Rupert Murdoch, you have blood on your hands.

Day 642

Americans die needlessly from lack of health-care coverage. Medical errors kill thousands of Americans a year for lack of health-care reform. A staggering 46 million Americans - the entire population of Spain - have no health coverage. An estimated additional 100 million-plus Americans - one-third of the population - are inadequately insured. More than 10,000 Americans drop their health insurance every day due to unaffordable premiums. Catastrophic illness is the leading cause of U.S. personal bankruptcies. America alone among industrial nations lacks the universal health care that Britons have enjoyed for 64 years.  

What's standing in the way of enactment of the U.S. health-care reform proposals under careful negotiation on Capitol Hill is an orchestrated campaign of disinformation by the medical-industrial complex. These profit-seekers stand to lose their fat profits, and be subjected for the first time to genuine competititon and accountability, if the proposed healthcare reforms become law. As they have in Britain, France, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Japan, Belgium, Iceland, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Norway, New Zealand, Spain and Switzerland, where medicine is not regarded primarily as a business but as a fundamental human right. 

And where, overwhelmingly, do those Americans most likely to believe the lies get their "news"...

...that reform means a government takeover of healthcare (under the proposed reforms, if you're happy with your doctors and insurance, by all means keep them, your circumstances won't change an iota)

...that government will decide who lives and dies (actually, it's private insurers that do that, by denying coverage, as do doctor-owned hospitals, by charging exorbitant fees for bedpans to heart surgery that patients' families ultimately cannot continue to pay for; the proposed "public option" would remove money from these traumatic decisions),

...that government will provide free healthcare to illegal immigrants (not a chance; no one has proposed this),

...that the commonplace ritual of end-of-life consultations are "death panels" (something else hospitals charge for - the privilege of talking with your dying mother's medical team, which the reforms propose to have Uncle Sam pay for instead of you, the total extent of proposed government involvement in that gut-wrenching decision)

...that the wildly popular U.S.-government-run Medicare is not actually a government program ("Keep the government's hands off my Medicare!" is a common refrain among seniors at the recent town-hall meetings - yes, there are Americans who don't know that Medicare, Medicaid and the VA, all vastly more cost-efficient than private care, are government-created and run)

...that "Obamacare" will bankrupt the country. (The absence of Obamacare will bankrupt America. Healthcare costs account for 16% of U.S. GDP, only 10% in Canada, even less in Japan, and average health outcomes are better in every nation with universal care than in the U.S. Among his few directions to Congress, Obama has required that the reform bill he signs must restrain costs, now soaring toward 18% of GDP within a few years, and 50% by mid-century, a grisly scenario in which taxes will soar and government services, including even spending on the military and national security, will have to be drastically cut.)

Where do the tragically misinformed get their "news"?

They get it from the Fox News Channel.

Sure, the dangerous myths are spread by G.O.P. lawmakers. By Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and the other multimillionaire yakkers of Hate Radio. And by the same crazed libertarians who wish to destroy government in all its forms in the U.S. - the Timothy McVeigh crowd.

But most Americans, like most Canadians, still get the bulk of their information from traditional TV network news. And in the case of self-identified Republicans and the looney right, that's Fox - conduit for every fresh falsehood and wacko notion that comes down the pike or that Fox can conjure up on its own.

Rachel Maddow of Fox rival MSNBC has the stats that tie the wilfully misinformed to Fox, courtesy of recent independent polling commissioned by the left-wing Daily Kos, among the most venerable of political websites. There aren't many dots to join here, folks. Especially when you see the same untruths fed daily to readers of Murdoch's New York Post.

Murdoch is an American by convenience (he would lose his lucrative U.S. TV licenses otherwise); an Aussie by birth, breeding and choice well into late middle age; a Londoner by cultural preference; and a longtime kissing cousin of Communist Chinese apparatchiks in order to retain his profitable Asian satellite franchises. He's no man to be heavily influencing the outcome of America's most important public-policy decision of modern times.

Why does Murdoch counsel Americans against their own best interests? Is he an extreme right-wing, anti-government idealogue?

Not at all. Murdoch was an early backer of Hillary Clinton's presidential bid. That was when she was the "prohibitive favourite" and Murdoch did what business does, take a pre-emptive financial stake in the presumed winner with whom they'll have to deal later. 

