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Obama’s nice try unlikely to change
a single Republican mind or vote

President Obama is publicly beckoning Republicans to do more and better than solidly oppose everything he and congressional Democrats try to do, saying if Republicans want to govern they must contribute more than “No!”

To the extent this gently phrased, positive approach to calling out Republicans raises the stakes for them politically because it throws a spotlight on their obstruction, it’s a good thing.

But our president and everyone else should be clear there’s virtually no chance congressional Republicans will work in a positive way to find reasonable compromises on vital matters such as health care and financial reform, and combating global warming.

To do that, Republicans, already in the doghouse with a substantial majority of Americans, would have to risk alienating their base of government-hating, tax-phobic and all-around resentful people, sometimes called the 23 percenters.

wingnut enforcer

That radical-conservative Republican base looks on compromise as capitulation or selling out. Those in it see working in a constructive way with a president whose religious beliefs they’re suspicious of, whose citizenship they question and whose race many of them find offensive, as political treason. On top of that, they’re so steeped in their own paranoid propaganda that they are convinced Obama is a doctrinaire socialist.

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Bill to fight Citizens United fallout
advanced by Ohio Sen. Brown

OK signSen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, has submitted a bill to possibly curb corporate political spending and ensure transparency for the outlays corporations do make.

Brown’s bill is one of several put forth in both houses of Congress by Democrats in reaction to the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission, which essentially removed all limits on and regulation of corporate campaign spending — by both domestic and foreign interests.

Here are the essentials of Brown’s legislation, as highlighted in a Huffington Post item.

  • “It requires corporate shareholders to vote for election spending. Everything from its affect(sic) on pension funds to hiring practices and all the things that companies do, they should have a say and obviously expenditure of money for something like politics.”
  • “Secondly, it promotes transparency by requiring the corporate CEO to disclose sponsorship of the political ads, just like a politician.” (This, Brown says, would apply even if corporations form front groups)
  • Last, it would close the loophole that would permit foreign corporations, including those owned by foreign governments, to influence U.S. elections.”

Brown’s Web page asks visitors to sign a petition supporting his bill. We gladly obliged and urge you to show your support as well.

An amendment to the Constitution is the ultimate, ironclad way to rectify the Supreme Court’s grievous mistake. But amending the Constitution is a long, hard process. Legislation such as Brown’s is necessary to blunt the worst effects in the short run.

Here’s hoping at least a few Republicans will for once see beyond their own selfish ends and do the right thing for our political system and country. And yes, we know better than to hold our breath.

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Possible way to zap Citizens United decision

W e had hoped to be able to recommend MovetoAmend.org to you wholeheartedly as a means for fighting back against a mortal threat to our democracy, the Supreme Court’s execrable Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission decision.

Unfortunately, because of MovetoAmend.org’s own tentativeness about fighting this menace, we can only offer it as a potential path toward eventual action.

For those who’ve been away from the country for a couple of weeks, the Supreme Court ruled corporations have the rights of citizens, of persons, including freedom of speech — with which the court equates spending money — overturning already weak limits on corporations’ ability to buy elected officials and election outcomes, ensuring that anything goes.

MovetoAmend.org is gathering supporter contact information at its Web site. Those who sign up do so in support of a “motion,” not of an actual amendment that could, in the fullness of time, revoke the Citizens United decision. Here’s the motion:

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Hurting countries abhor leadership vacuum

“But don’t blame Rahm Emanuel; this is about the president. After Massachusetts, Democrats were looking for leadership; they didn’t get it. Ten days later, nobody is sure what Obama intends to do, and his aides are giving conflicting readings. It’s as if Obama checked out.

“Look, Obama is a terrific speaker and a very smart guy. He really showed up the Republicans in the now-famous give-and-take. But we knew that. What’s now in question isn’t his ability to talk, it’s his ability to lead.”

—Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist, author and columnist,
in a New York Times blog post, Cossack Rahm Works For The Czar,
Jan. 30, 2010


It’s beginning to look as though our president sees the federal government as a giant roundtable and his role as being that of moderator. Just hold a few good, civilized discussions and legislators will return to their chambers and do the right thing.

If Franklin Roosevelt had adopted that approach in combating the Great Depression, the New Deal would have been the No Deal, and a desperate, dissatisfied public might well have thrown their support behind a communist or fascist vowing to knock heads and jail reactionaries to turn things around.

