After House Budget Czar Paul Ryan's kill-Medicare plan - which all but four Republicans in the House and 40 Republican senators voted for - became a major fail and lost Republicans a special election for a House seat they won just six months ago with 74% of the vote, Republicans are trying to retool their message on Medicare. The new big lie, in the corporate media as well as in Republican circles (funny how they always synchronize so well, don't you think?), is that Democrats don't have any plans on Medicare at all, and since left alone, the Medicare trust fund will eventually fall short of all its obligations, Democrats too want to end Medicare. But it is a dastardly lie.

Sen. Chuck Schumer appeared on Meet The Press this Sunday, making clear two things: If Republicans don't drop the Ryan plan immediately, it will legitimately be hung around their necks in 2012, and that the Democratic plan to effectively address costs within the system - e.g. by focusing payments on treating a patient for a particular illness rather than the current fee-for-service boondoggle for private hospitals and providers - to promote both better care and lower costs.

In my dealings with Democrats I sometimes encounter people who are disappointed that they didn't get an FDR style president in President Obama. I wanted to learn more about what I’ve been missing since clearly this FDR must be some kind of President. Based on what I’ve read so far, yes for his time and given all the advantages that he had such as majorities in both houses and three terms in office, he was great. But was FDR really the sort of President we need now? Were his policies so superior to those of our present Administration? Or have the policies of FDR taken on a mythology that is easier to long for than to deal with present day reality?

Even a superficial comparison shows some fundamental differences between the two men as seen in this table.

Today, we honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of the United States. But what does it mean for the rest of us? What is the role of a grateful nation - grateful for the service of those who have fallen and to those on whom the burden is the greatest - our military families?

Our military families go through so much. Every acknowledgment that we know they are there, every offer to help them in any way we can, anything any of us can do to help a servicemember re-adjust to civilian life are all ways we can serve. That is what the Joining Forces is all about. An effort launched by First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden. They remind us that even though not all of us will join the military, all of us can serve by serving the families of those who lay their lives on the line.

Editor's Note: Everyone, please welcome another terrific addition to TPV - Tien le. Some of you know her from her participation in the comments. I reached out to her after seeing some of her writings, and she graciously agreed to blog here! Please join me in welcoming her as a contributor. - Deaniac83.

There are people on the Left who criticize the President. Rightly so, we can’t all agree all the time with everything coming from the White House. There are policies that didn’t go far enough; foreign engagements and wars we want resolved; this or that agency we want to function better or less expensively. These criticisms are part of the public discourse and we all have the right to engage in them. Luckily for us, we have a President who actually listens to people even when he doesn’t necessarily agree.

It was then surprising to me to learn that there are a group of people from the far left who are spending all their time and energy trying to discredit our President for everything he and his administration does and says. The criticism is relentless and makes no account for changes or actions that correspond directly with Liberal ideals and the Democratic Platform. Nothing the President does is good enough or right in their eyes. These same people claim that they represent the Liberal ‘base.’

Yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden delivered our weekly address due to the President being out of the country. The focus: the revival and revitalization of the American auto industry. Chrystler is paying back its financial rescue loan six years ahead of schedule. GM announced that it would run an additional shift at its Detroit Hamtrack factory, adding 2,500 new jobs. In the words of Don LaForest of the United Auto Workers, "It's mind-boggling that we can go from near-extinction to full employment in two years."

Here is the Vice President's address:



A transcript is available here.

Ooh, boy. The AP is reporting that the Republican presidential contest is suddenly heating up, thanks to three people: Texas governor Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, and Mr. noun-verb-and-9/11 Rudy Giuliani.

After months of resisting calls to join the contest, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Friday he would consider it. That could reshape the GOP field, adding a sitting governor who has never lost an election.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin also sent a jolt through the party with the announcement of a campaign-style bus tour along the East Coast, the latest possible contender to stand up since Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels announced last weekend that he would not run.

And former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is heading to New Hampshire next week, further stirring speculation that he will jump into the still-gelling field.

Umm, so the Republican field is finally getting some much needed excitement because of (wait for it, wait for it)...

Ack! There goes the "corporatist" Obama administration again - this time trying to hold oil futures traders accountable! First, this "corporatist" administration comes into office and passes unprecedented measures to protect consumers from corporate malfeasance like a patient's bill of rights on steroid in health reform, the most significant re-regulation of Wall Street since the 1930s, student loan reform, and credit card reform. And now, this! Outrageous!

Even under the convoluted legal morass that derivatives and futures tradings operated under under before President Obama's Wall Street reform was signed into law, CFTC has found a way to hold at least some wild-marketeers accountable and is suing oil traders for manipulating the market in 2008 (and there might be more to come in the pipeline).

The suit says that in early 2008 they tried to hoard nearly two-thirds of the available supply of a crucial American market for crude oil, then abruptly dumped it and improperly pocketed $50 million.

The regulators from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission would not say whether the agency was conducting any other investigations into oil speculation. With oil prices climbing again this year, President Obama has asked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to set up a working group to look into fraud in oil and gas markets and “safeguard against unlawful consumer harm.”

Maybe this will become a semi-regular to regular feature of TPV.  Thinking about a daily open thread feature with a different flavor. So here is your first Friday night funnies. Just some selection of recent comic moments (mostly picked from Comedy Central's The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and sometimes Youtube).

First up, Stephen Colbert uses humor to show the absurdity of Citizens United and "Super PACs."

Yesterday, that homophobic black president (or maybe not black enough, ask Cornel West) who passed a repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, declared the federal Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional, mandated that any hospital accepting Medicare must respect same sex partner visitation rights, expanded federal hate crimes statutes to include protections for LGBT Americans, and did more to advance gay rights than any president ever received the endorsement of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest and most successful advocates for LGBT equality.