No, Murdoch does it for the money. Fox and its News Corp. parent maintain an iron grip on what H.L. Mencken described as the "booboisee," from which it milks immense profits. Which leaves the competition fighting among themselves for a slice of the rest of the audience. It's the Rovian approach to media riches: identify a niche, cater relentlessly to it, ignore everyone else - everyone else happening to be the majority of Americans, three-quarters of whom tell pollsters they want universal health care. But even conservative Democrats listen to the Fox-fuelled voices of protest, and are unduly swayed by them.    

Here's the damning video:

Today's top news, Friday, Aug. 28.

Day 642

Finally, Canadian caregivers unite in effort to squash U.S. healthcare myths about Canada. The top video below is among most prominent U.S. attacks on Canadian medicare, financed by U.S. medical-industrial complex. Second video is belated but welcome response from Canadian docs, clinicians, citizens who've had it with slagging of Canadian system.

Related: Veteran medical reporter Andre Picard of the Globe, frequent critic of Canadian system's shortcomings, offers reminder of why Canadian system fundamentally a blessing.

Canadians now optimistic about economic recovery - a sharp, positive swing in consumer sentiment.  

More good news for Ontario auto sector. Star's Tony Van Alphen quotes unnamed company sources saying production of compact Corolla at Cambridge, Ont. will be accelerated later this year to compensate for lost production with imminent closing of California joint venture with GM. Corolla was biggest winner in recently ended U.S. "cash for clunkers" program. Cambridge and Woodstock plants, where Toyota employs total of 3,000 workers, are spared despite recent decision by world's biggest automaker to scale back production in Japan. Toyota earlier this month forecast staggering fiscal-year loss of $4.8 billion (U.S.) due to massive overcapacity in weak global market. (Photo: Toyota's flagship Canadian assembly plant in Cambridge, now in its 22nd year.)  

Some Canadian banks actually showing record profits amid recession and global financial crisis. A boost to national pride, to be sure. But might also focus attention on proliferating fees by which bank customers are shouldering the cost of global financiers' reckless greed. Scotiabank reports near 8% drop in quarterly profit, but beats Street expectations.  

Still more green shoots: U.S. economy shrinks less in 2Q, first-time jobless claims fall again.

With 6.7 million U.S. jobs lost in recession, and total 15 million unemployed, surprising comeback in popularity and status of physical-labour jobs. They seem more real, tangible, than deskbound corporate paper shuffling.

Big drop in solar-panel prices brings residential energy efficiency within reach of more homeowners. Panels have plunged 40% in price since last summer, due to recession and big increase in production. While not yet an upfront bargain, long-term payoff from solar-energy homes now increasingly practical option.

Always iffy proclamations of coal "renaissance" cast into further doubt by abundance of cleaner natural gas to supplant coal as U.S. leading fuel for electric-power generation. And power demand will soar even further next decade with prevalence of hybrid and all-electric cars.

U.N.'s chief climate-change agency attempts to quantify cost of reversing global heating. Estimated cost of $40 billion (U.S.) to $170 billion (U.S.) per year to 2030 is a wide range because of unknownable behavioural response of individuals and institutions to crisis. If uptake of electric cars and above-mentioned solar panels is high, for instance, cost of combatting global heating will be lower. Count on remaining global-warming denialists to cite U.N.'s higher figure, and governments to be laggard in constructive programs for averting catastrophe.

Profits barometer: Upgraded profit forecast from Williams-Sonoma (namesake chain and Pottery Barn) points to upswing in consumer sentiment on pricey housewares and furnishings. PC weakness continues with poor results from Dell and Acer, but Dell exceeds Street expectations. Global spirits leader Diageo (Johnny Walker, Guinness) posts higher profit, despite its premium-priced portfolio, but lowers expectations for full year. Lousy Aer Lingus results may make Irish flag carrier more amenable if a second Ryanair takeover bid emerges.

Troubled CanWest lucks into soaring ratings at 50%-owned TEN, its Australian TV network, whose $600-million sale proceeds of could stave off insolvency. But bondholders are squawking over where the proceeds go. They need to have a chat with Aspers' bankers, who've redefined meaning of patience.

Speaking of Manitoba, retiring premier Gary Doer to be named today as Canada's next U.S. ambassador. Globe's Jeffrey Simpson lauds Doer as rare statesman to retire at top of his game. Bill Davis did it. But think Chretien, Klein, Thatcher - all pushed from power by their own parties.

Star's Christopher Hume bemoans low Canadian voter turnout. In recent, disputed Afghan vote, turnout was miserable 30%. Last time Mississauga voted, turnout was 26%.