If that seems far fetched, consider what happened in Germany, Italy, Jugoslavia, Romania and Japan in the 1920s and 1930s.

Civilized discussions are important. Proactive, determined, unrelenting leadership is required.

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Obama delivers another great speech,
for what that’s worth to hurting country

U.S. flagPresident Obama did a remarkable job with his State of the Union address last night, covering many bases, hitting many right notes and laying out, as he needs to do regularly and more pointedly, who he and we have to thank for our large collection of national predicaments.

All pretty much as we expected, but with a bit more humor and less oratory.

Indications are that Obama’s speech was well received by much of the public.

Of course, Republicans in the chamber played their predictable part of being sneering, resentful bumps on a log. Members of the Party of No wouldn’t even stand and applaud for Obama’s lengthy list of tax cuts and the fact he hasn’t raised taxes.

Bringing further dishonor on the already politically soiled Supreme Court, Republican “Justice” Sam Alito lacked the self-discipline to gracefully weather Obama’s ever-so-polite criticism of Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission — the high court’s worst decision since Dred Scott.

On MSNBC, Chris Matthews launched into embarrassingly sophomoric instant analysis that was fully as obnoxious as Pat Buchanan’s last week, bloviating about Scott Brown winning a Senate seat.

We’re past the point of being impressed by Obama’s ability to say all the right things in a well-written and splendidly delivered speech.

We want to see some consistency and coherence in what the president and his people do, instead of this kind of thing.

Most of all, we want to see some toes being stepped on, some arms being twisted and some important business getting done.

For starters, we want to see results in real health care reform that’s not an undeserved bonanza for insurers, large-volume job creation, ending more families’ bad-mortgage nightmare and bringing our troops home from Mideast wars they won’t lose but can’t win.

When we see those things actually happening, we’ll gladly stand and applaud.

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Will Tennessee tea partiers buy in
or bag Palin-headlined event?

PalinLooks as though the Republican right’s rendition of America’s sweetheart doesn’t make tea partiers’ hearts go pitty-pat all that much, judging by Sarah Palin’s lack of drawing power for a pricey dinner do in Nashville.

Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips likely assumed that scoring a dinner speech by the former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate would guarantee a huge turnout for his National Tea Party Convention, scheduled to start Feb. 4 at Nashville’s Gaylord Opryland Hotel. But according to Tea Party insiders, the tickets for the Palin banquet aren’t selling—and some conservative activists who have already paid to attend are now demanding refunds. With the controversial event shaping up to be a potential flop, some Tea Partiers are urging Palin to cancel her speech to avoid a humiliating public relations disaster.

The Mother Jones story goes on to say Phillips is seeking to profit from the convention, selling passes to it plus the Palin/steak-and-lobster dinner for $549, or to just the dinner for $349. Palin’s speaking fee is $115,000.

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What Obama should put a freeze on
is Republican-lite policy blunders

ObamaAs this post is being written, Republicans are dusting off the flip-flopper meme they employed to beat Sen. John Kerry’s presidential bid to death in 2004, to use on President Obama in 2012, all thanks to Obama’s brain-dead decision to impose a three-year freeze on domestic spending.

You can hear them already, saying, “Obama was for big stimulus spending before he was for cutting spending and balancing the budget — absolute proof he squandered $780 billion on a recession remedy that wasn’t working.”

As talk-show host Thom Hartmann put it, by calling for this spending freeze, Obama is validating Republicans’ tried-and-proven-wrong measure, needlessly and foolishly ceding to them an ideological victory that they will use against him soon enough.

From an economic standpoint, cutting domestic spending in a period of high unemployment and economic stagnation is a formula for prolonging the agony. It makes as much sense as spraying water on a grease fire. President Herbert Hoover proved that eight decades ago.

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South Carolina’s Bauer advocates
starving the poor out of existence

“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”

“. . . I can show you a bar graph where free and reduced lunch has the worst test scores in the state of South Carolina. You show me the school that has the highest free and reduced lunch, and I’ll show you the worst test scores, folks. It’s there, period.”