HRC President Joe Solmonese had this to say about the endorsement:

President Obama has improved the lives of LGBT Americans more than any President in history. In 2008 we were promised change and profound change is what we got. More remains to be done and ensuring that President Obama is able to continue the forward momentum toward equality for another term is an absolute priority of the Human Rights Campaign.

The White House is threatening a veto of the House committee version of the defense authorization bill over Republican attempts to launch a worldwide war without specific targets or reasons, block detainee transfer from Guantanamo, and mess with the president's efforts to reduce active nuclear warheads under the new START treaty. It is also warning Congress against complicating the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Not that you would have heard about this if you read Glenn Greenwald, self-proclaimed Constitutional hero of the anti-war movement.

In the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Republican Chairman Buck McKeon (R-CA, serving defense contractors), slipped in a provision to authorize the President to use force anytime, anywhere in the world even without any specific threat to the United States. The ACLU called this provision the worldwide war without end provision. The House bill also includes provisions to limit the president's power of detainee transfer from Guantanamo, as well as seeks to delay the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

The Department of Health and Human Services issued, on May 19, final anti-gouging regulation mandating automatic reviews of health insurance rate increases of more than 10%. If the states won't do it, HHS will step in itself.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a final regulation to ensure that large health insurance premium increases will be thoroughly reviewed, and consumers will have access to clear information about those increases. Combined with other important protections from the Affordable Care Act, these new rules will help lower insurance costs by moderating premium hikes and provide consumers with greater value for their premium dollar. In 2011, this will mean rate increases of 10-percent or more must be reviewed by state or federal officials.

The Kaiser Family Foundation found last year that the average premium increases imposed on individual plans were nearly 20%, with no rhyme or reason explained. Patients were essentially left with three unattractive choices: lose coverage altogether, pay the premium increase, or switch to a plan that covered less.


Courtesy: Kaiser Family Foundation News Release. See above for link.

The first thing Republican Congressman Eric Cantor thought about after the Joplin tornado was how to use the crisis to cut government spending elsewhere- maybe by throwing crippled children on the street or cheating old people of their pensions or denying medical care to the sick. Being the lifetime politician that he is, Cantor knew how to say it in DC language so he didn't actually have to say the words "dump crippled children in the street or you won't get emergency aid".

if there is support for a supplemental, it would be accompanied by support for having pay-fors to that supplemental,”Politico

Cantor is 100% correct though - the government does not have money to spend to help widows and orphans in Joplin. I run a small business and I know you can't just spend money you don't have indefinitely and I know that taxes on businesses like mine are not light. We pay about 1/3 of profits in tax and because we are a small business where income goes up and down but expenses do not, scraping together tax payments is often not easy. But we have to pay high taxes, not because there are so many unfortunate people getting government benefits, but because Cantor and his fellow Republicans, including Roy Blunt, the guy who represents Joplin pass our tax money out to their donors, our big corporate competitors. Although we pay 1/3 and our workers have income tax withheld from their paychecks, our big corporate competitors pay little or nothing in Federal taxes thanks to tax favors that the Republicans in Congress will do anything to defend.

I can't really contain me glee on this one. Today, it must suck to be Paul Ryan. After the Dumbest Speaker in Memory John Boehner made all but four House Republicans vote to kill Medicare as part of Paul Ryan's Path to Poverty, and beating up Newt Gingrich for letting the truth about it being right wing social engineering slip, tonight comes the first Republican electoral casualty:

Kathy Hochul (D) has won the special election in NY-26, a blood-red Republican district, beating Jane Corwin (R), who declared her affectionate support for Ryan's kill-Medicare plan. She won by a pretty significant margin, too. With 87% of the precincts reporting, Corwin languished with 42% of the vote while Hochul was close to breaking 50%, at 48%.

This was a referendum on Paul Ryan's kill-Medicare and Path to Poverty plan, ad the Republican Tea Party lost. But the good news for Democrats is that the wingnuts have a tendency to double down when they lose. Now, they will definitely run Michelle Bachmann for President!

The radical Right hates Obama because they think he's a communist. The radical Left hates Obama because they know he isn't.

I heard someone say on TV this once, and I have paraphrased it with some modifications.

Chris Hedges is the Truthdig author who published Cornel West's racist, antisemitic screed last week. After the liberal and progressive voices were out there took Prof. West to task and summarily condemned the nasty racism and bigotry that Prof. West displayed, Hedges was apparently unhappy that his attempt to hide behind Cornel West's race baiting to cover his own had been a flop. So in his Truthdig column yesterday, he doubled down, calling West a "prophet" and delving in a self-congratulating pathetic diatribe of bitter, angry and false complaints against the Democratic party and what he calls the "liberal class."

Hedge's argument, in a nutshell, is that you can't be considered to be on the Left unless all you do is oppose "the state." He manages to trash every cornerstone of a free and democratic society, along with any organized group that has ever made progress in the long history of this country.

The pillars of the liberal establishment—the press, the church, culture, the university, labor and the Democratic Party—all honor an unwritten quid pro quo with corporations and the power elite, as well as our masters of war, on whom they depend for money, access and positions of influence.

