Posts by Barbara O'Brien

Barbara O'Brien has guest blogged at the Take Back America Conference, Glenn Greenwald's, Unclaimed Territory, and Crooks and Liars. She is the "owner/proprietor" of The Mahablog.

Free Market Fundamentalism Is Killing Us
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on May 12, 2007 at 5:00 AM.

By many tangible measures, the U.S. health care system isn't much to brag about. For example, the World Health Organization reported that in 2000 the U.S. ranked 24th in the world in "healthy life expectancy."

"Basically, you die earlier and spend more time disabled if you’re an American rather than a member of most other advanced countries," said Christopher Murray (M.D., Ph.D.), Director of WHO's Global Programme on Evidence for Health Policy.

In life expectancy, infant mortality, and number of practicing physicians per capita, the U.S. long has ranked near the bottom among the 30 or so wealthiest industrialized nations. And this is in spite of the fact that we spend nearly twice as much per capita on health care as nations that get much better results than we do. We don't even have as many hospital beds per capita as most other industrialized nations.

But worry no more, children. I learned yesterday that "US Health Care Saves More Lives Than Socialized Medicine"! Keep reading to learn more!

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Late Term Confusion
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on April 20, 2007 at 12:47 AM.

Time and time again I am struck by how little people know about abortion law and practice in the U.S. This includes most people with firm opinions on abortion. For example, earlier this week I noticed one right-wing blog after another celebrating the end of "late-term abortions," by which they obviously mean abortion of a viable fetus, presumably for frivolous reasons. Example:

Most Americans, even those who are pro-choice, understand how sick this procedure was. If a late term pregnancy was so harmful to the mother's health, then the mother should just deliver the baby and give the baby a chance to survive. But this procedure wasn't really about saving the life of the mother. It was about killing an unwanted baby. ...

... Some lefties are angry at Justice Kennedy, claiming that he's abandoned them, and now they're lamenting the fact that killing a late term unborn baby by sucking its brains out is no longer legal. Of course, they disguise partial birth abortion as "women's rights," which is a bunch of hooey.

Here's a feminist whose first comment was "We're f***ed." Sure, lady, if you mean that you can't go to an abortionist when you're 6+ months pregnant and have your unborn baby almost completely delivered except for his head and have his brains sucked out while he's still alive because you just don't feel like being pregnant any longer, then yes, I suppose you're f***ed. Be sure to check out the comments on this feminist's blog as well. These wacko women are beside themselves about the fact that they can't kill their babies in this manner any longer.

But elective late-term abortions were already illegal in most states. Roe v. Wade allows states to ban abortions once the fetus has reached the gestation age at which it is potentially viable, about 23 weeks[*], except when the life and health of the mother are at risk. There are laws on the books in most states to that effect. Some of the states that don't have such laws in effect are those which tried to enact a law without the "life and health" exception, and the law got tangled up in court challenges.

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'08 GOP hopeful channels 2nd worst president ever
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on April 15, 2007 at 10:26 AM.

Fred Thompson writes in the Wall Street Journal [emphasis added]:

President John F. Kennedy was an astute proponent of tax cuts and the proposition that lower tax rates produce economic growth. Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan also understood the power of lower tax rates and managed to put through cuts that grew the U.S. economy like Kansas corn. Sadly, we just don't seem able to keep that lesson learned.

One of the triumphs of the Coolidge Administration was the passage of his tax program in 1926. The Coolidge program "repealed the gift tax, halved estate taxes, substantially cut surtaxes on great wealth, and reduced income taxes for all," it says here. Coolidge signed his tax cuts into law on February 26, 1926. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 was only slightly over three years and seven months away. The Great Depression followed soon after.

Calvin Coolidge's tax program is the bad example that won't die. I remember just after George W. Bush was "elected" in 2000 some eager young folk of the Right wrote giddy tributes to tax cuts that cited the Wisdom of Silent Cal. But mention of Coolidge vanished rather quickly, and I assume there was some frantic back-channel communication explaining that, um, maybe Calvin Coolidge's economic policies are not something we want to emphasize. I guess Lawnorder Fred didn't get the memo.

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Pelosi's Syria visit highlights GOP, media hypocrisy
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on April 6, 2007 at 5:02 PM.