On 100th anniversary of girls storming a U.K. Boy Scout gathering demanding their own, similar organization, Britain's Independent canvasses JK Rowling, Emma Thompson and other former Girl Guides for the lasting benefits of their youthful Guiding lessons. A gender-enlightened Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Guides as well as the Scouts, wrote in Scouting for Boys (1908): "Girls as well as boys may well learn scouting when young, and so be able to do useful work in the world when they are older."

Globe contributor makes case for the F-word - or "F bomb," as she calls it. She's in good company with late June Callwood, among the most saintly characters any city ever blessed with, a staunch advocate of occasional profanity. They don't teach that in Guides or Scouts. Nor, at least in my experience, Wolf Cubs. We might get it from expulsions of MPs in Question Period.

____________________

Quote of the day

"The battle that's going on in the United States taps into Canadian emotions.” -Roy Romanow, former premier of Saskatchewan, birthplace of Canadian medicare, and erstwhile head of one-man federal inquiry on fixing what ails it.

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007. 

GR instruction manual. 7. a. Enlarging the photos.

Day 641

A friendly reminder from Gus, who recently added photo editor to his mascot duties, that images on this site often run at a fraction of their original size. Simply click on the image to enlarge.

 

The photo below appears to be photo-shopped, but it's the real thing. The folks on the beach, some with binoculars, are plane-spotters at one of KLM's resort destinations, where there's not much to do other than sunbathe and get an unusually close look at the underbelly of an enormous jetliner making its final descent.

 

The 1920 image above is early Soviet propagandist art. On close inspection, you see only a hint of the transition from traditional representational art of the previous century to the severe, and more familiar, Kremlin-approved posterwork shorn of czar-era architectural icons that are still plainly evident here.

 

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007. 

Google is paying attention to Bing, no?

Day 641

It should.

As you know, Bing opens up with a new spectacular photo each day, and Google with its ultra-minimalist search box on a white background. It was that lack of clutter, that simplicity, that helped Google establish itself as the indispensible research tool it quickly became.

But all things being equal - and for a non-techie like me, Bing, Google and Yahoo each yield satisfying results - that Bing photo is mesmerizing enough that I now bother each day to do a Bing search just to see what home-page shot they've come up with.

I've been treated to mountain crevices in parts of Europe I didn't think had mountains. A romantic night shot of an Indian palace lit the way the B.C. legislature is in summer, alerting me to the fact that this date was Indian Independence Day. And today, here's a photo of the oldest circular library building in England, on the campus of the University of Oxford. Crazy, I know, but I've never laid eyes on Oxford. I've always imagined it as a few buildings tucked away in a forest, not an ancient city. When you learn something even before you learn something, that's the ticket.

There also, as you know, are discreet boxes on the Bing opening-page image that light up when your cursor passes over them, with quiz-like queries offering hints of what you're looking at, and links to the answers. The most Google does is retool its logo occasionally to celebrate the anniversary of a person or invention, most recently Galileo's telescope.

If I were Mr. Schmidt, I'd be thinking on this one - it's an easy enough feature to add. Google and Bing could have duelling palaces! They could - oops! - feature the very same image marking ANZAC day!

A well-deserved backhanded compliment.

Day 641

One never wants to say "I told you so." Playground stuff.

Still, when some portion of the world catches up with you, suddenly recognizing the lunacy and mendacity you identified years ago for what it is, what do you do?

This is Paul Krugman's dilemma. Shared by the likes of Josh Marshall and Eric Alterman. Krugman notes in his blog today that MSM columnist Steven Pearlstein "has an outraged column about

"...the lies, distortions and political scare tactics that [Michael] Steele and other Republicans have used to poison the national debate over health reform."

"The raw dishonesty of the modern GOP appears to be a revelation to Pearlstein, Joe Klein, and others," Krugman writes. "I thought it was obvious at least as far back as the 2000 election campaign. (If I’d really been paying attention, it would have been obvious much earlier.)

"I welcome Pearlstein and Klein to the reality-based community — better 9 years late than never. And in a way they have an advantage: having fought this thing for so long, I just can’t muster the same sense of shock."

Actually, Krugman still manages to keep hitting same note of outrage in sufficiently different ways to keep me engaged.

