When The Man Comes Around.

Hmmm-The Matzos were good. A few ducks and Canadian geese and a huge snapping turtle. Back to watch the Healthcare debate. Don't know whether can last the whole time. Obama to talk afterwards.

We're getting to the end of playing chicken. The GOP is now saying the Senate parliamentarian is going to kill the bill. OK, put Joe Biden in the chair and have him overrule him. At this stage, the debate is whether the GOP is going to kill health insurance for 36 million Americans and increase the deficit. Which side do you think wins?

The procedural votes are proceeding along the lines of my predicted last vote counts. The bill will pass and it will be historic in its importance. What it means is that health care now is a right, not a privilege. A one hundred year struggle will be coming close to a conclusion.

What is clear from the debate is that the United States right now only has one political party, the Democrats. The Republicans became prisoners of their ever-narrowing base. There is not an attractive face among the GOP representatives talking. By egging the demonstrator on, they basically threw in the towel on being a "loyal opposition". Their tea bagger friends even spit on members of the Hispanic caucus today calling them "wetbacks" and telling them to go home to Mexico. And why would anyone in their right mind vote for people like this?

David Frum at www.FrumForum.com writes a column today entitled "Waterloo". The former Bush speechwriter and Wall Street Journalist says that conservatives and Republicans suffered their biggest political defeat since the 1960s. He said that conservatives are overly optimistic about the fall because the economy is going to come back. He said conservatives and the Republican Party made a strategic decision believing that healthcare would be Obama's Waterloo like it was Clinton's in 1994. But he said the conservative echo chamber miscalculated because Obama was elected with 53% of the vote compared to Clinton's 42% and the liberal bloc within the Democratic caucus was bigger and stronger than in 1993-94. He also said that Democrats remembered the lessons of the 94 failure. "We went for all the marbles, and got none."

He chides Republicans who think the bill will be repealed because it won't. Not only will Republicans have a tough time winning back seats but that no one will repeal items such as carrying your child on your insurance until he/she's 26; no one will repeal exemption for pre-existing conditions. And the President retains a veto.

He ends with "we followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat."

He said majorities in Congress change but this bill is forever. He blames the rightwing echochamber of Fox news and talk radio for leading the Republican party to disaster. Bitterly, he concludes it is a "huge win for the conservative entertainment industry."

Well said, David.

I read several blog comments today how after watching the behavior of the Republicans they will never vote for another one in their life, even if she or he is the most qualified. The finger-pointing is already starting among the Republicans. Sensing political disaster and unfavorable optics, even the Tan Man had to chide his caucus to behave, as the Republicans all acted like Jacobins in suits. To have a Republican congressman from California defend teabaggers who used racial epithets against the Black caucus because of the reactions to the "totalitarian process" showed how low a once great party has sunk.

In the weeks ahead, it will be interesting to see how polls register the intensity factor for the upcoming election. So far it has favored the Republicans but I expect that will soon change. I think after the shambles of the last few days--the watching audience for this debate is huge, I think the GOP can kiss off hopes of taking back either chamber of Congress.

Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich said that the Democrats will pay for forty years for this bill like they did for the civil rights legislation. Nice racism, Newt. It's going to be interesting for you to explain to the middle class and working class how this is so threatening to them.

One of the fun things today was receiving an e-mail of concern over whether the military's tricare was in the bill. Obviously, President Obama sold the veterans out. Naturally, no such thing happened as was explained to the VA throughout the week and a statement was sent out from the House two days ago explaining the military benefits were in the bill. But I thought good conservatives were against such socialized medicine?

Oh by the way, even though Michael Steele says that Obama and the Democrats cooked the CBO books, the written report to the House showed that the savings on the deficit was even more--about $300 billion than the previous statement.

I think we should be concerned about not being aware when the Republicans these days say something that is actually true. So far they are batting 100% but one of these days soon they might actually be accurate. We'll have to keep on our toes.