The Right continues to work itself into higher and higher pitches of hysteria over Nancy Pelosi's visit to Syria. Today the Wall Street Journal editorial page is shrieking that Pelosi committed a felony by traveling to Syria. The story is that Rep. Pelosi violated the Logan Act.

If in fact Speaker Pelosi violated this Act (which has been on the books in one form or another since the John Adams Administration) then a large part of Congress, living and dead, also violated it. However, the only Logan Act indictment ever occurred in 1803 -- the case involved a Kentucky newspaper that advocated the western states secede from the Union and form a separate nation allied with France -- but no prosecution followed. In all these years not one American has ever been convicted of violating the Logan Act.

One wonders how many Wall Street Journal staffers were put to work finding some obscure law Pelosi might have violated.

[In the video -- upper right, courtesy MMFA -- CNN's Suzanne Malveaux, whom Glenn Greenwald calls "increasingly bizarre" in his excellent post on the media taking its cues from a teensy-weensy group of fringe extremists, carries the right wing water that Barbara details in this post... -- ed]

The Righties have decided that the President has sole authority to talk to foreign governments. But Scott Lilly writes at the Center for American Progress:

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Hillary inevitably?
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on April 5, 2007 at 10:21 AM.

Last night I endured considerable babbling from the television pundits about Barack Obama's first quarter fundraising results. Consensus among the bobbleheads is that all those little people who gave nickles and dimes to Sen. Obama instead of Sen. Clinton must be (a) angry with her because of the war, or (b) still suffering Clinton fatigue. Or both.

I think both are a factor, but I think there's another factor the bobbleheads are missing. For the past few bleeping years the pundits have been telling us that Sen. Hillary Clinton will be the 2008 presidential nominee for the Democratic Party. No doubt about it. She's got all this money, all these connections, a killer political organization -- nay, a machine -- behind her. Whether the Democratic Party base wanted her to be the candidate was never questioned. She was who we were going to get, like it or not.

After a while, Sen. Clinton started to sound like the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. Frankly, this attitude has been pissing me off. What's worse, the Inevitable Candidate talk seemed symptomatic of what's been wrong with the national Democratic Party for years -- their insulation. For a lot of reasons -- not all of them the fault of the politicians -- the Dems haven't had anything like a national progressive coalition behind them for about thirty years now.

That means leadership positions in the party are entirely filled by people who are accustomed to running (and, occasionally, winning) elections without thinking much about what a progressive base might want. Worse, many Dems have treated us progressives and liberals like disreputable relations; they don't mind if we donate money and turn out to vote for them, but they'd rather not be seen with us in public. So, instead of being active participants in the political process, we're supposed to be the passive consumers of whatever product the party chooses to market.

Bleep that, I say. I've asked myself if I would feel the same way about an Inevitable Candidate if the I.C. were someone whose stand on the Iraq War and other issues were closer to my own opinions than Sen. Clinton's are. Yes, I believe I would. I might support an I.C., but only if the candidate were someone capable of winning my support anyway. In other words, I'd support the I.C. in spite of his being the I.C., not because of it. There a couple of things I suspect but can't prove. One, I suspect much of the aura of Inevitable Candidate was wrapped about Sen. Clinton by the Right, because she's the candidate they most want to run against in 2008. Two, I think Barack Obama is benefiting from some backlash against the I.C. I think a lot of the people who donated nickles and dimes to Barack Obama did so because he's the only candidate other than Hillary Clinton the pundits take seriously these days.

There's no one Dem officially running that I support 100 percent for the presidential nomination. It's a strong field, but no one really stands out for me yet. But it's 19 months until the election. In theory, we ought to have a lot of time yet to make up our minds. It used to be that presidential nominees were chosen by the party conventions three or four months before the elections. Now, we're going to have a nominee chosen many months before most people are paying attention to presidential politics. And if the prime criterion for winning the nomination is collecting more donations than the other guys -- how does that give us a good president, exactly? Along these lines -- there's a good editorial called "Running for Dollars" in today's New York Times.

Pelosi Wears Hijab; Right wingers bark at moon
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on April 4, 2007 at 8:32 AM.

