Cause an "old school liberal" movement will be outgunned financially. We won't have access to the media. We won't have an infrastructure and decades worth of volunteer and voting lists. We will be ridiculed or called racists. You know, just like a standard day hangin' around this C-list cesspool.

Washington City Paper Loose Lips

In a column which oddly, or not, doesn't mention the President by title or by name, Krugman concludes:

The gist of the [TARP inspector general's AIG bailout] report is that government officials made no serious attempt to extract concessions from bankers, even though these bankers received huge benefits from the rescue. ...

For the A.I.G. rescue was part of a pattern: Throughout the financial crisis key officials — most notably Timothy Geithner, who was president of the New York Fed in 2008 and is now Treasury secretary — have shied away from doing anything that might rattle Wall Street. ....

Ryan Griffin in HuffPo, yeah yeah:

A bloc of African American House Democrats, angry and worried that not enough is being done about high unemployment by the administration, forced the postponement of a much-anticipated vote Thursday on comprehensive financial regulation reform.

And "progressives" couldn't do the same thing on health care why, exactly?

I sent an email to Eric Massa some time back, thanking him for voting against HR 3962, and specified that I didn't need a reply, as I'm not one of his constituents. I got a 'form letter' response anyway, and thought I would share it.

Dear [hipparchia]:

Because you have previously been in touch about health issues, I am writing to let you know why I voted "no" on the 2009 major health care reform bill (H.R. 3962). Being accountable to you for my actions, perhaps you will forgive a detailed response.

(x-posted at ePluribus media)

Via The Hill, John Conyers hammers Obama's weak stance in the healthcare battle in a radio interview:

"I'm getting tired of saving Obama's can in the White House," Conyers said on the liberal Bill Press radio show. "He only won by five votes in the House, and this bill wasn't even anything to write home about."

"The only way he could have got it through was that progressives held their nose," Conyers added.

The veteran Michigan Democrat had teamed with Rep. Dennis Kucinich
(D-Ohio) to push single-payer options in the health reform bill, a
battle which Conyers said was far from over.

And on Rahm Emmanuel? Via the NY Times:

Well, folks, the Senate health plan is out. It's 2,074 pages long, and is even more crapulent than the House plan, from what I can tell.

Some of the awesome features:

1) Taxing more expensive plans that employers provide. The meme is that these are "Cadillac" plans, as if the people who are covered by these plans have any say WHATSOEVER in how much the programs cost.

2) Cutting even more from Medicare.

3) Offering an "opt-out" option for the states.

4) Forcing people to buy insurance, then penalizing them if they don't do so.

That's it!

Oh, wait. You wanted to know about that whole abortion thingy? Don't worry. The Senate has you covered!

Via Tulsa World:

This tiny town near the Oklahoma-Kansas state line north of Enid may soon own the country's only all-Christian prison, with Christian administrators, employees, counselors and programs.

"If Chicken Little doesn't come to town, we'll be open in 16 months," said Bill Robinson, the founder of Corrections Concepts Inc., a Dallas nonprofit prison ministry that is spearheading the project. ....

Robinson, himself an ex-con and prison minister, said he had been working for years on the idea of an all-Christian prison, and he had invested $1.3 million so far on construction plans and other expenses.

Pravda:

The Obama administration announced plans Monday to hold a forum on jobs and economic growth at the White House on Dec. 3, after which the president will go on the road to demonstrate his concern about the nation's rising jobless rate.

With the nation's unemployment rate at its highest level in 26 years, President Obama plans to bring together CEOs, small business owners and financial experts* to sound out ideas for continuing to expand [?] the economy and create jobs.

"During these difficult economic times, we have a responsibility to consider all good ideas to encourage and accelerate job creation in this country," Obama said in a statement.

The president outlined plans for the forum before leaving for Asia last week, but at the time had not nailed down a date. The White House said Obama would follow the forum with a visit to Allentown, Pa., for the first stop of what the White House is calling a Main Street Tour, which will take him to across the country over several months.

Months. So, we're going to have to go through the campaign of 2008 all over again.

I'll just quote Riggsveda:

The Final Word on Health Care Reform

Charles Pierce at Altercation sums it up so perfectly it needs nothing more than a blockquote:

I'm sorry but while both Ezra KLEIN and Jon COHN have done great work on this issue, they are talking here about a country and a political system that no longer exist. And their responses to Marcia Angell's CRI DE COEUR are largely political, and not really to the point of her piece, which is that no substantive reform of the system is possible until the control that the insurance industry exercises over the practice of medicine is broken forever. The now-familiar argument is that the House bill--even if it had a snowball's chance in hell of surviving the Senate intact, which it doesn't--represents a good first step. When exactly was the last time our political system--to say nothing of the Congress--did anything in "steps"? We don't progress. We move a step ahead, and then there's an election, and then we move another ste

Crossposted at ZBlogs, Firedoglake and TPMCafe

How can we get repealing bans on first cousin marriage on the US legislative agenda?