President Obama brought Bart Stupak and his lonely pro-life holdouts along by promising to sign an Executive Order saying exactly what the bill actually says that federal funds will not be used for abortion. NARAL blasted Stupak for caving and NOW blasted Obama for caving. Rep. Sensenbrenner claims presidents can't sign executive orders. Bush practically governed with them.

A nice touch came today when Rep. Dingell gave Nancy Pelosi the huge gavel that was used to bang Medicare into law. I hope President Obama channels some LBJ after this bill. LBJ flew to Independence, Missouri to sign the Medicare bill so that former President Harry truman would become the first person with Medicare in the country. Truman said, "I'm lucky I lived so long." Then as Medicare was about to take effect one year later, LBJ made the media cover the elderly and the poor going to the hospitals for the first time. Republicans wanted this to be a failure, I'm going to show them success, he crowed.

Flawed Bill? You should read the original bill for Social Security. The progressives can keep their public option plans ready at a moment's notice. There will be changes to this as we move along. But, today is more than just a first step, it is an historic leap filling a void in our domestic affairs that has existed for 100 years.

Some 54 speeches later, not counting tonight, Barack Obama had the tenacity to see the process through. Few other political leaders would have had the courage to keep on going with this given the manufactured lies and the abuses heaped on him. So much for crippled presidency! He is the Man.

Get The Exorcist

Texas congressman Louis Gohmert told a crowd of about 100 tebaggers that the capitol building had been invaded by "demons". The teabaggers showed up with signs saying the RNC paid for them--crossed out in black. Republicans told the teabaggers that Nancy Pelosi had the votes to pass the bill. Iowa's congressman Steve King called for massive street uprisings in the U.S. to overthrow the government. He said there were alot of similarities to Czechoslovakia and called for a new "Velvet Revolution". Why? Because "the government is nationalizing liberty". I thought that was a good thing.

The worse constitutional crisis since the "civil war" and "Watergate". The GOP has given up the fight on healthcare reform. Now it's a war over the process. They have been puttng out the disinformation that the House Democrats can pass the bill without ever voting on it. This is hitting the little political press like Politico, the Hill and now the Washington Post. Actually they could, according to House rules, which the Republicans have used several more times than the Democrats. The odds are Democrats will not use this process. But the Republicans have introduced a bill to prevent the Speaker from using the so-called Slaughter motion, which calls for the use of this arcane maneuver. The rules for this procedure were written by none other than Republican congressman from California David Dreier.

While the Republicans are playing a rearguard action, Democrats themselves are raising questions about their sanity. The Ed Schultz show claims 38 Democrats oppose and only 200 are for. Steny Hoyer is quoted as saying the Democrats don't have the votes yet. The Whip is muttering something about postponing this past Easter and calling on the President to postpone his trip again.

But Lindsey Graham, who has been real classy as late, says Nancy Pelosi has the House Democrats "all ,liquored up" and ready to "commit suicide". The Democrats have already printed out the talking points for when the bill is passed. There are an impressive number of reforms that occur the minute the bill is signed. I doubt the average voter will care whether Mary Landrieux got something for Louisiana if health insurance companies can't drop me and my son can be covered until he's twenty-five.

In the classy department, conservatives are complaining about Natoma Campbell, the women who wrote President Obama about her lack of health insurance and who now suffers from leukemia. Lucianne. com and Drudge are claiming she probably will not lose her house as the President claims and that there will be financial help for her treatments. I say wait until she loses her house for sure to pass healthcare. Are we also supposed to write the sitting President and if he reads by chance our plea, then we can wait to receive financial aid? Isn't that like a King reading pleas from his peasants? Is that the way healthcare is supposed to work? Beg the nearest powerful or wealthy person? See it's not so bad--the women didn't even lose her house; what's she complaining about?

Eric Cantor called Rahm Emmanuel to tell him to back off on Israel. FLASHBACK: Moshe Dayan, he of the same eyepatch as me, would be delighted, over-joyed to know that the chief of staff of the President of the United States was a veteran of the UDF. But Mr. Sunshine, the BIBI called Rahm Emmanuel " a self-hating Jew" right at the start of this administration. I would love to hear Rahm's response to Eric the Weasel.

