Okay, comment of yesterday I'm a bit behind, by i on the ball patriot at Naked Capitalism in response to tan Edward Harrison post (internal block quote markers are mine):

Edward Harrison said:

Barack Obama has now come clean about his thinking on why his administration has decided to focus first on reducing the deficit and next on jobs. He fears a double-dip recession will occur if foreigners lose confidence in the U.S. dollar, causing interest rates to spike.

Echidne.

Masthead

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While some Dems are joining with Republicans to try to prohibit even private insurers from covering abortions in the new "reform" effort, other Dems are joining with Republicans to ensure Christian Science Prayer sessions are covered by insurance:

Backed by some of the most powerful members of the Senate, a little-noticed provision in the healthcare overhaul bill would require insurers to consider covering Christian Science prayer treatments as medical expenses.

Frank Rich in his column about the GOP meltdown in upstate NY's congressional race:

The same Republicans who once deplored Democrats for refusing to let an anti-abortion dissident, Gov. Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, speak at the 1992 Clinton convention now routinely banish any dissenters in their own camp.

Harrison provides a nice round up of judicial victories for homeowners (show me the note!) as well as links about Citi's problems in Belgium (where it got people to move money from savings accounts to investments in Lehman) and evidence that Citi is in trouble globally.

Insurance premiums for small businesses are being driven higher not just because of an increase in healthcare costs, but also because Wall Street wants higher returns:

The higher premiums at least partly reflect the inexorable rise of medical costs, which is forcing Medicare to raise premiums, too. Health insurance bills are also rising for big employers, but because they have more negotiating clout, their increases are generally not as steep.

Higher medical costs aside, some experts say they think the insurance industry, under pressure from Wall Street, is raising premiums to get ahead of any legislative changes that might reduce their profits.

Now, you might think with health insurance reform pending in Congress, the industry would be concerned about screwing its customers. But you'd be wrong because Washington doesn't run this country, Wall Street does:

“There’s no one out there who hasn’t had to do a mea culpa to Wall Street,” said Sheryl Skolnick, an analyst for Pali Capital who follows the companies. While the industry is particularly vulnerable now in Washington, she said, “it seems like they’re more afraid of Wall Street.”

The Black Agenda Report has been documenting the atrocities of the Obama education policy, including the traveling sales trio of Gingrich, Sharpton and Education Secretary Duncan. Now, why, you may ask, would Newt Gingrich endorse Obama's education policies? And shouldn't such an endorsement be a huge red flag to anyone who thinks government - and public schools - should and can work since, you know, Gingrich has spent his entire career working to destroy government.

Via Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi explains Obama's Nobel Peace Prize by providing some very insightful commentary about who is - and isn't - eligible for Nobel Peace Prizes and why:

Thanks to the wonderful posts by CD and the thoughtful contributors in the comments, we've been talking about food a lot the past couple of days. And to tie those posts in with CD's post about the need to take action, I thought I'd pass along these 10 things you can do to help start a citizen revolution aimed at taking back our food. The list comes from Sustainable Food, which I've added to the Blogroll and highly recommend.

Melissa McEwan provides an important overview. It isn't just our political system that's broken, although it would be naive to believe that our political and economic systems aren't affected by our culture.

Sure it costs 2-3 times as much as other developed countries. But someone has to pay for lifesaving drugs like this:

And it's not just snark, those damned Europeans really are more innovative in pharmaceuticals. No back room deal with Billy Tauzin required.

That's why money is flowing into bank stocks. There's no place else to go.

Of course, you can't separate finance from the real economy so eventually the bank stocks will reflect reality - that they are still in for heavy loan losses in addition to the bad assets they kept on their books when the USG bailed them out.

Although, all things considered, perhaps a dying economy isn't our biggest problem since we also have a dying planet.

Happy Tuesday!

I've tried to draft this post for the past couple of weeks and it isn't working. So I've decided to try stream of consciousness so the readers could do the work for me. Kind of like mad libs Joyce. So here it goes:

We are a country built on paper (mortgages, securities, etc.) We don't make things any more. We make paper. That is by design. It's what our elites wanted, sell off the industrial base, keep the paper.

She had a dream
And boy it was a good one
So she chased after her dream
With much desire
But when she get too close
To her expectations
Well the dream burned up
Like paper in fire
- John Cougar Mellencamp

How do you organize/protest in a country built on paper?

Fire?

Helen Thomas explains to Robert Gibbs why she keeps asking if Obama will fight for a public option (h/t Melissa McEwan):

Of course, I'm sure Helen realizes that:

1) Obama isn't going to fight for a public option (even a puny, useless one and if you don't believe me, watch the video again); and
2) Robert Gibbs doesn't have a conscience.

Anne Applebaum on Roman Polanski:

He did commit a crime, but he has paid for the crime in many, many ways: In notoriety, in lawyers' fees, in professional stigma. He could not return to Los Angeles to receive his recent Oscar.

Richard Cohen on Cap Weinberger:

Based on my Safeway encounters, I came to think of Weinberger as a basic sort of guy, candid and no nonsense – which is the way much of official Washington saw him,” Cohen wrote. “Cap, my Safeway buddy, walks, and that’s all right with me.”

