Canada – Health Care Done Right

In the almost-30 years I have been visiting Canada on a semi-regular basis (Mom remarried and moved there in 1980), I have always been struck by the utter lack of a certain kind of fear and anxiety by its citizens. Although always subject to the unpredictable whims of euro-capitalism, there is a peace of mind that prevails in Canada which can only be attributable to one thing: an excellent system of health care – both in payment and delivery. People are not only are healthier in Canada; they feel healthier. And it shows.

It’s pretty simple, really. Here’s how it works for your average, everyday visit to the doctor. Any resident of the province of, for example, Ontario walks into the doctor’s office, showing their OHIP card. They get an office visit with the doctor. They leave. The doctor submits the visit to the Ontario Ministry of Health, probably electronically. The OMH pays the doctor. Visit, payment; visit, payment; visit, payment. All day long.

No scrutinizing and copying of health insurance cards; no giant health insurance bureaucracy poised to deny coverage; no co-pays; no high deductibles. In the bigger picture, none of the fear and anxiety of the accident or illness that will lead to financial ruin. This leaves Canadians to worry about those other important variables in life – jobs, relationships, kids, education, progress. But not health care. That is their national commitment to themselves and their future. Health care is their right.

Are there problems in the system? Sure, there are. And, when things don’t work, the political system responds and heads will roll. The enemies of health care reform in the U.S. have made sure that you’ve heard anecdotal stories about long wait times for this or that. This morning, my copy of the Toronto Star reported that a guy who was working full-time to reduce wait-times had been sacked. If there is a problem (I am not taking the U.S. wing-nuts’ word for it), this is how it is supposed to work. The effectiveness of health care delivery becomes political and things get done. Try getting some satisfaction out of a fat-cat insurance company dragging its feet approving your expensive hip replacement. Good luck with that.

As always happens when the health insurance industry is threatened in the U.S., the checkbooks are open for anyone willing to provide fodder for their lies. Canadians telling health care horror stories in the U.S. media are like anti-black African Americans and anti-feminist women – they are all extremely well paid to take the positions they take. The fact is that no Canadian in their right mind – not one – would trade their government health care system for the craziness of the U.S. "system" of social Darwinism, gold-plated doctors and giant health insurance vultures.

"It is awfully tempting – painfully so – to feel superior to the United States over its national debate, and I use the term irresponsibly, on health-care reform," writes one apparently reasonable columnist in my Globe and Mail this morning. Indeed, we are the laughing stock of the world, as loopy people paid by lobbyists or simply misled by wing-nut squawkers who know better try to besiege those in Congress brave enough to hold town hall meetings in the midst of a campaign of organized disruption. If you want to see the difference between the astroturf ridiculousness of people "fighting to get our country back" from the elected African-American guy and the real thing, try proposing the dismantling of the health care system in Canada. Then you will really see the people rise up to keep what they have.

Winning John Torinus’ Money

In the Journal Sentinel this morning, we learn in a wire-service story that Ben Stein – the former Nixon economic advisor and sometimes-droll comedic actor in Ferris Bueller, Wonder Years, Win Ben Stein’s Money and, unintentionally, in his own Expelled – has been bounced from his biweekly perch on the New York Times business page. His crime? Stein was caught whoring it up for a company pushing economic snake-oil. The Times editors apparently decided that Stein’s snooty save-the-rich musings were too much coming from a free-credit-report scam pitchman, with or without the guitar.

It was an interesting story to appear in the Journal Sentinel. Even after finally admitting that it jettisoned 92 employees, including almost all of its fine-arts writers, the paper continues to employ its own highly-conflicted business columnist, John Torinus. The list of Torinus’ publicly-known conflicts that would prevent him from offering objective, fact-based opinions on anything runs long and deep. And it shows in his columns, which are not so much opinion as week-to-week campaigning on issues dear to him and his short-sighted business cohorts, such as high-deductible health insurance.

Unlike Stein, who at least has his deadpan movie/TV routine to facilitate his sell-out, Torinus is not for sale. His conflicts are that of his own self-interest and political connections, which is worse. If it wanted to, the Times could have kept Stein on and scrutinized his columns for any hint of recommendations that people send $30 a month to a murky company in exchange for nothing. It is impossible, though, to separate Torinus’ WMC talking-pointed pap from his personal, corporate and political agenda.

Torinus’ column might be more tolerable if the Journal Sentinel would at least let its readers know just how conflicted he actually is. Instead, the J-S informs us of just two of his non-paper interests (he is "chairman of Serigraph Inc. of West Bend and a founder of BizStarts Milwaukee"), making it look like he is just a hard-working businessman trying to make it in this harsh government-regulated world. Hardly. He continues to serve on the board of the WMC, which has been fairly active in recent years buying Supreme Court seats to make them safe for their narrow notion of business interests. He happily beats up on Wisconsin’s business climate for right-wing think-tank the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (Question: If the Wisocnisn business climate is so bad, why are those who complain the most about it still here?). He is also a reliable contributor to Republican candidates for office.

None of this is mentioned in the newspaper as it continues to spend more of its shrinking newshole (not to mention payroll) on predictable right-wing advocacy. Of course, the more astute reader would realize that someone who advocates the elimination of the state corporate income tax (at a time of crisis for state revenue) and considers health-care reform a "burden" (when most small businesses are screaming for it), as he does in today’s column, is hardly an impartial observer of economic trends.

Why not just put a WMC logo and a "paid advertisement" notice on his column and be done with it?

Journal Sentinel: Death by a Thousand Cuts

It’s daily-newspaper subscription-renewal time here at the Plaisted household. The Journal Sentinel Inc. wants $75.05 to deliver its dwindling product to my doorstep (what once landed with a thud now floats to the ground like a wounded butterfly) every morning for the next six months. Hmm...what to do, what to do....

This week’s purge of some of the paper’s best veteran writers is not a good sign. Coverage of the arts took a disastrous hit in this round with the loss of Dave Tianen on music, Tim Cuprisin on TV/radio, Tom Strini on classical music and Damien Jaques on theater. I assume they are folding that local arts tent altogether – look for more wire-service Brittany updates on the back of the Local page (for as long as they keep up the facade of separate sections). The business page is losing its most high-profile voice of diversity, Tannette Johnson-Elie, and they are going to have to find someone else to shill for the school "choice" industry with the loss of Alan Borsuk. Even the Letters editor, the lovely and talented Sonya Jongsma Knauss, is getting shit-canned or reassigned.