Meanwhile, instead of seeking to patch things up with the United States, Bibi is coming to Washington to speak only to the Jewish members of Congress. Not great optics for politics. But the usual gang of Republican Senators blasted the Obama Administration for criticising a "strategic ally" openly. For instance, you should never say "Old Europe" and "New Europe" and openly criticize allies such as Germany, France and England. It's sort of like that.

Can you imagine Golda Meir's approach to Vice President Biden's visit? Even though Joe is a gasbag and a klutz, he is known as a lifelong friend of Israel. So now, he's Vice President of the United States, the only ally you have. She would have insisted he stay at her home and she would have made breakfast for him. She would have mothered him with health tips.

Old hawk Ariel Sharon was no dummy in terms of geopolitics. If he had a chance of getting 22 Arab nations to recognize Israel, he would start talking again to the Palestinians even if he was bluffing.

Hillary Clinton, another long-time backer of Israel, just sent a list of demands to Israel basically asking Bibi to back down from his plans for Levittown in Palestine and making sincere gestures toward a peace process.

Oh, where is Abba Eben when we need him?

Representative Gohmert's mention of "demons" made me think they is a compromise on the torture issue. Since Christianity, Islam and Buddhism recognize the devil, we should contract out exorcists from the Vatican to train CIA personnel to "exorcise" terrorist detainees. This should satisfy the torture advocates.

The Quittah from Wasilla, Birther Madness and America the Stupid

We are now definitely in the dog days of summer. A few days in New Jersey, where fears of Obama's health plan are high, and birther nonsense seems to win favor, it dawned on me that I can't listen to these people anymore. Basically, healthcare will pass in some form that will ameliorate the present crisis and Obama will have another domestic triumph of some sort. Sotomayor will be confirmed, despite the racist positions of Sessions, Hatch and Kyle. And we remain in Afghanistan and Iraq is acting independently. Newsweek reports the recession is over--not for some of us. Recovery will be long and hard and I doubt whether the old economy will remain the same.

While away, the birthers got wall-to-wall media coverage from CNN, FOX and NBC. Of course, the big fly in their oinment is the fact Barack Obama's mother was an American. All the rest of the nonsense about birth certificates, live births, the rumors about Mombassa (which would have been in Zanzibar when he was born) and his mother renouncing her American citizenship in Indonesia (extremely doubtful as she was a U.S. government employee in a country in the middle of a civil war), is just that nonsense. Huffingtonpost.com actually had a person videotape answers of House Republicans about whether Obama was a U.S citizen. Only one very conservative representative from Arizona answered in the affirmative.

Republicans believe they can play the race card to win the 2010 by-elections. That's why they don't want to alienate the birthers. In fact, Republicans didn't even respond to the prime-time press conference by President Obama on health care. Instead, the RNC and the NRSC rifled off denunciations of Obama's criticism of Cambridge, Mass police arresting Harvard professor Gates while in his own home. Now House Republicans want to pass a resolution calling on Congress forcing him to apologize because he said the police acted stupidly. Arresting a black man entering his own home with suitcases might be called stupid in the world of reality. But this flap served to get the media off the healthcare debate. In other words it served the Republicans short-term purpose. Now the new argument about healthcare reform is that illegal immigrants will receive free healthcare. Maybe this will all pay off for the Republicans but how it serves the country is beyond me.

Howard Kurtz reported that he had made frequent inquiries to Republican offices about the GOP ideas about healthcare reform and found out they have no such plan,although Roy Blunt, the leading Republican on healthcare had previously claimed a plan would be forthcoming. So in terms of policy initiatives, the GOP remains without a single idea except to race bait on every issues. Even the cancellation of the F-22 is now made into an issue of trying to prevent the Hate Crime Bill from being passed in the Senate. From healthcare to defense, it's all about race and gays. We also know the health insurance industry--the last standing prosperous financial sector in America--has bought and sold the Republicans and many of the Blue Dog Democrats like Max Baucus. If nothing happens on healthcare, the number of uninsured is expected to raise to 66 million and insurance rates for the rest of us are expected to double.