We Americans are very lucky people. A sane and compassionate president is in charge. ~Frank Schaeffer

An article written by Frank Schaeffer which I had bookmarked for reading from about a month ago had me thinking about how President Obama indeed had the most grueling two and half years in this suicidal political environment we live in not to mention he is one person that is never appreciated or always under appreciated for doing so many things that takes the kind of political courage no other politician is capable of. In the article, Obama Is Now and Will Be a Great President , Schaeffer speaks of the incredible leadership qualities of our President, his effectiveness, how in the face of so much adversity from the Left and obstructionism from the Right and the Racists, how he has threaded carefully to succeed in a job that can break the soul of anyone by outsmarting his opponents including the MSM that is always interested in creating drama than reporting honest and intelligent news. It was rather a fascinating read that pretty much sums up the last two years especially considering what this President was faced when he assumed the Presidency. Losing 700,000 jobs a month two January ago, "two wars, the worst economic crisis since the depression, America's standing in the world at the lowest point in history, a country that had been misled into accepting the use of torture of prisoners of war, a health care system in free fall, an educational system in free fall, a global environmental crisis of history-altering proportions", an auto industry in shambles, a skyrocketing debt owned by foreign Countries that can easily create a hostage situation of our constitution giving them foreign veto power over us and so many other challenges. So many problems, so much adversity, so much impatience, so little time to fix everything to please everyone, so much criticism, but how did he do it all so far despite the fact that he had so many desperate forces both from the Right and the Left taking any potential momentum away from him?

Poor Newt Gingrich. The man who defined loyalty politics of the far Right edge in the 1990s now finds himself on the wrong side of absolute and abject party loyalty demanded by conservative activists. Why? Because he let the truth slip through his mouth (quite likely the only time he has made such mistake in politics) about the Paul Ryan plan to kill Medicare to pay for tax cuts for the super wealthy: that it is right wing social engineering. And oops, there goes Iowa.

There is nothing wrong with being anti-war, per se. But like any other advocates, they lose credibility when they start claiming everything they don't like is illegal. Hail Mary passes may keep the noise machine going, but those don't advance the national debate. Plenty of influential figures in the anti-war movement, however, have done just that with respect to the intervention in Libya. They have pretended that some parts of the Constitution exist, others do not, and even more interestingly, these supposed advocates of international law and human rights have pretended throughout the conflict in Libya that neither actually matter or even, perhaps, exist.

Back in March, after the start of the operations in Libya, Rep. Dennis Kucinich had called the intervention an impeachable offense against President Obama, and I had to set him straight. In short, I had argued that primarily our international treaty obligations and secondarily the War Powers Act authorize actions in Libya. Now, Glenn Greenwald argues the President's actions are unilateral and never legal because of the War Powers Act. Apart from the absurdity of calling an action in support of a unanimous resolution of the UN Security Council and in a support role to NATO "unilateral," a simple reading of the War Powers Act provides that he is wrong. The section Greenwald specifically refers to reads the following way:

(c) Presidential executive power as Commander-in-Chief; limitation
The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.

In the early months of the Obama administration, with the economy in free-fall and Bush's bank bailout having poured hundreds of billions into an apparently bottomless bank collapse, Nobel Prize winners Paul Krugman and Joe Stiglitz among others "on the left", authoritatively and confidently explained that the policies advanced by the new Administration were naive, stupid, complicit, and sure to fail abysmally and catastrophically. The extent of the error made by these economists and others, like Dean Baker, Simon Johnson, and Robert Reich, not to mention all their often ludicrously ignorant followers in "progressive" blogs is all the more remarkable given their subsequent lack of interest in figuring out why they were so wrong or even admitting to error in the first place.

I was under the impression that he might bring in the voices of brother Joseph Stiglitz and brother Paul Krugman. I figured, OK, given the structure of constraints of the capitalist democratic procedure that’s probably the best he could do. -Princeton Professor Cornel West (not a hotel porter)

The basic Krugman/Stiglitz argument was that the financial markets had correctly priced bank assets as junk and so the biggest banks owed more money than they could ever repay and the government should "nationalize" them. The Administration, on the other hand, said that the financial markets were in the grip of a panic and that arranging for temporary government and government/private finance would calm things down at less cost to the taxpayer. Obviously, Geithner, Obama, and Bernanke were correct and the critics from the left were incorrect - the banks have stabilized, the "toxic assets" purchased by government have turned out to be a great investment, and the economy is recovering slowly, not smoldering in ruins. But the strangest thing about the incorrect analysis of the "left critics" is that it's based on a fundamentally right wing view of the economy wrapped up in a bunch of pseudo-populist signifying. The right insists that that market price is value. The right insists that financial markets are rational. And the right is contemptuous and derisory about reformers.

I don't usually write on the Israeli Palestinian conflict, because while I have my views, I am not self educated and informed enough to run commentary on the issue that would be worthy of the quality that TPV has become known for. I don't plan on a departure from that today. But I did think it is extremely important, in light of the recent media bruhaha about what the President said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for everyone to actually listen to what the President had to say. Here is the President's speech at AIPAC today:



A transcript is available courtesy of the Wall Street Journal.

For a while, the big babies at Firedoglake pretended to be Democrats and touted their purported attempts to simply hold the Democratic party to its platform. Now, they have finally dropped the rouse. Kudos to them for that, I guess. See, "some" FDLers with the apparent blessing of the FDL hierarchy have formed a new 527 group to blow smoke up the behind of FDL's idea of running a primary challenge against President Obama.

Of course, the new e-fart, err, I mean effort, called the New Progressive Alliance (funny, given that what they are doing is neither particularly new nor progressive - and as for alliance, I suppose they are an alliance in the same way the Tea Party is an "alliance"), has really one purpose: be a spoiler in the 2012 elections. By any means necessary. Really. In their own manifesto, NPA goes full Lieberman and announces that they plan on participating in the 2012 Democratic primaries but most definitely not abide by its results. Declaring their intention to screw with democracy, they state:

As the first of its two-stage strategy for achieving this goal, the NPA is actively seeking a 2012 primary challenger who will commit to turning the electoral process, as we know it, on its head.