And while nine years might be better than never, what a spectacular price we've paid from the MSM giving evil-doers in our midst a free pass. Alterman documents in his must-read Sound and Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy and What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias in the News the MSM ridicule of candidate Al Gore in 2000 that raised the curtain on this lost decade.

Gore's failing, what disqualified him from the presidency, was that he was too smart and let you know it. Rarely took time to chat up "the boys on the bus." The food and hi-jinks on his zoo plane (the press plane) were no match for the lavish spreads the Bushies laid out, and for Bush's delightful mimicry of leading political figures. (And reporters.)

Obviously Bush was the man to lead America into the 21st century. The mind reels.

I don't especially enjoy the company of Johnny-Come-Latelies. It isn't that they mocked me (and worse, doubted my patriotism), it's that they abetted a giant step backward in social progress. Yes, that is a bit precious. But think of what's at stake.

A lost decade - okay, eight years - to make a genuine start of curbing climate change, which requires a massive culture change. To devise some means of intervening to prevent genocide. To honour a unanimous Canadian parliamentary commitment to eradicate child poverty, dating from 1990. (Currently about one million Canadian children live below the poverty line.)

We spent the decade, instead, with getting and spending. Culminating in an easily foreseeable crash, a further hindrance to the urgent need to get on with health-care reforms and experiments in higher-quality, more cost-efficient care in both Canada and the U.S. And raising education standards as our two nations watch helplessly while our industrial heartlands are hollowed out.

The Rip Van Winkles have much to answer for. Or, as I once told David Frum, on the Iraq war, "You have blood on your hands." Frum, realizing things got out of hand, is leading a one-man mission to reinvent the G.O.P. as that "kinder, gentler" party Peggy Noonan instructed G.H.W. Bush to pledge himself to. Which died when a more convincing progressive than G.H.W. Bush defeated Poppy in 1992, and Rovian calculus of milking the wretchedly angry among us became a narrowly winning strategy.

It's fun to watch Frum, in his adopted homeland, with his recently launched newmajority.com Ground Zero of the new, more compassionate G.O.P. - which no one pays attention to. Frum is, after all, tainted with the incompetence of his former boss Dubya, which the Oxford editors will soon be accepting as a synonym for incompetence in a wide variety of fields rather than limited to one. What's most fun is the facile name, newmajority. Frum, to the extent he has followers, is in a pitifully small minority in his party of hard-right dead-enders. But he boldly labels himself in the vanguard of a "new majority," as Lenin was pleased to have his ragtag following tagged as Bolsheviks (majority) when they constituted nothing of the kind. I know Murdoch kept a bust of Stalin in his dorm room, but that was a joke. Who knows? By the time someone lets David in on his unintended irony the name will have achieved too much "brand equity" to change.

Krugman has reason to wonder what magic pill the newly enlightened recently took to awake them finally to the entirely preventable horrors that enrage them, but did not disturb their sleep until now.

It's just possible that there is some kind of social-justice pain threshold. It was okay with the MSM when a mere 32 million Americans - the entire population of Canada - suffered without health-care coverage at the time Bill Clinton took office. But the 46 million Americans lacking coverage today, that apparently is less acceptable. Still further beyond the pale is the inadequate coverage suffered by an additional 100 million or so Americans. Which might include the friends and family of Steven Pearlstein and Joe Klein.

Anyone who's canvassed the CliffsNotes guide to U.S. history should know there's not a dime of difference between a Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly and a Westbrook Pegler or Father Coughlin. So, knowing how those retrograde voices tried to hold us back from a more truly prosperous society in the 1930s and 1940s, why do we suffer their descendants today as mere comics? Which, by the way, always is the apology for Limbaughs, O'Reillys, Becks and so on. "They're entertainers, David, it doesn't matter." Uh huh. And that's why United States Senators this spring and summer have been vetting their pronoucements in advance with Rush Limbaugh. Just as LBJ consulted with Red Skelton on cabinet appointments. Didn't he? 

Krugman reminds that it was always thus with the forces of self-centeredness, and sends us to Rick Perlstein, "our premier historian of the rise of modern movement conservatism" for some remedial lessons on how for these folks afraid of the future, crazy is a pre-existing condition."

Above image: Boris Kustodiev's 1920 painting Bolshevik. Courtesy Wikipedia.

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007. 

Rush, it's okay. He's dead.

Day 641

No respect for the dead on Hate Radio. Here's Rush Limbaugh yesterday on his syndicated radio show:

"The greatest tribute [to Ted Kennedy] would be that every American would get the same healthcare option that Ted Kennedy got. Ted Kennedy did not have to face death panels.”