Of all the dumb things to get worked up into a snit about, this one is almost as dumb as Ann Althouse's boob post.

The jolly folks at Little Green Footballs have gone batshit bleeping crazy because Nancy Pelosi wore a headscarf to visit a mosque in Syria. "Pelosi in a hijab!" they shriek.

Hello? Some of us old enough to remember when women were required to cover their hair in Catholic churches. Here's the divine Jackie with that first guy she married outside a church sometime in the late 1950s.

Apparently scarves are still a requirement at the Vatican.

[Update] Speaking of Laura Bush, here's a lovely photograph of her...

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After the Supplement Bill Veto
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on March 30, 2007 at 8:16 PM.

Now that the House and the Senate have passed emergency appropriations bills to fund the war in Iraq, the next step is for members of the House and Senate to come up with a compromise bill. It is hoped a compromise bill can be agreed upon and passed during the week of April 16. Then it goes to President Bush, who has sworn loudly and stridently that he will veto it.

Let's assume the compromise bill goes to Bush in April, and he vetoes it. There aren't enough Dems to override the veto. I've heard suggestions that Congress should then pass whatever bill Bush wants, which sends a signal that this is Bush's War. He and the Republicans own it, and whatever happens is entirely their doing. However, this also might send the signal that the Dems are caving in once again, mightn't it?

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What the Right Means by "Support"
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on March 4, 2007 at 12:41 PM.

Along with "the troops," another entity righties claim to "support" is "the family." As in "marriage" with "children." So one assumes righties will be disturbed by this story by Blaine Harden in today's Washington Post:

Punctuating a fundamental change in American family life, married couples with children now occupy fewer than one in every four households -- a share that has been slashed in half since 1960 and is the lowest ever recorded by the census.

As marriage with children becomes an exception rather than the norm, social scientists say it is also becoming the self-selected province of the college-educated and the affluent. The working class and the poor, meanwhile, increasingly steer away from marriage, while living together and bearing children out of wedlock.

Does this mean President Bush's Healthy Marriage Initiative isn't working? The HMI, you might remember, was George Bush's cure-all for welfare. Bush budgets carved money out of Medicaid and other "entitlements," but in 2006 HMI was allocated $750 million ($150 million per year for five years). The goal of HMI is to increase the number of children raised by married couples. (Here is a good analysis of HMI by Emily Amick of Wellesley College.)

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About That Uranium in North Korea ... Never Mind
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on March 1, 2007 at 11:21 AM.

Do you remember back in October 2002, when the Bush Administration threw a major hissy fit over the "discovery" that North Korea was processing uranium? And do you remember how this "discovery" touched off a spasm of hysteria on the Right, along with a collective denunciation of Bill Clinton's handling of North Korea, most especially a 1994 agreement negotiated by Jimmy Carter that stopped North Korea from processing plutonium?

In today's New York Times, David Sanger and William Broad write that the U.S. might have been, um, wrong about the uranium.

For nearly five years, though, the Bush administration, based on intelligence estimates, has accused North Korea of also pursuing a secret, parallel path to a bomb, using enriched uranium. That accusation, first leveled in the fall of 2002, resulted in the rupture of an already tense relationship: The United States cut off oil supplies, and the North Koreans responded by throwing out international inspectors, building up their plutonium arsenal and, ultimately, producing that first plutonium bomb.

But now, American intelligence officials are publicly softening their position, admitting to doubts about how much progress the uranium enrichment program has actually made. The result has been new questions about the Bush administration’s decision to confront North Korea in 2002.

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Conservatism's Fuel: The 'Stabbed in the Back' Meme...
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on February 20, 2007 at 9:13 AM.

For more than sixty years the American Right has been fueled by a "stabbed in the back" meme. As Kevin Baker wrote,

Every state must have its enemies. Great powers must have especially monstrous foes. Above all, these foes must arise from within, for national pride does not admit that a great nation can be defeated by any outside force. That is why, though its origins are elsewhere, the stab in the back has become the sustaining myth of modern American nationalism. Since the end of World War II it has been the device by which the American right wing has both revitalized itself and repeatedly avoided responsibility for its own worst blunders. Indeed, the right has distilled its tale of betrayal into a formula: Advocate some momentarily popular but reckless policy. Deny culpability when that policy is exposed as disastrous. Blame the disaster on internal enemies who hate America. Repeat, always making sure to increase the number of internal enemies.

