the beginning of this post) is "Who is the one being stupid?" I'll be watching for some happy 11th hour excitement when Obama tells Pharma to fuck off, that we're enacting single payor and that for its loyalty and naivete, Pharma will be rewarded with tax breaks of "up to" 100%, which means negative 37%. Take that, assholes. That's what you get for trying to cut secret deals with my President. If only. Epilogue: For those of you who are pissed that Obama is a communist, note that Blue Cross just tried to raised its rates by 56% in Michigan.

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Obama voters increasingly frustrated with Obama

Drew Weston has captured my frustration with Obama:

I happen to be one of the lucky ones. I don't carry a balance on my credit cards, my home is still worth more than my mortgage, and I still have a job. But if Americans are starting to turn populist anger toward a White House that has doggedly refused to focus that anger where it belongs -- toward the banks, the mortgage brokers, the regulators who failed to regulate, the oil companies that have blocked energy reform for decades while racking up record profits, the health insurance companies that make their profits by denying coverage and discriminating against the ill, the pharmaceutical companies whose lobbyists have negotiated away the right to negotiate, and the Republicans who bankrupted the treasury during the eight long years of the Bush Presidency and crashed the economy on their way out -- I can understand why.
We are not seeing major change where we most need them. I'm increasingly thinking that Obama is way over his head. I do think Obama is a good and decent man, but it's becoming increasingly clear that large corporations completely own and run Congress. It will remain this way unless the people get mad enough to get up from watching movies on their big screen TVs and take to the streets. But anger is not enough. First, the people have to take the time to understand how bad things are and how they are having their way of life stolen by plutocrats. This is unlikely to happen on a mass scale given that so many of us can't or won't take the time to self-critically study complex situations.

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Corrupt bankers and corrupt government regulators

Robert Scheer sums up the cozy relationship between the U.S. government and the financial sector and it's ugly. One federal judge has the guts to tell it straight, but where is the SEC and where is the Obama Administration? In the process of acquiring failed brokerage house Merrill Lynch, Bank of America sneaks more than $1 Million in bonuses each to 696 Merrill Lynch executives who ran the company into the ground (Merrill Lynch had lost $27 Billion). These outrageous payments occurred while BofA was receiving $45 Billion in taxpayer money as part of the "bailout." On top of that, 39,000 additional Merrill Lynch employees were each paid an average of $91,000 in bonuses, an amount that the Bank of America attorney suggested wasn't a significant amount. New York federal Judge Jed S. Rakoff disagreed, saying:

"I'm glad you think that $91,000 is not a lot of money; I wish the average American was making $91,000."

How corrupt is the government/banking relationship? The SEC did sue BofA of misleading it's shareholders, but this sweetheart settlement stinks to high hell. Consider this quote from Scheer's article:

The SEC complaint did accuse BofA of misleading its shareholders, but instead of digging deeply into how such decisions had been made and by whom, a deal was concocted in which BofA got off with a paltry $33 million fine. That is less than the bonus received by one of the Merrill execs. Yet the SEC deal would have closed the case on how that decision was made.

"You filed a rather uninformative, bare-bones complaint," Judge Rakoff told SEC lawyer David Rosenfeld, who lamely defended the decision to avoid going after the bankers involved, and it is instructive of whose interest he was serving that "[t]he lawyer for Bank of America periodically whispered what appeared to be suggestions to Mr. Rosenfeld," as a New York Times article put it. Whispering between government regulators and the Wall Street honchos ostensibly being regulated is what got us into this mess in the first place.

In the meantime, TARP watchdog Elizabeth Warren is repeatedly warning that the same toxic assets that triggered the meltdown are still on the banks' books. She's warning of the "looming commercial mortgage crisis."

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Defusing Gatesgate

Thanks to Barack Obama's ingenuity and his faith that human beings should always be challenged to figure out their differences with empathy, we have a wonderful resolution rather than an interminable ugliness. Bold, beautiful move. Here's how Henry Louis Gates now sees things:

Let me say that I thank God that I live in a country in which police officers put their lives at risk to protect us every day, and, more than ever, I’ve come to understand and appreciate their daily sacrifices on our behalf. I’m also grateful that we live in a country where freedom of speech is a sacrosanct value and I hope that one day we can get to know each other better, as we began to do at the White House this afternoon over beers with President Obama.

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