The right, of course, lost its most crowd-pleasing whipping boy this week.

For the record, the Obama-proposed "public option" of a new government insurer would provide the same health care coverage that federal lawmakers receive. And the "death panels" already exist. They also go by the name "end-of-life consultations." It's when family and friends pay - yes, pay - to confer with a dying patients' medical team about options for the terminally ill patient. Do we continue with intensive hospital care? Move to a hospice or palliative care? Move the patient home, to die, as Ted Kennedy did at Hyannis Port, among familiar surroundings? Act on the provisions of a patient's living will?

These discussions go on thousands of times each day in the U.S. If there is an unwelcome intruder in the deliberations, it's not government. It's money. How much further intensive care will the patient's private insurance cover, assuming it didn't run out long ago? Can we even afford the consultation? What two of the five Hill committees working on reform packages proposed was that Uncle Sam, not the family, pay for those consultations. Period. 

A federal G.O.P. lawmaker made the same proposal years ago, gaining considerable support for it among fellow Republicans. He has, understandably, voiced outrage at how his idea has become "death panels."

That this got turned into the government deciding to "pull the plug on grandma," as Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said (he has since recanted) is a disgrace, of course. It is deliberate misinformation to confuse the public on, of all things, a ritual already fraught with trauma and emotional pain. So far, the evidence points to Limbaugh, the recovering OxyContin addict who pulls down several million dollars in pay a year and will never want for first-class healthcare, having originated the odious term. Though it is, of course, most closely associated with Sarah Palin, who quit her post as Alaska governor as probes into her ethical conduct mounted. That these moral eunichs are anywhere near a national debate on America's collective health is stomach-churning.

As U.S. Army lawyer Robert Welch asked Joe McCarthy: "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?"

The question was, and is, rhetorical.

 

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007. 

Today's top news, Thursday, Aug. 27.

Day 641

Alberta braces for $6.9-billion deficit, $2.2 billion worse than predicted in April budget. Finance minister says "real kick in the head" for Alberta economy. As earlier noted in Top News, 50% plunge in natural gas prices - the major source of Alberta government resource revenues, not oil - will be big blow to Wild Rose Country, already in recession. B.C., trailing only Alberta in natural-gas production, has reported 6X jump in deficit forecast of last February, and premier has warned government spending cuts loom. Alberta sure to follow in austerity measures.

Green shoots I: Decline in Canadian corporate profits is tapering off. Down 6.4% in Q2, compared with drop of 14.1% in 1Q and 19.2% in 4Q 2008. 

Green shoots II: U.S. employer poll points to much stronger hiring expectations in 2010 than previously forecast. German business confidence also up strongly.

Green shoots III: Air-traffic recovery now anticipated. IATA says "fragile" recovery underway, after months of fretting by IATA and its airline members that weak passenger volumes threaten massive industry losses.

CAE, world-leader in aircraft simulators, wins $100-million in contracts from European and U.S. military clients. Montreal-based firm benefits from diversified product line-up, as civilian-aircraft side of the business has been weak.

TD beats expectations, both profits and lending are up. Royal Bank underwhelms with 24% profit jump, much lower than Street estimates. National Bank reports profit rise, to $303 million. So far, all reporting banks - including BMO yesterday - are showing higher earnings. CIBC, meanwhile, confronting potentially huge credit-card defaults.

NHL in stunning volte-face says in its bid for Coyotes, it's prepared to relocate the team. Bettman's beef with Balsallie's bid was the RIM co-CEO's plan to relocate struggling franchise from Phoenix desert to hockey friendly Hamilton. Not that New York-based American CEO of Canada's national game has ever been accused of an abundance of competence. But Bettman's hypocrisy and plankheadedness is a combination to take one's breath away - as Globe's Stephen Brunt chronicles today.

U.S. "cash for clunkers," now winding down, a boon mostly for foreign makes. Only two domestics, both Fords, make the top 10 new vehicles for which motorists traded in aging gas-guzzlers.

Spectacular industrial accident Monday at Russian hydro-electric dam a sign of crisis in decaying Soviet-era infrastructure throughout world's largest nation.

Monday's breach at Russia's biggest hydro-electric facility, Sayano-Shushenskaya in Siberia, has cost 17 lives with another 58 workers missing. S-S alone accounts for 15% of Russian hydro power, and will cost an estimated $1.3 billion (U.S.) to repair. Kremlin is angry over West depicting accident as "a second Chernobyl," but concedes national power infrastructure is aging and more accidents loom without massive investment in repair and replacement.