The decimation of the paper’s staff has had a dramatic effect on the simplest of journalistic tasks. I was shocked this morning when I saw a story on page 3B about the preliminary hearing for a man accused of shooting two police officers in Walkers Point early this summer – an event that caused quite a bit of hysterical coverage when it happened. The paper couldn’t even get a reporter to the courtroom to cover the hearing in person.

• "A Milwaukee police officer testified in court Friday that he felt a burning sensation and immense pain in his shoulder and leg after he and another officer were shot on the city’s near south side, WTMJ-TV (Channel 4) reported."

Wha? As "WTMJ-TV (Channel 4) reported"? "In testimony recorded by Channel 4..." the story continued. "Burton was bound over for trial and pleaded not guilty to the charges, according to on-line state court records." Where the hell was the J-S reporter? Obviously not in the courtroom, from which newspaper reporters have always reported their stories since the beginning of time. What is going on here? The entire article was apparently generated from the reporter’s desk, as he (Jesse Garza) watched TV and CCAP’ed the proceeding on the internet. This isn’t reporting – it’s tweeting. The late, great courthouse reporter for the paper, David Doege, would never have put his name on such impersonal, second-hand drivel.

While the paper abandons any pretense of basic crime reporting and arts coverage, it is more than willing to hand over acres of its shrinking editorial real estate to right-wing nuts like Patrick McIlheran, Mike Nichols (who doesn’t even have a desk there anymore), and nationally-syndicated cartoonists like Michael Rameriez (including gems like repeating wing-nut talking points about who doesn’t have health insurance). It seems the Kings of State Street think they can make it through another Packer season (there is a reason why, in the midst of all this staff-cutting, they maintain five Packer beat reporters) before they have to face the ultimate consequences of the deadly combination of the death of the newspaper-industry economic model and their own bad decisions and incompetence.

The reasons to keep this charade I have going with the local newspaper are getting fewer and fewer. Just because I need a newspaper in my hands while I drink coffee in the morning, is that worth throwing more money at an institution that is committing corporate suicide right before my eyes? And what good is it if the paper is so thin and the substance so worthless that I am done with it before the first cup is cold? Besides, can’t I get something still-decent like the New York Times delivered? (Answer: Yes.)

Watching Walter Cronkite at My Daddy’s Knee

Walter Cronkite had quite an impact on my young life. So much so, in fact, that the best song I ever wrote was about him. It was in ‘82 or ‘83, I think, when I wrote the song about the news anchors that came after Cronkite, called "Why Does Dan Rather (Wanna Be My Friend)?" It is still a favorite of all five of my fans and of mine. The bridge goes like this:

I grew up/With space shots and assassinations

I saw riots in the street/I watched with fascination

I watched the revolution/On my TV

Watching Walter Cronkite/At my daddy’s knee

We were a CBS family. Huckleberry Hound, Ed Sullivan, Danny Kaye, Gilligan’s Island; and, later, Mary Tyler Moore, All in the Family and the first two seasons of M*A*S*H. And, everyday at 5:30 in those years, I stood up, walked across the room and turned that clunky dial on our first color TV over to Channel 2 in Green Bay (or Channel 6 in Milwaukee – with an antenna on the roof, we were ambi-market-ual, TV-wise) and my dad and I watched as Walter Cronkite brought us the world.

From the first major events of my political consciousness – the crossfire assassination of John F. Kennedy and the subsequent murder of patsy Lee Oswald – through Vietnam, the race riots in ‘67 and the seminal year of 1968; to coverage of the most criminal pre-Junior Bush administration in American history (Nixon and Watergate), Cronkite provided the first draft of a wild ride in history. He did it with a rock-steady hand, a lift of his bushy eyebrow and a sing-song baritone voice.

We now live in a time of a thousand of mediocre voices; squawking, torturing and reading the news. Unless you lived through it, it is hard to grasp what it meant for Cronkite to dominate and excel in a world when there were only a handful of distinct electronic voices. As the seminal news anchor and the executive editor of the CBS Evening News, his was the filter through which all the important news passed (and, if it wasn’t on his show, it wasn’t important). Although trivialized as "Uncle Walter", Cronkite was a serious man who bore the weight of his never-to-be-seen-again gate-keeper responsibilities with courage, class and wisdom.

And, at crucial times in that history, he made a couple of calls that helped bring an end one Stupid War and that helped bring down the criminal Nixon regime. If only someone of his gravity and insight were available when Bush made the final push towards his Stupid War on Iraq. If only Cronkite were there when the lies of the war and the daily violation of the Constitution by the Bush White House were exposed. He could have single-handedly saved hundreds of thousands of lives and quite a bit of the nation’s dignity.

It was Cronkite – the heroic, cheerleading WWII war correspondent – who came back from the jungles of Vietnam and put the lie to LBJ and his war. It was Cronkite who took Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting and made sense of it for a national audience, with charts, graphs and long segments of his Evening News devoted to Nixon’s crimes. He brought us the sorrow of the JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations; and the curiosity and joy (at least for me, as a kid) of every Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space mission, culminating in the first lunar landing, being celebrated just this weekend.

On March 6, 1981, a group of us at the Daily Cardinal – including our dear departed friend, Keenan Peck – walked across University Ave. from our office to a bar on the corner to watch Cronkite’s last broadcast. We drank beers and laughed as we always did, jeered at Dan Rather as Cronkite handed him the baton and generally mocked the over-hyped media event. It was the end of an era, and we knew it.

The Spooky Right

Before I saw it, I was reeling.

Rick Esenberg and others were pummeling me on Rick’s post and the comments. I was "lathered up", a "poor student of history", a purveyor of "vituperation", "the angriest white man in Milwaukee" (really!). I need to "take instruction", says the oh-so-presumptuous visiting assistant professor of law, who generally takes his instruction from the likes of fellow Federalist Society members, the WMC and others in the right-wing, business-side legal community. In the comments, I am "seriously unhinged", not to be "dealt with", not worthy of a discussion that would include intellectual heavyweights like George Mitchell and Dad29.