—Lt.Gov. Andre Bauer of South Carolina, in a campaign speech, Jan. 22, 2010


Let’s see if we’ve got Republican governor-wannabe Bauer’s message straight. To reduce the number of poor people and underachieving schoolchildren in South Carolina, starve them to the point at which they’re too malnourished to procreate.

With starvation, of course, comes disease and death.

This is conservative Republican economic Darwinism at its most blatant and vicious. This is also what is known as genocide.

Bauer is what is known as an ignorant, bigoted madman.

A few years back one of the networks, CNN in 2004 as we recall, did a report about religion and politics in America, highlighting South Carolina as having a strongly Christian conservative, churchgoing population. Evidently, the ministers, pastors and priests of that state have failed utterly at conveying Christ’s teaching and examples about lifting up the least among us, and about treating others as we would like to be treated.

Perhaps as a result, South Carolina is what as known as a state whose voting majority has a demonstrated preference for elected leaders who are at the least ignorant, backward, Bible-thumping hypocrites, and at worst, bigoted madmen.

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Our eight-point health care reform plan

lightbulbPresident Obama and many congressional Democrats seem to feel their only chance to reform health care lies in passing the lousy Senate bill or a few a la carte measures — lame, face-saving expedients they hope would allow them to move on to other issues without being accused of giving up.

We’ve got a better way to go, one every American can readily understand and get behind, and one every Democrat in Congress should be able to support.

As you’ll see, our eight-point plan eliminates or otherwise deals with some of the supposed main sticking points in House and Senate plans as they’ve evolved, providing truly universal coverage in ways that should not balloon the deficit.

With that, here we go:

  1. Commercial insurers will be free to reject people for pre-existing conditions and charge whatever the traffic will bear — provided their charges do not excessively and unjustifiably exceed comparable coverage from other companies.
  2. Commercial insurers will be free to drop customers for: A, provable deliberate deception, immediately, or, B, for any other reason, but only by notifying the customer to be dropped 18 months in advance.
  3. A commission will be created to recommend malpractice litigation reforms, with a specific charge to come up with ways to discourage and/or penalize those who attempt to use litigation as a shakedown, hoping the practitioner they’re suing will offer a quick settlement to avoid legal expenses and bad publicity.
  4. Federally operated health insurance exchanges won’t be created, but states will be encouraged to set up their own exchanges.
  5. Those satisfied with the commercial insurance they have will be free to keep that coverage for as long as they wish.
  6. We will create a federal public option plan that will seek no more than 3 percent profit and be available to every American citizen 25 to 64 years old. Those at 20 percent above poverty level and below will be charged on the basis of their ability to pay.

    Young adults 18 to 24 will be able to stay on their parents’ health insurance. Those 25 to 30 will be encouraged but not required to buy public or private health insurance. However, if employed, those who choose not to buy insurance will be required, at age 25, to put $40 a month into a Medical Responsibility Savings Account, with their employer contributing half that amount. Then each year through age 30, monthly savings will increase by $10 a month for the individual and $5 for the employer. Past age 30, when an individual can show that he or she has bought health insurance at a reasonable level of coverage for two years, they may draw down money in their Medical Responsibility Savings Account for the purpose of paying health insurance premiums going forward — in effect, getting their savings, plus interest, back.

  7. The antitrust exemption for health insurers will be eliminated.
  8. Insurers of all kinds will be required to demonstrate biannually to a federal regulatory agency that they are operating in the public interest. Companies that show a pattern of deceptive behavior, exceptional levels of failure to pay benefits, price gouging, excessive profit taking and/or irresponsible financial management will be subject to having their license to sell insurance revoked and their corporate charter, if any, will be eliminated. Principals of any company so dissolved will be prohibited from ever again holding a position of executive authority or high responsibility in any insurance business or closely related business.

    (Note that No. 8 applies not only to health insurers, but to all insurers including AIG.)

That’s our plan. Let us know what you think of it and about how passable you think it is.

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Good insights into Haiti’s history

Realizing most of us know little about Haiti and how it got to be the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, and put off by how the media portray the country, Brown Man of the Brown Man Thinking Hard blog put together an informative video.

We think Brown Man has done an impressive job on his first venture in video production. Invest a few minutes learning about Haiti’s history and see if you agree.



It took courage and determination for 19th-century Haitians to defy France and throw off the yoke of slavery. How unjust that they spent so long having to pay reparations for their own freedom and independence.

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