We seek a challenger who recognizes the rare opportunity 2012 provides for boldly leveraging Americans’ broad support of real Progressive policy and programs. Our challenger must pledge to oppose Mr. Obama throughout the primary season, and to play a key role in the second stage of our strategy, by changing the “traditional” script and throwing their support not to Mr. Obama, but to an as yet undetermined independent or third-party candidate who earns our endorsement.

PLEASE JOIN OUR MEMBERSHIP.

Not big enough? Fine.

Remember the Bush administration's Gonzo-gate? The US Attorney scandal when Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales went around firing career prosecutors because they weren't willing to bring phony voter fraud cases against Democrats or they weren't enough of a "loyal Bushie"? Sane Americans were rightfully outraged at the barren and brazen politicization of the Department of Justice. At that time, those who now classify as the Professional Left were outraged right along with us. How dare the White House interfere with the workings of the Justice Department? Charged with defending the law, the Justice Department is and should be unique in independence from the White House, they argued.

They were right. But as it turns out, they weren't serious about it. It turns out that they don't really oppose White House political intervention in the workings of the Justice Department; rather they oppose it only in certain cases. In other cases, they in fact demand that the White House intervene politically in criminal prosecutions of the Department of Justice. The self proclaimed "principled" people are very happy to ignore their principle when it fits their agenda.

The President spoke today at the State Department, delivering an address as much to Americans as it was meant for the people of the Middle East. In his speech, President Obama lauded the peoples across the middle east demanding their universal freedoms and democratic rights. He also pointed out that a policy of engagement, not careless war (ala Iraq), is required from the United States. Finally, he renewed America's commitment to Israel's security and called for two independent states of Israel and Palestine, saying that democracy, peace and cooperation can flourish neither from terrorism nor occupation.

Here is the President's full speech:



The White House has a full transcript.

Increasing the debt limit is deeply unpopular. A recent Gallup survey shows that Americans are opposed to raising the debt ceiling by a whopping 47% to 19% margin (while 34% say they don't know enough to say either way).

Well, 47% of us are wrong. Of course, the question was based "from what you know or have heard" on the debt ceiling. That may be the problem. The media has done a piss poor job of explaining what the debt limit actually is, what raising it means, and what not raising it would mean. The unpopularity of raising the debt limit comes from two primary myths about the debt limit: first, that raising the debt limit means raising the actual obligations of the federal government. The second myth is that not raising the debt limit will prevent the actual debt from going up. Neither is true.

Let's discuss those two myths with simple analogies before we go onto the really serious, catastrophic consequences of not increasing the debt limit. The debt limit is, of course, the amount of money the federal government is allowed to borrow to pay obligations already authorized by Congress. Since the national debt is often likened to a national credit card, these myths are busted well enough using the same analogy. First, if your credit card company raises your credit limit, it does not mean that you will automatically have a bigger bill. Similarly, if you reach your credit limit and become unable to borrow any more, it does not mean that your existing debt isn't still accruing interest, late fees, etc. even above and beyond your credit limit.

It’s not pretty when several irrational ideas collide. On Thursday May 12, the Senate conducted a hearing to discuss the removal of a $2 billion per year tax break for the top 5 oil companies. The NYT called the testimony at the hearing “A big whine for big oil.” Eliminating a tax break like this should be a no-brainer, but that idea is blocked by six irrational notions from the right that come together in an explosion of false logic:

1. Speaker Boehner claims that “unsustainable debt and deficits threaten the prosperity of our children and the health and retirement security of our seniors”, BUT YET…

2. Stopping a tax increase, no matter what kind of tax, is economic priority number one. Senator Orrin hatch (R-UT) said that “all this hearing is about is providing a justification for tax increases.”

3. The conservative media pundits argue that an increase in taxes paid by the hugely profitable oil companies would raise the price of oil. SO…

4. For many conservatives, the answer to our oil problem is “drill, baby, drill,” the implication being that drilling for more oil within the US would lead to lower gas prices. THEREFORE…

5. If we drill for more oil, we’ll find oceans of it! The right-wing pundits say that we have enough oil to live happily ever after. If you need more of something, it will magically appear. AND FINALLY…

6. If we don’t get oil prices down, civilization will collapse because civilization is not possible without oil.
Let’s give these ideas a reality check.

When Glenn Beck said that President Obama has a deep seated hatred for White people and White culture, we on the Left - and really, all Americans of good conscience - were outraged with good reason. When Rick Sanchez displayed naked antisemitism and spread around the conspiracy theory Jewish people control the media, we weren't too happy about that either. Racism and race baiting, coming from any corner of the American political discourse, is not a welcome idea. It does remain to be seen, however, how the Professional Left responds to the equally race baiting, Jews-are-controlling-Obama type comments by Cornel West.

I am still getting my thoughts together about how to react to this blatant form of racial, cultural and religious divisiveness displayed by West, but here, Jon Chait has the comments:

“I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men,” West says. “It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He is just as human as I am, but that is his cultural formation. When he meets an independent black brother, it is frightening. And that’s true for a white brother. When you get a white brother who meets a free, independent black man, they got to be mature to really embrace fully what the brother is saying to them. It’s a tension, given the history. It can be overcome. Obama, coming out of Kansas influence, white, loving grandparents, coming out of Hawaii and Indonesia, when he meets these independent black folk who have a history of slavery, Jim Crow, Jane Crow and so on, he is very apprehensive. He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination. It is understandable.

“He feels most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they want,” he says.