As I drafted a comment that maintained my vituperous facade, I was crumbling inside to think that I had not met the lofty standards of the nut-right Milwaukee commentariat. I was searching my soul – assuming I had one – wondering how I could question the assignation of leftist characteristics to Nazis, white supremacists and anti-choice murderers. My failure to see the obvious evil in Al Gore’s movie, the threats in (Sen.) Al Franken’s comedy routines, the depravity of Michael Moore’s documentaries – it was all too much for me. Of course! I see my folly now! Looking around the house to make sure no one else was paying attention, I turned to The O’Reilly Factor to begin my long-delayed re-education.

Then I saw this:

As the story goes, an executive assistant for the Republican caucus chair of the Tennessee State Senate circulated an e-mail with a .jpeg attachment of apparent great hilarity. Titled "Historical Keepsake Photo", the file was a compilation of images of every U.S. president. And there, in the 44^th spot, instead of Barack Obama, was a racist image of a black face with spook eyes. The staffer who sent it out to at least 20 people around the statehouse "only felt bad about sending it to the wrong list of people".

You can bet that, since she didn’t claim to create it, this thing has been in thousands of willing e-mail boxes before it got to her, and was never disclosed. Why? Because the extent of hate, racial and otherwise, for President Obama lies barely under the surface in certain segments of our society. Those in the right-wing media know this and stoke the fires of anger by stirring the pot, every hour of every day. Their intentions are political – they hope to win with irrational hatred what they cannot by political argument. But the more immediate results of the dehumanization of the "enemy" and the taunting by the wing-nuts for the powerless to strike out are things like the murder of Dr. Tiller and the Holocaust Museum murder.

And, let’s not forget the comments on my own blog that I highlighted in a post earlier this week, relating to violence against the President himself:

Please SOMEBODY take Doyle and the Obomination out. A Clear MAJORITY of this country will cheer when that happens.

someone please shoot the nigger and his wife in the head!!! PLEASE ANYONE?

LMAO, his mellon will be split open with a assassins bullet sooner rather than later is my bet

Where is that crazy lone gunmen when we need one, that is hope and change I look forward to

I suppose Esenberg would try to excuse the racist photo and the cheering for the President’s assassination as the work of possibly leftist sentiments. Perhaps thinks he could dig up something from a Democratic staffer somewhere that is as blatantly racist (he’d be wrong) or find similarly offensive assassination encouragement, perhaps during the Bush disaster (he can't).

More likely, Rick would try to pooh-pooh the sources of the e-mail from the Republican staffer and the comments on my site as of insufficient status to matter, clearly not representative of clear Republican "thought". Perhaps not. But these are the targets of the mainstream right-wing mouthpieces that so foul our political discourse. These are the people they neither reject or discourage.

You’d think that after a few assassination shout-outs, some racist e-mails, a couple of murders and whatever else lurks beneath the dark underbelly of right-wing hate, a respectable guy like Esenberg might want to encourage the people on his side to take a pill and chill, maybe take a step back. Instead, he is the Apologist, making excuses for the worst of it, blaming it on a leftist perspective that doesn’t exist and trying to say that our side does the same, and worse.

Like the great Professor Kingsfield in The Paper Chase, Esenberg seeks to shroud me as so much insignificant piffle. "But the stone stupid enthusiasm for the idea that people like me encourage hate and murder has gotten to me," muses the professor in his comments. "It's made me question whether talking to these people is worthwhile." Yes, the ivory tower of Marquette University is no place for such uncomfortable thoughts. Let us put it out of our mind as we prepare for the next inevitable example of right-wing violence and racist hatred by repeating our mantra:

Not Our Fault....Not Our Fault...

The Slippery Slope of Denial

Rick Esenberg’s blog is often interesting. When you need to know the business-side legal perspective on joint-and-several liability (on the off chance we can get more than 50% put on that one penniless defendant, we don’t have to pay and the injured plaintiff can go pound sand) or why the WMC ought to be able to buy themselves a couple of Supreme Court justices (and let them rule on cases involving same), he’s your guy. He also has a healthy appreciation for Chrissie Hyde and the Pretenders on his frequent Sunday musical video excursions, so he ain’t all bad.

But, where Esenberg gets in over his head is when he tries to drive a right-wing talking point that he knows (or should know) isn’t true. He is too smart to really think that President Obama is a Manchurian Candidate socialist with a Messiah complex, but he worked that tired saw all during the campaign and since.

In the past couple of days, he has joined the rest of the right-wing script-readers in a ridiculous attempt to pretend that two domestic terrorist incidents in the past couple of weeks had nothing to do with the overheated right-wing lunacy that permeate mainstream radio, Fox News and various blogs every time there is a Democrat in the White House. He even goes so far as to say that the Nazis in Germany had more in common with the left than the right. Next thing you know, he’ll be arguing that the disastrous Bush administration was run by a bunch of Democrats with a twisted penchant for unnecessary death and dark comedy. But once you start heading down that slippery slope of denial, this is where you end up.

The attempted re-definition of the obvious political dispositions of the two latest perpetrators of domestic terrorism is ludicrous on its face. The guy who killed legal abortion provider Dr. George Tiller has lurked in the shadows of the right-wing’s favorite anti-woman emotional wedge issue – the right of women to make up their own minds about what happens inside their own bodies – for years. The guy who shot up the Holocaust Museum is an old-school right-wing lunatic in the white supremacist/John Birch Society mode, howling at the moon about the control of the world by the Jews and interracial dating, proudly exercising his Second Amendment rights to wreak havoc in a public place (talk about open-carry!).

Before the blood was even dry in the Museum, the right-wing echo chamber was out using yet another tragedy for political purposes, spouting its predictable bullet points to deflect the notion that its decades-long campaign of hate rhetoric would have produced such obvious results from its weakest adherents. First, they went into deep denial about what their overheated squawkers are saying, over and over, and the predictable (preferred, even) impact of their pretend-impassioned entreaties. Second, they hilariously claimed that the murderous anti-choice activist and the murderous gun-toting white supremacist weren’t really right-wingers at all; in fact, they might be flaming lefties. And, for those who might not swallow that load of bullshit, they made the "point" that the left has its own extremists, resulting in – well, no one who has caused death with the bright light of world peace, universal health care, choice, etc. in their hearts, but, you know, they made us feel bad. Or something.