I think it would clearly help in getting started to consider why it has not already been raised as an issue, given facts like that no other Western country prohibits it and that the genetic arguments have been shown to be hollow.

I can see at least two big reasons why it's been neglected:

Open Left:

One of the few - and I sincerely stress the word "few" - concrete legislative successes progressives notched in the Republican Congress under President George W. Bush came on the evening of July 26th, 2002, when they humiliated the House into passing a bill sponsored by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) banning federal contracts from going to companies that engage in tax "inversions." These are the schemes whereby a corporation that is based in the United States buys a P.O. box in Bermuda and uses it to legally avoid paying American taxes.

ubetchaiam

For those who argued we should just pass SOMETHING, even if it was a bad bill, because they said we could fix it later, this is what you
get from a strategy of perpetual compromise, a bill that is utterly
beyond redemption. It’s time to throw HR 3962 in the medical waste
bin, and do what should have been done in the first place, build a
new national health care system on what actually DOES work, by
extending the existing economical and efficient Medicare plan to all
ages.

Kip Sullivan at Firedoglake:

Bankster-friendly ideologies have made managers stupid:

Yves here. Krugman does Germany an injustice by failing to contest US prejudices about European (particularly German) labor practices. If German labor practices are so terrible, then how was Germany an export powerhouse, able to punch above its weight versus Japan and China, while the US, with our supposedly great advantage of more flexible (and therefore cheaper) labor, has run chronic and large current account deficits? And why is Germany a hotbed of successful entrepreneurial companies, its famed Mittelstand? If Germany was such a terrible place to do business, wouldn’t they have hollowed out manufacturing just as the US has done? Might it be that there are unrecognized pluses of not being able to fire workers at will, that the company and the employees recognize that they are in the same boat, and the company has more reason to invest in its employees (ignore the US nonsense “employees are our asset,” another line from the corporate Ministry of Truth).

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

Barney Frank has become something of a darling on the left because of his feistiness, which heaven knows is in short supply among Democratic politicians. That quality seems to work best for someone who will go down with the ship on principle, all other considerations be damned; someone like Dennis Kucinich, who voted against the House health care bill under just that circumstance. (Phoenix Woman brilliantly articulated the hazards of this outlook.*) It does not work so well with someone who appears to be at least half in the pocket of the interests he ostensibly oversees.

His interview with Ed Schultz earlier this week gave a clear illustration of why. Schultz pushed on a couple of key points: Last year's bailout came with no strings attached, and as a result the major players have gone back to the same reckless behavior. Frank turned prickly, which is what feisty looks like when you don't like it, and almost immediately said "don't condescend to me" when Schultz was obviously doing no such thing. He proceeded to condescend to Schultz throughout the interview; "the point I made to you several times" and "What's the matter with you?" stand out. There was also this:

SCHULTZ: Congressman, why can't you just admit that this was a serious misstep on the part of the Congress? You forked out billions of dollars to save the economy, I get all that, to get the structure back going again. But you didn't ask them questions about how this...

FRANK: No, Ed. You're wrong.

SCHULTZ: Oh, tell me I'm wrong.

FRANK: You're wrong. And I'd like to be able to explain it.

... for another Kool-Aid aperitif. Obama's thinking 2010 won't be 1937-38. But Krugman's disagreeing. Krugman's got a keen chart, too:

Have we declared victory on health insurance reform yet? I confess I don't keep up with the access bloggers as much as I should, so maybe I didn't get the memo. Anyhow, the Versailles consensus that declaring victory is distinctly preferable to achieving it works for finance, too. James Kwok:

Gillian Tett has an article criticizing the idea that CoCos — contingent convertible bonds — will solve the “too big to fail” problem. ...

Contingent convertible bonds, a.k.a. contingent capital, are the latest fad to hit the optimistic technocracy in Washington and London. A contingent convertible bond is a bond that a bank sells during ordinary times, but that converts into equity when things turn bad, with “bad” defined by some trigger conditions, such as capital falling below a predetermined level. In theory, this means that banks can have the best of both worlds. They can go out and borrow more money today, increasing leverage and profits (which is what they want). But when the crisis hits, the debt will convert into equity; that will dilute existing shareholders, but more importantly it means the debt does not have to be paid back, providing an instant boost to the bank’s capital cushion. In other words, banks can have the additional safety margin as if they had raised more equity today, but without having to raise the equity.

Sounds ideal! Where do I sign up?

Pravda buries the lead:

Allies [of departing White House counsel Gregory Craig] also note that he oversaw the successful confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court and praised him for trying to keep Obama in synch with some of the ideologically liberal ideas he promoted in the campaign.

McClatchy called their shot on this "Rahmian act of public humiliation" back in September.

Via Naked Capitalism:

The only reason the Howler repeats himself is that our famously free press does. As for example:

This morning, the gods rocked with laughter: On Olympus, that is. Reason? On the front page of the New York Times, Sheryl Gay Stolberg penned a report about the way current health reform bills would deal with American health care spending. On Olympus, her opening paragraph produced some muffled laughter:

STOLBERG (11/10/09): As health care legislation moves toward a crucial airing in the Senate, the White House is facing a growing revolt from some Democrats and analysts who say the bills Congress is considering do not fulfill President Obama's promise to slow the runaway rise in health care spending.