If you read the Wall Street Journal or right wing blogs, you know who Ron Bloom is. He is special advisor to Tim Geithner and White House director of manufacturing policy. He's a former official at the United Steel Workers Union who helped manage the auto rescue.

Mr. Bloom attended Harvard Business School, where he gravitated to populist business cases and was keenly interested in employee buyouts. After 10 years at investment banks, among them Lazard, he became special assistant to the USW president in 1996. Both inside and outside the USW, Mr. Bloom is known as a financially savvy negotiator — with a tendency to spout profanities WSJ

Right wing blogs are more straightforward

Is there really any doubt that Obama and his administration are a pack of radical Leftists?

Look for Bloom on Youtube and you'll see - they really really hate him. Here's what got our right wing compatriot's underwear in a twist. Speaking as a union official at " 6th Annual Distressed Investing Forum" Bloom said:

Generally speaking, we get the joke. We know that the free market is nonsense. We know that the whole point is to game the system, to beat the market or at least find someone who will pay you a lot of money, 'cause they're convinced that there is a free lunch. We know this is largely about power, that it's an adults only no limit game. We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun. And we get it that if you want a friend you should get a dog.

Absolutely nothing that Bloom said is even controversial on Wall Street, but according to American Right Wing Propagandists, working people are supposed to naively believe in the stories told to them by the economists. They are not supposed to have learned how the private equity market works and how to play hardball. Democrats are supposed to act like the "progressives" who, when the Republicans attempted to fire Bloom through a legislative rider, lamented and bewailed President Obama's lack of respect for Congressional oversight (he basically told them to take a hike) without worrying about why the Wall Street employees who manage the GOP caucus wanted so much to get rid of Bloom.

Maybe John Boehner can hold another vote in the House on ending Medicare and armtwist the four Republicans who voted against it last time to vote for it this time. Since after they did it the last time, it has worked out so well for the Republicans. You see, after President Obama took Paul Ryan to the cleaners for his Path to Poverty (aka Road to Ruin) "budget" including his plan to end Medicare and forcing seniors to go buy health insurance in the open market - since, you know, insurance companies are dying to insure seniors - by paying $6,000 extra. After all, Ryan had a justified cause to do this: 33 such seniors being thrown to the den of the insurance industry would help pay for the $200,000 tax break Ryan wants to give to the average millionaire.

After the Republicans took that vote and were creamed by their constituents (thanks in no small part to a job well done by President Obama and Congressional Democrats on messaging), Paul Ryan has responded with the natural response of the Right wing when they get themselves into a hole: dig some more. Yesterday, Ryan gave a speech to the Economic Club of Chicago, trying out a brand new lipstick on his end-Medicare pig: he called the speech "Shared Scarcity vs. Renewed Prosperity." Yes, Paul Ryan is very much against shared scarcity, especially if you share the scarcity with the super rich. And his renewed prosperity means brand new $200,000 tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires while the seniors get shared poverty. You know, the American Paul Ryan way.

I knew this would happen. That David Sirota - the guy who went after an USAID program to help Sri Lanka after the tsunami that devastated that country - would be the latest in the "Obama-sucks" wing of the Left to come and start whining about the way that bin Laden's death. Apparently, he also does not read all that well, given that all of the "questions" in his latest "ZOMG-how-dare-we-kill-bin-Laden" screed have already been answered. Just like his pal Glenn Greenwald, Sirota presents the bin Laden mission as an issue of executive overreach. Seriously. The lack of common sense and critical thinking is breathtaking. Take his first question, for example:

Is it legal for a president to issue extrajudicial "kill only" orders — that is, orders to kill but not capture a suspect, even if that suspect surrenders?

"Extrajudicial." "A suspect." Osama bin Laden - who planned and executed the attacks on 9/11 and many others targeting civilians after that, and bragged and claimed credit for them, is a "suspect." Sirota thinks that this is a criminal court proceeding, with the "suspect," bin Laden, who is to be presumed innocent. Therefore, I suppose, the President has no right to do anything except to tell his Justice Department to go to a court and get an arrest warrant, and tell his state department to look into extradition agreements with other countries.

NY-26 is as blood red a district as it gets. Hillary Clinton lost the district twice, even as she won the state with big margins for her senate races. George W. Bush and John McCain won the district even as John Kerry and Barack Obama trounced them in the state in 2004 and 2008, respectively. Then they got a Craigslist Congressman, who resigned. And right now, the Democrat in the special election to fill the seat, Kathy Hochul (by the way, you can click here to donate to Hochul) is statistically tied with the Republican, some polls even showing her leading.

Why? Because of pretty much this: Republican candidate Jane Corwin's support to the Paul Ryan plan to end Medicare. As the candidates debated on Thursday,

Hochul returned time and again to Corwin's support of Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to cut spending and turn Medicare into a voucher program, arguing that it would return the nation to a time when seniors were the most impoverished citizens.

The post from yesterday - one on separation pay for gay servicemembers, has NOT been deleted. Blogger (Google's blogging platform that is in use for TPV) has been having some major issues in the past 24 hours, and some posts were temporarily removed by Blogger while they were fixing their problem. The backend was also closed. Systems seem to be coming back online now, however, and all posts, including that post, should be restored soon.

There's a new meme in the clawing community determined to yell at the President over everything: the Obama administration hates gay troops! Yes, still, even after the President succeeded in pushing through a legislative repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, stopped defending the Defense of Marriage Act in Court, made hospital visitation rights universal, enacted hate crimes legislation and built up an impressive record of accomplishments on gay rights.