For reasons known only to himself, Esenberg buys into all of this. Although he admits he’s never watched a guy who has to be seen to be believed, he defends circus clown Glen Beck because he ultimately decided FEMA was not building concentration camps after he previously "reported" on them. He also says it was no big deal "calling" an abortion provider a "baby killer" (he’s talking about Bill O’Reilly) – apparently, you can be a professor at Marquette without knowing the difference between an unborn fetus and a "baby". Actually, now that I think of it, such delusion might be a job requirement.

He implies that Beck and O’Reilly spewed their invective in passing when, in fact, they both used the same intense, dog-on-a-bone hammer-driving that they and countless other right-wing megaphone-owners employ on any "issue" they get their manipulative hands on. Beck didn’t just "report" the absurd notion of FEMA concentration camps – he ran entire segments on the nutty notion for several weeks ("I can’t debunk it," he said ominously to the slack-jawed simpletons on Fox & Friends before quietly saying "never mind" weeks later). O’Reilly didn’t call Dr. Tiller a "killer" once or twice – he did it at least 24 times while making hating Dr. Tiller a personal campaign of his, saying at one point "if I could get me hands on Tiller...well, you know". Yeah, Bill, we know. Cowardly church-assassin Scott Roeder knew, too.

People like Beck and O’Reilly (and Limbaugh and Hannity and Sykes and Belling, etc.) don’t argue issues; they demonize opponents. Obama isn’t just wrong, he’s evil. What are you supposed to do with evil people, let them just walk around and not pay for their sins? What kind of patriot/Christian are you? This is the black-and-white fantasy world these people create for themselves and their emotional, fearful, imaginary target demographic: the angry-white-male who feels he is being emasculated and made powerless by other races, immigrants, feminists, gays, Democrats and anyone else who seem to be dancing happily in the streets while they sink further into their Lazy-Boy in High Life-enhanced depression. Of course some of them are going to strike out. The wing-nuts taunt them for being so stupid to sit there and accept "the situation", even if, like Obama’s election and the Democratic congress, it is a result of a healthy democratic process.

Esenberg also tries to get the murders off the right-wing books by toying with the notion that the Museum killer, anyway, "could just as readily be called a member of the extreme left as of the extreme right". This is nuts, of course. He tries to explain in his comment section. "White supremacy is not a ‘right wing’ view [sez who? It certainly always has been.] and one could argue that there is more anti-semitism on the left than the right." The latter point – made ad nauseam elsewhere by Esenberg’s fellow travelers – is that those who protest the Stupid War in Iraq complain about the "neocons" who talked Bush into it, "neocon" supposedly being a codeword for "Jewish" because many of them happen to be. This cheap dodge to addressing the real issues is nothing new, but no less cheap when propagated by Esenberg.

Finally, we get the I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I argument: the Left supposedly has its own overheated rhetoric that leads to, well, not murder, but, you know. He trots out the names of Howard Dean, Keith Olberman, Al Gore, Al Franken, and Joe Biden as people who are somehow just as "intemperate" as the wing-nut squawkers. And how’s that, exactly? Al Gore taking the nation to school on climate change (oh, Rick, you're not really a climate change denier, are you?) supposedly "could...prompt violence on the part of environmental radicals", he says in a comment. To Esenberg, information is not only power -- it's hate. Did Howard Dean say at some point that the Democrat/Republican contest was one between "good and evil", as Esenberg claims in a comment? So what if he did? Did he craft a whole show around the idea and drive it for years, as Sean Hannity does everyday to make the same point about how evil Democrats are? Esenberg pretends not to know the difference between an off-hand comment and the kind of concerted, talking-pointed campaign in which he often takes part.

The official right-wing echo chamber doesn’t directly promote violence because it doesn’t have to. They know if they spew enough poison in the air, a few of the more unbalanced in their audience will go off the reservation and act on the logical consequences of their hateful words and campaigns. This is the way they want it. Irrational , emotional appeals based on lies will not always get you where you need to go. But add a little danger and chaos to the equation and, well, as Hitler taught us, people will move.

UPDATE: As usual, Tom Toles nails it.

In Green Bay with the President - Part 2

Well, that was quite something.

There is a much more mellow vibe at these official events than at campaign things, where everyone is scrambling to take advantage of every minute of free advertising, trying to rush through this event to get to the next one, wondering whether they should have come here in the first place, etc. Here, the mobile Obama White House -- a smooth, disciplined organization if there ever was one -- swept into Green Bay and made the most of a friendly small town crowd.

And, in person, President Obama rocks much more than he does on television. He has been described by even supportive Washington insiders as a bit of a "cold fish" personally and I think that coolness comes across on TV as aloof, sometimes. Although he is ten times more of a dynamic media personality than anyone else in politics, that may be just because there literally is no other competition. But, in person, especially when the teleprompter is brought down and he interacts with people, he is articulate, interesting, sincere and -- funny. There was a time late in the event when he started riffing on how he does not want to run everything and had other things to deal with other than health care:

That's why I'm always puzzled when people -- they go out there creating this bogeyman about how, you know, "Obama wants government-run" -- I don't want government to run stuff. Like I said, I've got enough stuff to do. (Laughter.) I've got North Korea, and I've got Iran. And I've got Afghanistan and Iraq. (Applause.) I don't know where people get this idea that I want to run stuff, or I want government to run stuff.

At this point, I thought the president hit the comic rhythms of Richard Pryor. He was feeling it and seemed to be enjoying the day with the upbeat northeastern Wisconsin crowd, while making important points about the most important economic issue -- health care -- in the country.

I had several extremely good vantage points as I moved from the front of the camera riser facing the front of the stage (Obama's lectern was right at center court -- he was working somewhat in the round in a small high school gym) and the right side of the stage. When he faced my way, which was often, I felt somewhat connected -- so much so, I felt somewhat stupid trying to get away with doing some texting while the President of the United States seemed to be talking directly to me. Having been to many of these politician events, it was a strange feeling and I wonder if others felt the same connection.