On Sunday, Robert Farley of Lawyers, Guns and Money noted current developments in back-stabbing:

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Latest Developments, US Attorney Purge
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on February 16, 2007 at 2:00 PM.

Yesterday, Senate Republicans blocked a bill introduced by Senator Dianne Feinstein that would have curbed the Justice Department's power to fire and replace federal prosecutors. Laurie Kellman writes for the Associated Press:

The objection by Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., to the proposal was long anticipated. So Democrats used the occasion to complain anew about the firings of at least seven prosecutors, some without cause, under a little-known part of the Patriot Act.

Democrats say Attorney General Alberto Gonzales used the law to get around the Senate confirmation process and install Republican allies.

Here's the punch line:

Gonzales, Kyl and other Republicans say this approach could lead prosecutors to be appointed for reasons other than their qualifications.

Some people have no shame.

The other new development is that former Karl Rove assistant Tim Griffin, who was appointed to replace Bud Cummins, the U.S. attorney in Little Rock, has decided he won't go forward with the Senate confirmation process because he thinks the Senate will be mean to him. Details beneath the fold.

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What America Needs to know about Giuliani, Part II
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on February 7, 2007 at 6:59 AM.

This post has been added to the bottom of Giuliani Part I... GO HERE.

What America Needs to know about Giuliani, Parts I & II [VIDEO]
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on February 6, 2007 at 1:00 PM.

Word is that former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is now the front runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.

This far out from the actual nomination the polls don't mean much, and I am reasonably certain that Rudy's candidacy will self-destruct long before the Republican National Convention. There are reasons the people who know him best -- New Yorkers -- prefer their polarizing Senator, Hillary Clinton, over Rudy Giuliani. There are also reasons why the thought of a President Giuliani scares the daylights out of me.

Here are a few things America really needs to know about Rudy Giuliani:

Had Rudy Giuliani been mayor of New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit, he would not be a presidential contender today.

I was in lower Manhattan on 9/11, and as I was working in Manhattan I spent most of my time there in the days and weeks after. So you can take my word on this: Rudy's post-9/11 "leadership" amounted almost entirely of the mayor appearing on television. He did a fine job of appearing on television, and he managed to set the right tone and say the right things -- abilities Hizzoner did not always draw upon in the past. I give him credit for his performance. But that performance did not constitute "leadership." It was all public relations. It was all about Rudy.

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Abortion debate b/w rationality and fanaticism...
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on January 22, 2007 at 2:07 PM.

Even before the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down (34 years ago today), mass media was fond of presenting the abortion issue as a dichotomy of absolutes. For years the shtick was to present two (and only two) viewpoints from the opposite ends of the opinion spectrum. Editorial pages would "balance" an op ed calling for the criminalization of abortion against one advocating no legal restriction whatsoever, for example. On television and radio, advocates of criminalization (let's call them "crims" for short) would be pitted against advocates of legalization and given eight minutes to shout each other down before the commercial break. [*] As a result, Americans have not had the rational and dispassionate debate we need to have if we're ever going to reach a consensus.

But this picture is skewed, and it's becoming more skewed every day. Increasingly, the real debate -- not the debate staged by mass media, but the debate the rest of us are having on the web and among our acquaintances -- is not between two groups of absolutists. It's between rational people and foaming-at-the-mouth fanatics.

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U.S. Attorneys: It’s the Replacing, Stupid
Posted by Barbara O'Brien on January 18, 2007 at 1:14 PM.

By itself, forcing the resignations of at least seven U.S. attorneys is not necessarily scandalous. Presidents may fire U.S. attorneys, and they do so routinely at the beginning of a new administration.

It is unusual to fire U.S. attorneys in mid-term except in cases of gross misconduct, which doesn't appear to be the case for the forced resignations under discussion. I don't yet know how often that's been done. But the larger issue here is not so much the firing (although the firing is an issue) as it is the replacing. The Bush White House appears to have found another way to gut the Constitution and usurp powers that belong to another branch of government.

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