The latest salvo comes in the form of publicizing a lawsuit by the ACLU and service members discharged for being gay. Soldiers, when involuntarily separated but getting an honorable discharge, are entitled to separation pay. The Department of Defense cuts this separation pay in half for several causes of separation, including homosexuality. There is no doubt that this is an outrage. Gay soldiers, fully capable and willing to serve if given the chance, should not see their separation pay cut in half simply for the crime of being gay. Morally, there is no room for equivocation there.

There is, however, a great deal that is not understood about this policy and how the DADT repeal will affect it, including, it would seem, by many who are trying to make this a political football. Scott Wooledge (clarknt67) makes an insidious accusation that the DOD, and in defending it, the DOJ, has somehow equated gay soldiers with drug addicts and criminals.

The moral and practical failure of US policy in the middle east is wrapped up in our dependence on petroleum. The reasons why we are firing missiles at camps in Yemen, sending special forces teams into Pakistan, maintaining a huge fleet in the Persian gulf and fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while we are funding our own enemies are (1) oil, (2) oil and (3) oil. President Obama keeps trying to hammer this home: we have 3% of the world’s oil reserves and use 25% of the production. We’re addicted and are forced to hold hands with dictators who repress their own people and fund a world wide network of religious extremists who hate us. So if you have moral reservations about what we do in the Middle East, and you should, then green energy, energy conservation, and breaking the political power of the oil companies are moral as well as practical imperatives. Saving the world from uncontrolled climate change is nice too. That's why Glenn Greenwald's shoddy, fake constitutional scandal about so-called "assassination" plots is such a dangerous distraction - he tries to get us to take our eyes off the prize of energy independence. The latest in Greenwald's long series of made up constitutional and ethical transgression accusations is that Franklin Roosevelt criminally violated the rights of US citizens who enlisted in the Waffen-SS and fought alongside Nazi Germany. At least that would be the consequence if his story about President Obama's attacks on Al Qaeda Yemen had any consistency or legal basis.

Ezra Klein is one of my favorite policy wonks. I read him on a regular basis, and will continue to do so. But today, I must set him straight. In a piece criticizing Alan Simpson - who, yes, I agree is guilty of some pretty bad insensitive language - Ezra Klein takes refuge of an interesting statistic: that for people who reach are Medicare age, life expectency has only increased by 5 years since 1935.

In 1935, a white male at age 60 could expect to live to 75. Today, a white male at age 60 can expect to live to 80.

Notwithstanding the fact that the workforce of this country has diversified quite a bit since 1935, both in terms of gender and race, this has been the line for people trying to counter the argument that since social security's inception, general life expectancy (for people who are born in a given year) has increased dramatically. To be sure, for someone born in 1935, the average life expectancy in the US was about 60 years - below the social security retirement age of 65. In 2006, it was 77.7 years.

Just an hour or so ago, President Obama delivered a moving speech on immigration reform in Texas. Here is the President's speech in full:

Remember in 2009 when the Professional Left gay establishment got their panties in a bunch (yeah, this gay man said it) over President Obama's not doing things "fast enough"? For a moment there, the Professional Left was basking in its own glory as it was having a mild effect on LGBT fundraising for the Democratic party after an admittedly stupid Justice Department brief in defense of DOMA.

But then, Obama proved that his strategy of advancing gay rights by advancing a legislative repeal rather than an executive pause of DADT, by refusing to defend DOMA altogether in the light of the legislative repeal of DADT and court rulings, and administratively advancing equal employment opportunities within the federal government, along with a slew of unprecedented gay rights advancements - both legislative (including signing the Matthew Sheppard Hate Crimes Act) and administrative.

And so, naturally, gay donors are standing with the President more strongly than ever.

Pleased by an all-out White House push to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell,” gay donors have surprised campaign officials with the extent of their support. And the campaign’s new fundraising apparatus appears designed to capitalize on their enthusiasm: Obama’s finance committee included one gay man in 2008; there are 15 this year, a source said. [...]

“It’s ironic — a year ago there was no constituency more unhappy. There was a sea change,” said David Mixner, a veteran New York gay activist, who said that White House actions during the past year had swayed restive gay donors. “You not only will see a united community that will contribute to Obama, but they will work their asses off.”

Many of you know about Glenn Greenwald, a contributor at extreme libertarian CATO Institute, (he also publishes and sells at least one White Paper on CATO's website and bookstore), and a pretend-liberal on Salon.com, who has a vendetta he pursues ruthlessly against the Obama Administration. If you listen to Greenwald, he actually sounds a lot more like a Tea Partier than any average American. Everything he writes has that "Boo! The government is taking your rights away!" scare tactic under the cover of "civil libertarianism." In his Saturday posting, he was very upset that President Obama is trying to take out a radical terrorist cleric. I'll get to that, but here's the part that kind of tells you everything you need to know about just how utterly insane Greenwald's logic has become:

There are certain civil liberties debates where, even though I hold strong opinions, I can at least understand the reasoning and impulses of those who disagree; the killing of bin Laden was one such instance.

Ahh. You see, the killing of Bin Laden was a "civil liberties" issue, and in the infinite wisdom of one contributor of the CATO Institute, we violated bin Laden's civil liberties. The damn Navy SEALs. I guess Greenwald thinks that they should all be court martialed for killing bin Laden instead of reading him his rights. Actually, we don't have to guess. We already know that Greenwald wanted the SEALs to act like the local police.

But of course, see, he can understand the impulses of the rest of us stupid people about that. But come on. Ordering the execution of a radical terrorist cleric? Now that's going too far. This is the story of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American born radical terrorist cleric who has is a regional commander in Al Queda in the Arabian Peninsula and is, in addition to preaching, actively recruiting people to attack American civilians. Greenwald's complaint? Due process.