Watching him work this friendly room, I would like to see what he would do with a roomful of the kind of people who keep saying or thinking he is socialist, anti-American, etc. How about a roomful of wing-nuts? Get him in a room with Limbaugh and Hannity or local pipsqueeks like Sykes or Belling. Obama would eat them alive. That's one of the many reasons they cower in their safe studios, take only scripted or friendly "callers" and maintain only a distant connection to what is going on in the real world. Obama in a room full of right-wingers could not charm them because they are not charmable. But he would clean their clock with facts, argument and humor. As a spectator sport, I'd buy pay-per-view for that one.

As for the substance of his remarks, they were always knowledgeable and often insightful but also overly careful as he again tries to reach consensus on an issue on which the Party of No, again, is not engaging and, again, will give him zero support. I completely agree with him doing this dance. Although he'll never get any support from the suicidal GOP, this PR effort is more about convincing Middle America that he has a reasonable way out of the nightmare of American health care, which all of them are either dealing with directly or sweating what is going to happen the next time they get sick or injured.

The bright affection shown by the overflow crowd was not all because of the president's rock-star qualities, although he certainly has those. It was also because he came to them with a commitment to get something done on an issue important to all of them. The Republicans will ignore the problem and try to obstruct Obama's serverely compromised solutions at their peril.

In Green Bay with the President - Part 1

I am here at the press table at President Obama's town hall at Southwest High School in Green Bay. The event is being held in a fairly small high school gym -- a very intimate venue for this kind of thing.

Driving in from right off the airport, there were police at every street corner. An hour ago some people were already camped out in front of their houses, with flags and signs, hoping to catch the president's attention as he motors by -- which won't happen for about a half-hour or so.

After being wanded and my electronics checked, we were ushered into the hall where hundreds have already gathered for the meeting. There are already some dignitaries mingling with the attendees; Lt. Gov. Barb Lawton, Sec. of Administration Michael Morgan, and others soon to follow.

There is a definite caste system, much like I saw at the Dem convention in Boston in '04. The national travelling press corps is screened off in their own area backstage (usually the cafeteria) and their tables out here in the staging area are better positioned than local riff-raff like me, who find ourselves behind the camera riser. I assume we'll be able to walk around and get a better angle once the President gets here.

Speaking of the President, I already have been sent a copy of his remarks to open the town hall. The remarks are "embargoed", so I will not be sharing, or they'll boot me out of here. The majority of the town hall meeting will be spontaneous and without the teleprompter -- somebody please call a wing-nut and tell them that, so they can lose that ridiculous talking point. Nah, they'll harp on it anyway. Never mind.

Protecting our children from themselves as they should, I cannot get on Facebook or Twitter on this school server (The page you requested is in the following filtered category: Personals & Dating. Well, excuuuse me!). So I guess you'll have to catch my updates here. I also can't do pictures until later tomorrow, probably.

Having a great time -- wish you were here. Send me a comment (no, not you, Anony)! What do you want to know?

The Legacy of Right-Wing Hate

I was working on a post this week about some of the more extreme comments I have received on this blog. It seems that real-life events in the last week or so have interceded to make some of those hateful messages more pertinent. Yesterday, a security guard at the Holocaust Museum was murdered by a loopy-right nutbag. Last week, Dr. Tiller was murdered in Kansas by a similarly inflamed "patriot". It appears that the years of hateful screeching by the vast network of right-wing message disseminators is again – as it did in Oklahoma City 14 years ago – leading to real results, real violence, real death.

The right-wing has pumped it up now quite a bit since the rejection of their agenda by the electorate in the last two election cycles and the remarkable success and popularity of President Obama. Their casual denial of the humanity of everyone from the president to anyone with the temerity to disagree with them has led the weakest of their listeners, readers and followers to strike out in uncasual ways. These most recent sad people who have inflicted death on the innocent while imagining them guilty now have begun their long stints in jail and prison cells with the false sleep of the just. They are still waiting for congratulatory messages from the radio clowns who spurred them to action and wondering where, exactly, they might have gone wrong.

I have seen a bit of this insanity here, on this blog. A while back, I had to start moderating the comments because some commenters – including one in particular – were abusing the privilege of instant, unscreened posting of their comments. They have called me and others ridiculous names, called for the assassination of President Obama, used the N-word in reference to the president and committed various other sins of impoliteness and slander.

I received a couple more such comments in the last couple of days – one, in fact, in response to my post yesterday announcing that I was going to President Obama’s town hall in Green Bay today – so I thought I would share what I’ve been dealing with once in a while as I have tried to engage on the important issues of the day. Whoever is doing this (all the offensive comments are under the cowardly "Anonymous" label; most, it appears, from one guy), I’m was not going to say – as the wing-nuts always do in highlighting any idiotic lefty posts on the Daily Kos, etc. – that this nonsense is representative of any right-wing "thought", such as it is. But that was before the murders of Dr. Tiller and security guard Johns. Now, it appears, while perhaps not representative, these comments are certainly a result of the poison atmosphere created on the radio and elsewhere.

NOTE: LANGUAGE AND OFFENSE ALERT

The ugly comments here are left by someone who (mostly) hides behind the Anonymous shield, the last refuge of the internet coward. In his twisted heart, he knows he’s right; but he also is afraid his family, friends and co-workers might see his twisted posts and would rightly think he’s nuts. From homophobic to racist to murderous, the comments I have filtered out run the gamut of 5th grade-level invective.

For instance, here is one I got just last night:

Mike go fuck your self and die, take the commie nigger "Obamination"with you.

Two days ago:

Mike dying of AIDS yet? or maybe your boyfriend? [Note: I’m not gay.]

Please SOMEBODY take Doyle and the Obomination out. A Clear MAJORITY of this country will cheer when that happens.

And more from the recent past:

His first 65 days have been a complete disaster, much less the next four years, someone please shoot the nigger and his wife in the head!!! PLEASE ANYONE?

Why is it Obama's the most heavily guarded US President ever? LMAO, his mellon will be split open with a assassins bullet sooner rather than later is my bet.

Folks we are living that disaster now with the communist, socialist un-american BAAAARAAACK Obama, names sounds like a person throwing up after a bout with food poisoning. Where is that crazy lone gunmen when we need one, that is hope and change I look forward to, it will happen Mikey.