 

______________________

 

Quote of the day

 

"I've given my memoirs far more thought than any of my marriages. You can't divorce a book." -Gloria Swanson

 

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007. 

The Kennedy factor in "Obamacare."

Day 641

It occurs me now why Obama initially set what later seemed a ludicrously early date of August 7 for Congress to send him a medical-reform bill. A bill resulting from the work of several House and Senate committees, reconciliation of those bills, votes in the two chambers on a final bill reshaping 15% of the U.S. economy.

I thought Obama pressed early on health care so soon after the stimulus bailout of the economy, the continuing bailout of the financial system and the bailout of Detroit, and redeploying troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, because he wanted to capture the urgency of the moment, Wanted to act on the mandate for change in health care that he and his party won Nov. 4. Was taking Rahm Emanuel's advice to exploit a crisis to do what Teddy Roosevelt and most presidents since World War Two have tried and failed to do - making health care universal.

It seemed odd, because John Edwards and Hillary Clinton were faster out of the gate - much faster in Edwards' case - with health-care reform proposals than the Obama camp. Obama, obsessed a little more with educational than health reforms, would have found it so much easier to fix No Child Left Behind, a Bush initiative he supported (and which Kennedy spearheaded the Senate passage of).

That would have been a sure bet for a big "win" in the short term -and Washington ascribes power to winners, regardless of the substance of what they're doing. (Remember what a great leader Bush was said to be in 2003 - The Right Man was the title of David Frum's bio of his former employer; and even centre-left Michael Kinsley lauded Bush for his skill in getting the country behind an Iraq invasion. It might have been a lousy idea, but at least Bush was a leader.)

I wrote a book about Obama last year, and spent the spring poring over his platform. And as a Canadian was struck by the similarity of Obama's proposed "public option" and single-payer Canadian medicare. I thought it was a Trojan horse, that Americans would take a liking to it in big and increasing numbers, endangering the private insurers. I thought the insurers would recognize the threat immediately in the event of an Obama presidency, and fight to the death - if you'll pardon the expression - to kill the public option. Which their lobbyists have been working day and night to do, with an assist from Sarah "Death Panel" Palin and Charles "Pull The Plug On Granny" Grassley.

And then Obama appeared to scrap his cherished public option two weeks ago - I say "cherished" because Obama has repeatedly said if he were starting from scratch he go with public single-payer. Obama backed away from the public option, just as Slate's Timothy Noah predicted last spring Obama might do. As a progressive, I was more than disappointed, along with folks like Robert Reich who think reform isn't worth doing without a new government insurer "to keep the private insurers honest." (I'd skip the pretense and happily put the private middlemen out of business, after their chronic bilking of Medicare, Medicaid and the VA, reneging on payouts to policyholders, and for the wastage in administrative costs and profits they cost the system. But Dems don't want to throw tens of thousands of insurance industry clerks onto the street. Plus, that would be "socialism," a no-sale. Or worse, French. Kerry lost a close election, one could argue, because enough Americans were annoyed that he could speak French to sway the overall vote against him.)

But it might all come down to Ted Kennedy.

One can't overstate how important it was for Obama that Kennedy early on endorsed Obama rather than Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. Here was another blow to Clinton's liberal credentials - the first being her vote for Bush's Iraq-war resolutions - dealt by the most prominent liberal in the nation. It didn't seem clear at the time, early last year, ahead of most of the crucial primaries and caucuses, why Kennedy was backing someone other than Clinton, the "prohibitive favourite." But then, Kennedy had opposed the Vietnam War and was one of the few prominent Democrats to fiercely oppose an Iraq invasion. Most Dem war skeptics held their tongues, fearful of post-9/11 blowback. Kennedy, fellow senator Robert Bryd (D-W.Va.) and Al Gore - that's about it for nationally known Dems who stood up to Bush on Iraq. Clinton, Edwards, Joe Biden and John Kerry all voted for invasion. But Obama, in obscurity as an Illinois state senator, girding for his first U.S. Senate race, took his chances with the public by coming out against the looming fiasco, in Chicago-area speeches and TV interviews. He didn't need to go there. Obama could have focused on price-support programs for downstate farmers.