To all the mothers that read TPV, a very happy Mother's Day to you! My mother always says that I was her Mothers' Day present (my birthday always falls either on or close to Mother's Day - it's tomorrow).

Some special thanks to the moms to whom the nation owes so much: the moms of our servicemembers, as well as the mothers who serve. We love you, we love your children, and we will always stand behind the sacrifice and courage that you all show. Here's a video of First Lady and Dr. Biden hosting a tea for military moms:



Before I close this post, I also want to mention mothers we don't talk much about on mothers' day: foster moms (and foster parents in general). They give a home to children who need it most. We love them. With that, please feel free to use this thread as an open one.

So Paul Ryan proposed his Path to Poverty, the Republican House voted on it, and then they went home for the summer. It wasn't pretty. Apparently, even Republicans' constituents didn't buy the idea that Medicare must be destroyed in order to be saved. People figured out the Ryan scam: turn Medicare into a voucher program, which would cost the average senior $6,000 more per year, and ask 33 such seniors to pay for the average millionaire's tax cut. After all, if privatizing Medicare is such a great idea, then why leave 55 and up population out of it?

So to the chagrin of their corporate overlords and insurance company masters, the Republicans are backing away, notes The New York Times:

While top Republicans insisted that they remained committed to the Medicare initiative, which had become the target of intense attacks by Democrats and liberal groups in recent weeks, the lawmaker who would have to turn the proposal into legislation said he had no plans to do so any time soon.

The lawmaker, Representative Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said that while he still supports the party’s Medicare approach, opposition from Democrats made it pointless to proceed.

Now, I'm happy that Republicans are admitting that it's Democrats who want to save Medicare, but I don't think it's Democratic opposition that is making it pointless to proceed. After all, following the same logic, an attempted repeal of health reform would also be "pointless" since Democrats, including President Obama, would never let it happen, but that didn't stop the Teapublicans in the House from passing a bill doing exactly that. And oh, they can squeal all they want, but they can't get away from their record. House Republicans are on the record voting for RyanCare.

Nearly a month has passed since the Obama administration National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) intervened to stop Boeing from recklessly and illegally punishing its unionized, high skill Washington State workers. The business press and the Republicans have reacted strongly both in media and in Congress. Their story is that Boeing is a private enterprise that is the victim of government "micro-managing". In the real world, however, Boeing is entirely dependent on government subsidies to exist, it is more of a public/private partnership than anyone wants to admit, its paper-wizard management doesn't seem to understand the business they control, and the government intervention is almost certain to benefit Boeing's shareholders and customers as well as its workers - and the national interest. But while the corporate side is on the move, there has been no rallying of public support for the administration. The "progressive" media is uninterested. Paul Krugman, Michael Moore, Dean Baker and other progressive pundits have joined blogs like DailyKos and FireDogLake in passing over this story almost entirely and The Nation relegated coverage to a single blog post. You have to go to labor union affiliated blogs to see any serious mention at all.

You could make a good case that "progressives" are only interested in labor unions when they can find a reason to bash the Obama administration about them. So the lack of progress of labor's prize "card check" law in Congress gets coverage and the Wisconsin public workers controversy was the occasion for many complaints that the President was not living up to his pledge and literally walking a picket line. And we hear a lot of no-data complaining about trade agreements. But when the Administration tries to protect coal miners, wins wage increases for agricultural workers, strikes against employers who fail to pay benefits or legal wages and/or put their hands in employee pension funds - there is near silence.

The April jobs report is out today, and it's good news. The overall growth figures beat expectations by 32%, with the private sector creating 268,000 jobs instead of the projected 200,000. The net job growth was 244,000 as state and local governments (mostly local governments) eliminated 24,000 jobs. The unemployment rate ticked up, however, to 9% as more of the previously discouraged, unemployed workers entered the improving job market.

Here's the famous "bikini graph" after the April numbers:

So President Obama has finalized three new free trade agreements ready for consideration by Congress: ones with South Korea, Panama and Colombia. And sure enough, it set of a trend among ideological opponents of free trade: term any free trade deal "NAFTA style." I doubt any of these knee-jerk opponents have studied either NAFTA or the trade deals they are talking about in detail. It's a talking point. It plays well. It's time tested to make people nervous. So use it. Sensationalism trumps over fact, again. FDL's David Dayen is flat in the middle of this. Noting that the Obama Administration is beginning negotiations on free trade deals with South Korea, Panama and Colombia, he shoots off his mouth:

It’s not clear why workers should herald another set of NAFTA-style trade deals...

Yes, it's not clear indeed, David. Because you have no idea what you're talking about. The trade deals the Obama administration has pursued have been nothing like NAFTA. Also, Dayen has evidently forgotten about CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement signed in by George W. Bush and approved by a Republican Congress. For him, it's apparently more important to bash a Democratic president's free trade agreement with two other countries than a Republican one with six other countries. Figures.

But I digress. Let's talk about a couple of things here: the problem with NAFTA and labor standards, and what is done differently in the recent agreements.

Oh no, this is not going to sit well with detractors of health reform - whether they are on the Tea-publican Right or purity Left. Health reform, despite Republican elected officials throwing every monkey wrench possible into the process, insists on working and producing results. This must be very confusing for ideologues on both sides, but all of a sudden, the rate of uninsured Americans age 18 to 26 has dropped over the last year by 4 percentage points over the last year, reports Gallup, resulting in the lowest uninsurance rate among that age group since Gallup started tracking in 2008.

[Cross-posted from NewDeal2.0.]