LMAO OBama is destroying the economy, stocks are tanking with a no confidence vote towards the nigger. In 2 years Republicans will overwelmingly [sic] regain control of Congress putting a stop to the communist nigger. Reverse his damage that he is doing to America and if he isn't assasinated [sic], he will either be impeached or voted out in a landslide.

LMAO Republicans will win 10-15 senate seats in 2010 just based on the niggers current fuckups.

And, locally:

You forgot to mention that Butler got trounced the first time he ran for the Court before receiving his affirmative action appointment by Doyle. Now that Butler is likely to get a lifetime appointment to the federal bench (yet another position he couldn't earn on his own), perhaps it's time you and the other hug-a-thug apologists stop whining about the voters' wise and informed decision to throw Butler out on his butt for the second time.

Note the reference to Louis Butler as an "affirmative action appointment" and a "thug", for no reason other than the color of his skin.

Well, you get the idea. And this is only from this year. Note the constant racism. Observe the homophobic references. Read the violent fantasies of assassination and "melon-splitting".

UPDATE:

An alleged implication has been withdrawn and an apology has been accepted.

It is past time we stop being intimidated by the bullies who would shut us down because their positions can’t withstand scrutiny in the marketplace of ideas. The wing-nuts don’t encourage wacko would-be vigilante violence as much as give it permission. With the apocalyptic tone used by so many of the radio squawkers and bloggers – Obama is radical, socialist, unAmerican, etc. – what else is a "great American" to do but take matters into his own hands?

Plaisted Writes Goes to Green Bay

I will be part of the press corps tomorrow when President Obama does a town hall meeting in Green Bay. Watch this space for almost-live updates, news and insights into the president's event.

That Was Then – And It Still Is

I can pretty much tolerate most right-wing hacks, at least on a personal level – not that I know any of them personally. I’m not disgusted or appalled by them – don’t have a visceral reaction one way or the other. Now that the good guys and gals are in charge, the radio pipsqueeks, cable nimrods and blogging boneheads are mere annoyances. When they are really on their lame game – like Glenn Beck currently is – they are mildly amusing and slightly facinating to watch, as we watch them spin themselves ever deeper into their own sad delusions of false righteousness and legitimacy.

It’s the same with most of the right-wing politicians who, not so long ago, were actually relevant and even held some power in the country, believe it or not. For instance, regardless of how much the wing-nuts tried to convince everyone that the opposition to Junior Bush’s disastrous policies were based on irrational rage, I never hated the little punk and I don’t know anyone who did. He was an empty-suited front for a bunch of manipulative but, ultimately, failed and sad white guys who are now justly losing the rewards they never deserved. Even Dick Cheney fails to get my blood boiling, as he continues his legacy tour of lies and pathetic self-rationalization.

In other words, it’s the issues – not the people who are so wrong about them – that deserve our passion and emotional connection. People come and go through politics and the various media noisemakers, but the important issues of the past several generations – civil rights, war and peace, protection of the environment and economic justice – remain. That’s why it’s easy – for me, anyway – to be at least polite with people I might run into on opposite sides or the fence, the political divide or the courtroom. Even if it is sometimes not reciprocated by a certain self-righteous member of the Marquette law faculty, or others.

Bipartisan and legal comity being a virtue, then, I’ll get to my point:

Screw Ted Olson.

Ted Olson is the lawyer who led the Bush campaign’s legal team that succeeded in shutting down the Florida recount in 2000, resulting in the worst U.S. Supreme Court decision with the most disastrous consequences (i.e.: the entire Bush legacy) in history. I can still hear his voice arguing in the Supreme Court in those dark days, when democracy was stolen in broad daylight. Using the most tortured interpretation of the equal protection clause anyone not named Scalia could imagine, the hyper-activist Rehnquist bare-majority (thanks for nothing, Sandra Day O’Connor) bought Olson’s snake oil just enough to install the worst president in American history before the votes were properly counted.

Last week, Olson popped up in a weird pairing with David Boies – who righteously represented the Gore campaign in the same historic case. For perhaps the first time in his career, Olson this time is on the Right Side, promising to join forces with Boies to challenge California’s Prop 8 anti-gay marriage amendment in the Supreme Court.

Boies and the Prop 8 opponents are too gracious in letting Olson tag along, even if he does lend his nut-right, Federalist Society credentials to the fight. What Ted Olson needs more than anything, if he is indeed trying to sneak his way back into polite society, is a good shunning. And, yes, I know his wife died on the plane that slammed into the Pentagon on 9/11. And, no, the justifiable sympathy from that personal tragedy does not get him off the hook for Bush v. Gore.

And, while I’m at it:

Screw Christopher Ruddy.

Ruddy is the pretend-journalist who provided fodder for Clinton-haters throughout the ‘90s with fabrications, lies and fantasies regarding the supposed crimes of the then-president. It was he who provided the gullible with the "facts" they needed to think the worst of Bill Clinton. He drove the phony "controversy" over Vince Foster’s suicide by claiming Foster was, instead, murdered in some dark Clinton conspiracy. He also pissed on the grave of another Clinton compatriot, Ron Brown, who died in a plane crash, but who Ruddy claimed died of a gunshot wound (during the plane crash, I guess). Ruddy’s smears were financed by right-wing financier Richard Mellon Scaife, and happily distributed throughout the wing-nut echo chamber, poisoning the political atmosphere for an entire decade and unjustly impugning the reputation of a fine and - in spite of him and them - successful president.

How strange, then, to read that the repulsive Ruddy is palling around with...Bill Clinton. In an otherwise heartening essay in the New York Times Magazine this weekend, Ruddy pops up as a most unlikely F.O.B. "I guess we thought, This is just politics," says the sleaze merchant, who remains in the bullshit business on NewsMax. "But looking back at my role, I was probably over the top. And if I knew then what I know today, I wouldn’t have pursued some of that stuff as aggressively as I did. I did an honest reporter’s job [ha]. But I have a different take on it now." Thanks for letting us know, asshole. Now, get off the stage.

David Boies and Bill Clinton need to use a little more discretion before they go around legitimizing their tormentors after-the-fact. Shake hands during a chance meeting in public? Sure – that’s what hand-sanitizer is for. But befriend and work together? Never.