Kennedy had also carried water on the Hill for "Hillarycare." He had reason to regret that, given Clinton's secretive, Hill-hostile process in developing her proposals. That ensured they were D.O.A. the moment they finally emerged from her policy-wonk lair. (Obama, you notice, handed the whole process over to Congress from Day One, with just a few guiding principles for direction. Which, notably, include a requirement that whatever Congress comes up with must cut costs in the long term, or the nation will go broke. Obama did the same thing with the stimulus bill, merely indicating that something like $600 billion U.S. to $800 billion U.S. would be nice. Congress gave him $787 billion U.S., right in the ballpark - a staggering sum that eclipsed, as a percent of GDP, what FDR spent in his first year. Obama prefers that Congress do the heavy lifting, and appreciates that Congress wants to do the heavy lifting and not be treated as an afterthought.) 

So for a bunch of reasons Kennedy saw in Obama, in policy and pragmatic practice, a kindred spirit. Obama wasn't campaigning exclusively on a "public option," but on a much broader set of reforms that just happened to include a new government insurer. Clever. A valuable chip Obama could cash in later in exchange for passage of a compromise that would still, finally, get coverage for the 47 million uninsured.

A scholar of U.S. Senate politics noted yesterday about Kennedy that he was so consistently successful in gaining passage of health-care reforms because, after dropping his 1970s advocacy of a Canadian single-payer system, realizing it that "socialist" scheme would never fly on the Hill, he was willing to settle for change around the edges. "The thing about Kennedy was that he would settle for 1/20th of a loaf in order to at least get something."

Bottom line: Obama was desperate to get a health care on his desk for a signing ceremony that Ted Kennedy would attend. Kennedy's doctors, in giving their prognosis in April of last year, told him he wouldn't make it to the end of 2008. Obama's protege, knowing his mentor was living on borrowed time, set the August deadline hoping that would translate into a bill by the end of the first year of his neophyte presidency - one hell of a triumph in itself. And there will be a bill by December for Obama to sign.

But for all his careful planning, Obama has been denied his wish that one of his key patrons will be there to witness it. And yes, the name of that bill will have the word "Kennedy" in it.

A great American speech.

Day 640

This may be Ted Kennedy's greatest speech, with echoes of Martin Luther King's Washington address in 1963 and Barack Obama's speech on race in Philadelphia in the spring of last year. It is an obscure speech in Sitka, Alaska in April 1968, a few days after King's assassination. And just two months before Kennedy's his brother Robert would fall to an assassin's bullet.

Such killers, Kennedy said, were not groups but "sick" individuals. So there was no justification for the anger among groups, even though the country was undeniably fragmenting into black and white, rich and poor, old and young. The rioters at that moment setting fires in D.C., prompting curfews there and in Chicago, were also suffering an "illness" and "not mourning Dr. King, but mocking him."

Yet Kennedy, a lifelong proponent of gun control, asks, "How did we become a country where we hunt people?" He condemns the complacency of the affluent majority, warning, as James Baldwin does in The Fire Next Time (1962), that by its self-absorbed ignorance of the disadvantaged, America's comfortable class is in danger of "writing the epitaph of a great nation."

The heart of the speech begins at about the 5:20 mark.

Courtesy: Alaska State Library.

HT: Talking Points Memo.

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007. 

 

MSM takes notes, blogosphere investigates, MSM blithely moves on.

Day 640

The CIA torture memos: A case study on two different worlds.

I get a free, handy e-mail summary of the day's American political events from U.S. News Political Bulletin, a come-on for the subscription-based customized briefings of Bulletin News LLC. 

Here's the Bulletin's digest of what the MSM was reporting Monday on the release of the CIA memos on "enhanced interrogation" techniques and their effect on preventing terrorist attacks. The MSM in its reports yesterday in the main found that the memos vindicated Dick Cheney's assertions that waterboarding and the like were justified.