The Grifter from Wasilla or the Quittah from Wasilla turned her farewell week into a series of picnics. She isn't even funny anymore. The Fox News poll today showed a plurality of Americans believe she should have a new life as a housewife, followed by being a TV announcer. Her stature among Republicans has dropped so that she is in fourth place with about 17% for the 2012 presidential nomination. Her farewell speeches were incomprehensible to me somehow linking honoring the troops by urging the press not to make things up. A Tenth Amendment follower she warned about ever-expanding federal control over state affairs. Although she was a recipient of federal largesse during her short tenure as was fellow Tenth Amender Rick Perry of Texas who has filled in his budget gaps with stimulus money.

The best fun was the internet rumors that Rupert Murdoch's yacht and private plane had showed up in Alaska during Palin's last week. Using Google Earth they were there in living color. I would imagine to finalize deals with the Palin family on her memoirs and possible Fox appearances. Hopefully, Sarah Palin has transcended to celebritydom where she will now be the filler for tabloids, which will chronicle her marital ups and downs and her latest fashion styles.

Which brings me to real Harold Bloom theme of the Real Closing of the American Mind. Having treated myself to Stacy Keach's landmark performance as King Lear at our local Shakespeare theater, I feel an authority today on this issue. The greatest danger to the United States is the willful embrace of ignorance. We saw alot of this during the Bush-Cheney years and during Sarah Palin's Vice Presidential bid in 2008. Ideology alone triumphed over competence. Success was and is solely defined as wealth and a lack of education is considered a virtue and a sign of one's basic honesty. The more ignorant one's positions the more honest one is perceived.

The election of Barack Obama spurred this embrace of the stupid so that it is an arch leading to our destruction. Let's take Glenn Beck. Having defeated his drug and alcohol abuse, his Mormanism and his libertarianism, he has warned about the inherent fascism of the Obama Administration. A strange thing for a person earning $25 million a year to say. He pointed to the fasces decorating the podium of the Speaker of the House and its appearance on the dime. He told his viewers that appeared because of Woodrow Wilson, one of the so-called progressive leaders around the time of WWI. Actually, before the fascists coopted the symbol, it represented a Republican form of government. The right has embraced this theme of fascism as being leftist, despite all the historical evidence to the contrary. They flog Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism as the definite statement on this subject.

If anyone has any doubt on this issue, a good introduction to fascism's rightist orientation can be found in Kevin Passmore's Fascism, a very short introduction in the Oxford series on various ideologies and philosophies. Passmore has it his study to examine emerging fascism--that is, fascism before it reaches the mature states of Mussolini's Italy and Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. Dysfunctional democracies allow for fascist openings and fascist leaders form alliances with conservative business interests to propel and sustain themselves in power. The whole theme is to renovate the nation as an organic, racial entity and not embark on a set of economic policies. They tend to be the cultural warriors par excellence. As we saw in the Holocaust, the idea is to purge the body politic of "foreign" influences and peoples considered as racially alien to the country. I would suggest some parts of the Republican base share much with early fascists.

This week we received news that the Obama Administration will release U.S. Government photographic evidence about climate change that had been suppressed during the Bush-Cheney regnum. This was an Administration which had enormous trouble coping with science. Probably the next revelations will be the release of recent dinosaur discoveries which the Bush Administration feared would prove evolution.

We end today's entry with Rush Limbaugh, the 50 million dollar man, warning about dictatorship and torture to be carried out by the Obama Administration. During Abu Ghraib, he said all this was like a frat party and he touted with great humor Club Gitmo, as the Muslim resort. Why the sudden darkness? A 2% income tax hike might cause him another $1 million. His audience probably can understand that.

Today's quiz is "Who is the most educated? Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin? The answer is--it's a she.