Peace Through Music 2009

As I have for the past several years, I have the honor of acting as the MC for the 8th annual Peace Through Music benefit at Linneman's Riverwest Inn in Milwaukee this Sunday, May 24th. The show, featuring 18 of Milwaukee's finest musicians, begins at 7 p.m. and goes until 1 a.m. $10 at the door. There will also be a raffle and auction of Beatles memorabilia and other fine items. All performers will be playing the music of John Lennon and/or the Beatles; a tribute to one of the most famous and tragic victims of senseless hand-gun violence in the United States.

Besides my hosting duties, Mike Plaisted and Band snared a late-night, prime-time slot at 11:25.

The show is a benefit for the Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort (WAVE) and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Both groups appear to have their work cut out for them, as the NRA-fearing Democrats now in charge of everything run for the hills on even the simplest and most reasonable forms of firearm regulation, such as a re-institution of the assault weapons ban and the closing of the gun-show loophole for background checks. "An internal detente that has been declared before the pro-gun and pro-gun-control forces within the Democratic caucus" was the way one "advisor" put it to Politico and we are all the worse for it.

In Wisconsin, the loopy-right has been celebrating the non-authoritative political -- oh, sorry -- legal opinion by Republican AG J.B. VanHollen that anyone who wants to get their precious pet gun some fresh air can take it out for a walk without concealing it and without worrying about getting charged with disorderly conduct, no matter how much the action "tends to cause or provoke a disturbance", as the statute reads. Just this past weekend, about 200 of the state's gun clowns got together somewhere, according to chief gun fetishist Owen Robinson, to celebrate Van Hollen's gift, overcompenstating for their, um, inadequacies by packing heat all over what I'm sure is an otherwise peaceful, lovely park.

In any event, the fight continues for reasonable and effective gun control. Join us on Sunday night for a night of music and fun, all for a good cause.

The Tyranny of E-Cig Regulation

The nut-right jihad in Milwaukee has united behind an unlikely commercial product in its effort to beat up on the Nanny State of their manipulative imaginations and pretended nightmares. The "issue" is the proposed regulation of e-cigarettes, the prospect of which has sent the hysterical wing-nut entertainers on a campaign of typically-patronizing squawking about the supposed danger to "freedom" and "liberty" from heartless bureaucrats who would dare to try to protect the populace from an untested nico-machine. Patriots unite! You have nothing to lose but your untested addictive drug delivery system!

It says here that e-cigarettes are an electronic device that contains nicotine in a liquid that vaporizes and gets sucked into the lungs, delivering soothing heart-rate-and-blood-pressure-increasing, blood-to-heart-muscle-restricting, brain-addicting nicotine into the bloodstream. It is being sold world-wide as shit without the mess to those who are trying to kick the habit of smoking real cigarettes. Even non-smokers are potential customers -- didn’t you always wonder what the big rush was that make those stupid smokers suck those poison sticks until they were smelly, sick or dead? I’m a non-smoker with a fine appreciation for the easy release of dopamine and this might be just the short-cut to serenity I need.

The FDA has refused to approve some versions of e-cigs and other countries like Australia and Canada have either banned them or advised against them. "Nicotine is a highly addictive and toxic substance, and the inhalation of propylene glycol is a known irritant," say the grown-ups at Health Canada. "Although these electronic smoking products may be marketed as a safer alternative to conventional tobacco products and, in some cases, as an aid to quitting smoking, electronic smoking products may pose risks such as nicotine poisoning and addiction."

Such sentiments and government directives are so much namby-pamby malarkey according to the pudding-heads in Milwaukee’s well-published and broadcast lunatic fringe. The Journal Sentinel’s omnipresent wing-nut, Patrick McIlheran, complained in his permanent Sunday screed-space that the effort to ban e-cigs in Washington "dwelt" on such quaint notions as "the possibility that children could order the devices and that the e-cigs haven't been proved healthy." "Haven’t been proved healthy"? Oh, pooh – silly government, trying to protect the public health again. Didn’t that function die permanently with the Bushies, when poison industry lobbyists were drafting all the "rules"? He accuses the government of "reflexively" trying to ban things so that people can’t hurt themselves in new and creative ways. This, as his knee jerks "reflexively" into a new claim of feigned victimhood for his whiny constituency.

Even the third-string squealers are getting into the act. Wretched Madison import Vicki McKenna practically hosted an infomercial for one of the on-line purveyors of e-cigs a week or so ago; having the guy on, promoting the web site and even offering discounts. This is apparently personal for McKenna, who sounds like the kind of person who sits and spouts her opinions from the end of the bar, a drink in one hand and her cigarette – e- or otherwise – hanging from her lips, while the other patrons slowly slink away. McKenna claims she has been able to cut her rate of self-destruction through burning cancer sticks by indulging in what’s-his-name’s delicious vapor product and, damn it, she should be allowed to continue to so delude herself.

Although she loudly indulges in the dreary right-wing talking points about the "tyranny" and loss of "liberty" involved in any governmental action – predictably, McKenna spent a month or so promoting the phony Madison Tea Bag psuedo-event on her show – one of her arguments appears to be that, even though e-cigs might be unhealthy, they are not as unhealthy as real cigarettes. Wow, "not as deadly as cigarettes". There’s a low standard for you. How about a bomb "not as destructive as an atomic bomb" or a nuclear accident "not as bad as Chernobyl"?

But the specifics of the manufactured e-cigarette "debate" isn’t what the wing-nuts are after. They want another fake reason for their angry-white-male demographic to feel oppressed by the Big Brother government that only exists in their heads. In right-wing fantasy-land, "they" are coming for your guns, coming for your e-cigs, blah de blah blah. It’s a tiresome routine, but you have to forgive them. Tied to the rock of the Party of No, they sink slowly in the ocean of their own failure. Self-victimization is all they have. Poor babies.

Belling Mines That Bird

Mark Belling, Milwaukee’s top-rated racist demagogue, committed a flagrant act of bad prognostication last Friday, boldly swinging the big dick of his own investments in the often animal-abusive American horse racing industry (i.e.: he owns horses) as he made Kentucky Derby predictions on his web site. "If this horse wins," he wrote of surprise long-shot winner Mine That Bird, "I'll never bet on another race and will vote for Jim Doyle for re-election."