Note that definition again: We’ll accept a rise in health care spending—it just can’t be a runaway rise! As Stolberg continued, the muffled laughter became full-throated—almost a roar:

STOLBERG (continuing directly): Mr. Obama has made cost containment a centerpiece of his health reform agenda, and in May he stood up at the White House with industry groups who pledged voluntary efforts to trim the growth of health care spending by 1.5 percent, or $2 trillion, over the next decade.

Can you see why the gods, and their guests, were now openly laughing? In the face of a “runaway rise in health care spending,” Stolberg almost seemed to suggest that a “trim” in growth, of 1.5 percent, somehow connected to the idea that “cost containment” was “a centerpiece” of Obama’s agenda! And then too, the gods, and their guests, had all seen the OECD figures—the figures which show the baseline of American health care spending. Can you see why the gods, and their guests, were now laughing hard at us mortals?

Total spending on health care, per person, 2007
United States: $7290
France: $3601
Germany: $3588
United Kingdom: $2992
Italy: $2686
Spain: $2671
Japan: $2581 (2006)

There’s the baseline for any future rise. In 2007, the U.S. spent 102 percent more than the French! In Stolberg’s account, it seems that we’re planning to “trim” 1.5 of those 102 points! But then, cost containment is a centerpiece of our health care agenda!

On Olympus, the sides of the gods are starting to split in the face of our culture’s year-long clowning—clowning which is mainly conducted at the very top of our “press corps.” Our advice: Surrender the prejudice of your youth! In a hundred different ways, you were told that “man” is “the rational animal!” As your society flounders and drowns, you—like the gods—can learn to see something quite different.

By contrast, here's how they do it in France:

On a separate thread where folks are discussing possible legal challenges health care bill, I said I'd look around to see if there have been any challenges to Massachusetts mandatory coverage law and how they fared. This is by no means comprehensive:

Mass.
Against the Mass. law, I could find only one challenge and that was thrown out on what seem to be procedural grounds rather than on the merits. (I can't find the slip op. online to confirm).

Tea Party Challenges

[I thought I'd update and re-post this, since with HR3962 our GENIUS Dems have really outdone themselves their indefatigable efforts to preserve the two-party system by giving the Republicans ever better odds in 2010 and 2012. Not that it matters to them; they're all made in Versailles by now anyhow. --lambert]

Obviously, I'm not a member of that curious breed, the "Democratic Strategist," nor do I play one on the teebee, nor do I have an interest in joining the League of Triple-A Democratic Strategists as a way to make it into The Show; and anyhow, if I were any good at strategerizing, somebody would be paying me to do it (Inside Rotisserie Baseball commenters take note).

Then again, because I'm not paid [except for your donations!], I can't ignore the obvious on health care insurance reform, and it seems to me that the "some bill, any bill" that the current Congress is going to emit will have some problems down the line. Among them:

1. Pffft. That deflated feeling, as of air escaping from a tire, will come when people compare the promise of "hope" and "change" to what is actually delivered -- and when (2013). As far at the [a|the] [strong|robust]? public [health insurance]? [option|plan], I still think my "baseline scenario" -- the mandate will force millions to buy junk insurance, bailing out the insurance companies -- is the most likely outcome, and it's not going to play well over time, especially with Obama's youthful base [UPDATE See Ian Welsh]. Then again, we might think that the electoral process has become a stepping stone to lucrative jobs on K Street or on the teebee, and so what we think of as the politics or optics of it all is just not relevant to insiders and wannabe insiders.

Via Baseline Scenario, where James Kwok comments that Brad DeLong is never afraid to admit error, this from DeLong:

“Back in the 1930s there was a Polish Marxist economist, Michel Kalecki, who argued that recessions were functional for the ruling class and for capitalism because they created excess supply of labor, forced workers to work harder to keep their jobs, and so produced a rise in the rate of relative surplus-value.

... but here she seems to have gotten one right:

Ana Marie Cox tweets:

Things now looking even grimmer in Maine... 76% in, @nomtweets asshats up 52/47.8 (Thanks, Obama, for all the help!)

A short while ago, she re/tweeted:

RT @twpolk If Gays lose in ME by such tight margin, the blame will falls on DNC, OFA and Obama. // Sadly, I think they all know that.

I guess it's cold comfort that a netroots cw purveyor like Ana Marie sees things the same way the real world does.

Haw.

David Jenny writes* in the Bangor Daily News:

The president and Congress agree: Washington’s solution to 46 million uninsured Americans is to “mandate” that they all purchase health insurance from private companies, or — if the president’s view should prevail — a government-run “public option.”

Until now, our federal government has never claimed the power to compel individual citizens to pay insurance premiums to either private companies or government entities.

Astonishingly, no one is asking: “Does the federal government actually have the power to dictate that individuals purchase health insurance?” ....