In a recent column in the NYTimes, Charles Blow sounds like he has taken a page from FDR’s famous “economic royalist” speech. Talking about what he calls “the right’s flimsy fiscal argument,” Blow claims that:

It all loses traction as more Americans begin to see the far right for what it truly is: a gang of bandits willing to sacrifice the poor and working classes to further extend the American aristocracy — shadowy figures who creep through the night, shaking every sock for every nickel and scraping their silver spoons across the bottom of every pot.

At another low point in American economic history, during the 1936 Democratic National Convention, FDR decried the domination of a small economic elite:

For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital — all undreamed of by the fathers — the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service…

The professional screechers on the puritan "Left" are apparently having some problems with the fact that President Obama and his team was successful in taking out Osama bin Laden. They can't quite figure out a way to discredit the president for doing this, so there's a new approach: go after the people's reaction, caused by the announcement in a very creepy, nasty way. Oh, and bash the president for not getting bin Laden alive. Glenn Greenwald leads the clan.

Did you know that hunting down and killing Osama bin Laden is just like killing an innocent infant baby? Greenwald thinks so. No, I'm not making this crap up. From Greenwald's yesterday's piece of turd:

It seems telling that hunting someone down and killing them is one of the few things that still produce these feelings of nationalistic unity. I got on an airplane last night before the news of bin Laden's killing was known and had actually intended to make this point with regard to our killing of Gadaffi's son in Libya -- a mere 25 years after President Reagan bombed Libya and killed Gadaffi's infant daughter.

See, Reagan bombed Tripoli, and Gaddafi's infant daughter was killed. Obama authorized an Navy SEAL operation against the compound where Bin Laden was hiding out and the operation actually resulted in the killing of Osama Bin Laden himself. Same thing. Pretty much. More or less. Oh, and I'm sure Mr. Greenwald will soon produce evidence of all the festivities that spontaneously erupted across the United States celebrating specifically the event that an infant was killed. Anytime. I'm sure.

I heard Andy Card - President Bush's chief of staff on 9/11 - on television yesterday that this is not a time for partisanship (speaking of the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed by US forces). Then he turned right around and attempted to claim credit for his administration. Something about how both Presidents Bush and Obama ought to be credited for keeping up the pressure on Bin Laden and finally getting him.

The problem with Andy Card's claim - which is now joined by scores of media blowhards eager to not look partisan - that George W. Bush kept up the pressure on Osama bin Laden is that it's flat out false.

President Bush went on TV and announced that he's not worried about Bin Laden, that he doesn't spend much time on him. That was March of 2002, a mere six months after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

We got him! Minutes ago, President Obama wrapped up his address to the American people informing us that Osama Bin Laden has been killed in a US Special Forces operation by order from President Obama last week. The operation was carried out in Pakistan, after the president decided that we had enough intelligence with enough certainty, and issued the order to carry it out.

As the President said, "Justice has been done." Here is a video of the full address by President Obama:



Here are the President's prepared remarks from the White House. This is fantastic news for our country and our world. Families of 9/11 victims have a closure now that might never have been possible without the tireless work of so many. Thank you to all of our intelligence professionals, people involved, and President Obama.

Introduction When I think of torture, I think of how horrible and degrading the African American experiences were during the Jim Crow era where black folks were whipped, lynched, dragged, castrated, mutilated and burned alive for having a black skin color. Those days may be over where brutality was embraced as a spectacular ceremony but the impact of that atrocity on the lives of black folks still lives on today not to mention today's moderner day enslavement and lynching exercised in our current Criminal Injustice System. Black folks are still physiologically lynched with all the double standard that comes with having a black skin color. Even the President of the United States is questioned about his birth and has to provide proof that he is legit. If it was a choice, the Donald Trumps of our modern day lynch mob will indeed embrace such pain on a sector of Americas minorities. In fact, to me these images come to mind instantly when torture is discussed. Torture is brutal and inhumane and does not have a place in a humane society. PERIOD. A blogger, GenXangster, said it best when she said,

"Why do I always do that? I mentally erase the face of the lynching victim and replace it with my own child. I do that with every victim of torture and injustice that I hear about, historical, present, black, Jewish, etc"

Since I will be discussing Bradly Manning and since there has been a lot of accusation of torture and many fishing expeditions about whether Manning was tortured or not from vocal anti-torture advocates while Bradly Manning is held by the authorities and in isolation under the custody of the US Government, I think it is important to make sure my view on torture is expressed before moving to the real subject matter I want to address today - Bradly Manning's admitted criminal act. Here is my believe on the many unsubstantiated torture accusation of Bradly Manning - The US Government is not torturing Bradly Manning. I will leave it with what the former State Department Offical, P. J. Crowley, whose prior comment had been taken out of context but nonetheless was used to sell this narrative that this Administration is doing what the Bush Administration has done in Abu Ghraib. P. J. Crowley said,

Earlier this month, I was asked by an MIT graduate student why the United States government was "torturing" Private First Class Bradley Manning, who is accused of being the source of the WikiLeaks cables that have been reported by the Guardian and other news outlets and posted online. The fact is the government is doing no such thing. Read more directly from P.J. Crowley at the guardian.co.uk

Stealing Government Secret There are a lot of people out there who are trying to make Bradly Manning the hero he is not for breaking the law. Stealing Government secret that is protected by the Laws of the United States America is straight up a criminal act. NO ifs and buts about it. We can argue about whether the secrets should have been a secret to begin with or not but that is another argument that will require an evaluation of how Congress has defined what is classified and confidential State secret. While Manning's act take guts and some may argue he is a hero, someone with Top Secret access leaking indiscriminately all kinds of top secret Government information and sharing it to foreign entities better know of the consequences of such acts but I will get to Manning in a little bit.