Since I've been working for two days on a post and it still sucks and doesn't say what I want and doesn't say it the way I want, I went looking for diversions and found the above headline which amused my inner 12-year-old. And then the article interested the more mature side of me. Because it is about a species changing its ways in order to survive:

"Behavioural flexibility coupled with altered environmental conditions, e.g. food scarcity, can trigger astonishing innovations in animal behaviour," concludes Siemers. This innovative behaviour is not an isolated case and is probably passed on from generation to generation.

I don't mean to go too hard on jurassicpork, who has many good things to say in this post, which is worth reading (via Avedon), but when it comes to the title ("I Didn't Vote for Neville Chamberlain"), I do have a nit to pick. Er, dude, you totally voted for Neville Chamberlain. That's not something that Obama is just now revealing about himself. It was one of his selling points. He campaigned on being Neville Chamberlain, promising to bring peace in our time.

Obama in one of his 2007 ads (emphasis mine):

Here's how Obama described how the public option will affect private insurers:

He said an audience member raised a "legitimate concern" about how a government-run health-care program might affect private insurers.

"My answer is that if the private insurance companies are providing a good bargain, and if the public option has to be self-sustaining -- meaning taxpayers aren't subsidizing it, but it has to run on charging premiums and providing good services and a good network of doctors, just like any other private insurer would do -- then I think private insurers should be able to compete. They do it all the time."

Then he invoked the Postal Service:

"I mean, if you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? No, they are. It's the post office that's always having problems."

That comment provoked laughter from the audience.

Oh, so the public option will be like the United States Postal Service. It will be constantly undermined by elected officials who insist it compete with private companies as an "equal" even as they ensure that the private companies get all the really lucrative customers and the postal service gets stuck with all the thankless, unprofitable work that requires them to drive every back road in this country to deliver a letter for less than 50 cents while also giving deep discounts to help mail-based business, regardless of whether such deliveries or discounts make sense from a business perspective.* And the Postal Service is expected to do all of this while the Government insists it do things that none of its private competitors have to do (such as prepay future retiree health benefits). Then when the public option, like the Postal Service, cannot win its race against private companies blindfolded with its legs tied together, it will be mocked by the President of the United States.** That does sound like a good plan.

So I spent Saturday night at Wolf Trap, America's National Park for the Performing Arts, watching one of the great party bands, the B-52s. For those unfamiliar with Wolf Trap, it's a pavilion with lawn seating outside of Washington D.C., in Northern Virginia. Given the high price of most concert tickets, lawn seats at Wolf Trap are a bargain at $25 and you're allowed to bring in your own food and drink, including wine and beer.

Last night's show was one big dance party from beginning to end.

The Bs have a new record out after 16 years (Funplex) and they sounded and looked great. I was shocked to learn Kate Pierson is 61, you'd never guess it by the way she looked or sounded.

I almost always agree with the fabulous Avedon and I certainly agree with her here that none of the rightwing crazy is new (a point she notes Bob Somerby also makes). But, IMO, it goes back much further than the 1990s or, hell even the 1970s. This goes back 300 or 400 years to before we were a nation and a bunch of rich white folks found themselves badly outnumbered by enslaved Africans and poor, white servants, who had much more in common with each other than they had with the rich white people who exploited them.* The only way to deal with the situation and ensure the rich stayed rich and everyone else stayed poor was to enact a series of authoritarian measures and inject a heavy dose of racism. Sound familiar?

If you haven't seen this yet, brilliant parody of the WaPo's Clinton beer video (h/t Shakesville):

The one before the election:

The one now:

Pressed by industry lobbyists, White House officials on Wednesday assured drug makers that the administration stood by a behind-the-scenes deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion.

Drug industry lobbyists reacted with alarm this week to a House health care overhaul measure that would allow the government to negotiate drug prices and demand additional rebates from drug manufacturers.

In response, the industry successfully demanded that the White House explicitly acknowledge for the first time that it had committed to protect drug makers from bearing further costs in the overhaul. The Obama administration had never spelled out the details of the agreement.

“We were assured: ‘We need somebody to come in first. If you come in first, you will have a rock-solid deal,’ ” Billy Tauzin, the former Republican House member from Louisiana who now leads the pharmaceutical trade group, said Wednesday. “Who is ever going to go into a deal with the White House again if they don’t keep their word? You are just going to duke it out instead.”

A deputy White House chief of staff, Jim Messina, confirmed Mr. Tauzin’s account of the deal in an e-mail message on Wednesday night.

“The president encouraged this approach,” Mr. Messina wrote. “He wanted to bring all the parties to the table to discuss health insurance reform.”

Why won't the [Single Payer Advocates, Blue Dogs, Progressive Caucus, C-list bloggers, etc.,] get out of the way so Obama can reform healthcare!

You just think you do. But, of course, those Baseline Scenario guys are totally DFHs!

The same way you get any politician to fall in line. Primary their asses.

Of course, that assumes "you" want the Blue Dogs to fall in line...