It's worth reading the following hunk of type just to see the consistency of the MSM's respect for "authority" figures, even a disgraced, out-of-office one who toiled by his own description on "the dark side":

"Monday's release of a CIA report detailing abuses allegedly committed during the interrogation of terror suspects raises the question again of whether "enhanced interrogations" stopped terror attacks. NBC Nightly News noted that "for the first time, the CIA report" recounted "threats against prisoners' families, sexual humiliation, mock executions, a litany of abuses by CIA interrogators at secret prisons overseas." The Los Angeles Times reports that "23 pages of the report, much of it apparently dealing with the agency's use of waterboarding, remained redacted, appearing as page after page of blacked-out text." NBC Nightly News noted that the report says "there is no doubt" the interrogation "program has been effective." Last night, "the CIA released these separate memos at" former Vice President Dick Cheney's "request, indicating the interrogations did prevent other attacks."
  "ABC World News also reported other documents "include information that backs up the Bush White House contention that the detainee program helped to overt further Al Qaeda attacks on the US, including one supposedly aimed at loosening the spikes on a railroad track to derail a passenger train somewhere in this country."
  "The CBS Evening News, likewise, said that "the once-secret documents do support the claims" by Cheney "that harsh interrogations at times did work. Interviews with prisoners helped the US capture other terror suspects, thwart potential attacks, including Al Qaeda plots to attack the US consulate in Karachi and fly an airplane into California's tallest building."
  "The Washington Post says "the report found that 'there is no doubt' that the detention and interrogation program itself prevented further terrorist activity, provided information that led to the apprehension of other terrorists, warned authorities of future plots, and helped analysts complete an intelligence picture for senior policymakers and military leaders." Likewise, the New York Times also says the report 'found that the C.I.A. program obtained critical information to identify terrorists and stop potential plots and said some imprisoned terrorists provided more information after being exposed to brutal treatment. But it raised broad questions about the legality, political acceptability and effectiveness of the harshest of the CIA's methods.'
  "The Washington Times offers a more extensive survey of the information that was reportedly obtained through the controversial techniques, including the 'identities of key participants in an al Qaeda program to develop the ability to mount anthrax attacks. The identities of about 70 people whom al Qaeda had 'deemed suitable for Western attacks.'"

Okay, the Washington Times, a daily must-read for Cheney, is owned by the Moonies. But it's the Washington Post of "Woodstein" fame that publishes mountebank Charles Krauthammer, addled mossback David Broder and errant George Will, who famously predicted the lasting hegemony of the Soviet Union in a column that appeared Nov. 9, 1989, the very day the Berlin Wall came down. It's the Post that (still) supports the Iraq war, and finds room on its op-ed page for the healthcare-reform lunacy of  national G.O.P. chairman Michael Steele (soon taken down a few notches by Post columnist Steven Pearlstein.) 

So here's the blogosphere's take on the same CIA memos, which it spent the time to read thoroughly and do some spadework:

* Blogger Greg Sargent: Top Bush Terrorism Advisor Admits CIA Documents Didn't Prove Torture Worked.

* Sargent: CNN Gets Snookered by Cheney's Masterful Obfuscation.

* Justin Elliott: Cheney Spin On CIA Memos Befuddles Politico.

* Zachary Roth: Big Surprise Torture Memos Belie Cheney's Claims.

* Spencer Ackerman: CIA Documents Provide Little Cover for Cheney Claims.

* Sam Stein: Torture Memos Used Overstated, Exaggerated Information From CIA.

* Jeff Muskus: Despite Months Of Practice, Interrogators Didn't Get Much Info Through Mock Executions.

The day those detailed, startling blogger reports appeared, MSM newsrooms had moved beyond the trifling issue of U.S. torture methods and effectiveness, and were preparing coverage of the important business at hand - the political winners and losers:

* SF Chronicle: G.O.P., Democrats Both Find Fault With CIA Inquiry.

* AP: Interrogation Probe Steams Those on Right And Left.

* LAT: CIA Interrogation Memos Provide Fodder For Both Sides.

So it's a wash. Everyone's "steamed," so no one's to blame. As long as it's "on the one hand, on the other," I can go back to mowing the lawn. And as long as 23 pages of those memos were blacked out ("redacted" is a weasel word no journalist should use), how much can anyone know of the import of those documents? Except what isn't there, namely a vindication of Cheney, Bush and the regime of torture by which they disgraced the United States.  

Just for the record, it was the U.S. that pushed for the creation of the U.N. and its Declaration of Human Rights. The U.S. that spearheaded the Geneva Conventions. The U.S. whose military field manuals counsel against torture of captured combatants because (a) it could provoke retaliation against captured American troops and (b) it does not work.

All that, Bush and the neo-con cabal with grandiose plans for reshaping the Mideast pushed aside. Nice to see the MSM is still with that discredited program. It's heavily invested in it, after all, most MSM outlets having endorsed the war of choice on a sovereign nation. (In Canada as well as the U.S., it bears remembering.)

 

For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007.