Oh, how we all laughed when Belling was faced with the perfect confluence of his pledge and the stunning race results. The question wasn’t whether he would weasel out on his promise, but rather – how? After carefully consulting with his own empty conscience and which ever dark knight he sold his soul to so many years ago, Belling brilliantly (to him) turned his miserable failure into an opportunity to conduct more smears and tell more lies. "If Governor Doyle withdraws his support for [insert various whiny complaints of revenue enhancements for the cash-strapped state], I will indeed vote for Governor Doyle for re-election."

Ho! Boo-yah! As late as Wednesday afternoon, he was still reveling in his own wonderfulness, bragging that he had gotten the goat of Doyle, state Democratic Chair Joe Wineke and anyone foolish enough to think that the radio clown who claims to "stand up" for anything, much less Milwaukee, might honor his condition-less bet without conditions.

The original prediction about the likelihood of Mine That Bird winning the Derby was a piffle of hyperbolic braggado, attempting to show how smart he was. Anyone listening to or reading it would take something like that even less seriously than they usually do with Belling. But he made it more serious by using his understandable failure (99% of the racing world agreed with him) to attack Gov. Doyle. But this is the kind of cheap political hackery we expect from Belling.

Of course, the truth being so dramatically against him, you can’t expect Belling to make a point without lying. Doyle’s supposed pledge, such as it was, had only to do with personal income, property and sales taxes. Only one of the budget items cited by Belling – a mere one-percent hike for those making over $300,000 – requires an actual tax increase of the kind Doyle was talking about. The rest of the tiresome right-wing litany Belling recites are not of that sort. But, hey, why let the facts get in the way of a cheap responsibility dodge?

The Belling Dodge has even gone national. Wednesday night, on his essential Countdown program on MSNBC, Keith Olbermann discussed the Belling renege during, appropriately, the Oddball segment. The Belling episode shows that "being a right-winger on the radio means you’re a welcher," said Olbermann, before showing hilarious footage of Prince Charles with an animated frog.

But Olbermann, not knowing him like we unfortunately do, lets Belling off too easy. "Welcher" is the least of it. Racist, liar, poisoner of political dialog, local embarassment – that’s more like it.

The Steele Republicans

The Incredible Shrinking Republican Party continues to not disappoint, as they spin themselves rapidly further into a hole, oblivious to their situation and their destiny.

Faced with the loss of Arlen Specter in the Senate, their message was, literally, "good riddance" and, according to their charming leader-by-default Rush Limbaugh, take John McCain and the other RINOs with you. The war on RINOs has been a staple of wing-nut radio for years, as they blamed two cycles of electoral thumpings on candidates who were not loopy-right enough. They say they would just as soon relative moderates and/or independently-minded senators like McCain, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe stop pretending to be Republicans and hit the road. If that happened (it won’t – Snowe, at least, still clings to the quaint New England version of her family's GOP), that would put the Senate math at 63 in the majority, with 2010 bound to add 3 or 4 more Democrats to the fold. Thus the new, ideologically-pure party digs deeper into irrelevance; the Talk Radio Wing-Nut Party of their wet-yet-impotent dreams.

It doesn’t help that the dominant anti-moderate wing of the party has installed its stooge at the head of the party – the eminently clueless Michael Steele – who was willing to use the occasion of Specter’s overdue switch to kick a large part of his own party under the bus. "I’m sure his mama didn’t raise him that way," he snarked, as he whined about Specter’s disloyalty (i.e.: his unwillingness to stay on the GOP Titanic). Talk about mixed messages. The traditional Republicans (like Snowe) are damned if they leave for being disloyal and damned if they stay for being RINOs.

Although a small faction of the party is trying to knock Steele down a notch by restricting his spending authority, I say: The more Michael Steele the better. Every time his dumb ass shows up on cable, I drop everything I’m doing, turn it up, and enjoy the show. Not since, well, Junior Bush has anyone so clearly out of his depth been thrust into a national leadership position. The difference between Steele and Bush, though, is that Steele appears to have no idea how truly comical he is. At least Bush had people around him to write his scripts and keep him away from microphones. Steele lurches into television studios, reveling in a spotlight that only serves to highlight his incompetent message delivery, as he paints the GOP further into a nut-right corner. Now, apparently, he is going after what he imagines as the Bush/Cheney old guard in his own party. What a riot. The guy needs a prime time show – we all need a good laugh these days.

Instead of accepting the Specter defection as a wake-up call, the GOP leadership in Congress is following Steele and the talk-radio demagogues off the cliff. In the House and Senate, they continue to whip their members into unanimous opposition to all things Obama, despite the president’s extraordinary popularity and the slow, tentative economic rebound that his policies have so far produced. The Republicans are betting and hoping that the economy remains miserable and somehow Obama and Democrats will be blamed for it in time for the 2010 elections. Even if that does happen, they still have to offer a legitimate alternative and the tax-cuts-for-the-rich party is hardly that.

Obama came to the White House with at least small hopes of bipartisanship in the face of the various crisis dumped on his lap by the Bushies and has been rebuffed at every turn by the Party of No that refuses to even acknowledge obvious and pressing national problems. How can you reach any consensus with people who refuse to admit that we have to do something about health care or climate change? There is no middle ground when irresponsible GOP "leaders" would just as soon let banks and auto companies fail; imagine what kind of death-spiral we would be in with the party of economic Darwinism in charge.

The Republican Party is going the way of the Whigs. History shows us that the Whigs fractured over the slavery issue in the 1850s, the wrong (pro-slavery) side taking over the party and leading it to oblivion. Now, the GOP’s minority relative-moderates are being driven out in the name of ideological purity, and the party is increasingly regional – only the South and Plains states remain. A couple more election cycles and the party will be (or should be) left for dead. The only question is whether and when conservative-to-moderate Democrats and Republicans peel off to form the second party this country desperately needs.

"Give Me Saddam!"

Some more observations on the Bush Torture Scandal™:

1) Of all the outrageous things the Bushies did to try to fabricate support for their disastrous invasion of Iraq, the substance of this well-sourced reporting from McClatchy Newspapers and others takes the cake:

"The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime...[F]or most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there. It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003..."

I mean – really. Not only were we committing international torture crimes in the context of a hysterical effort to pry information from detainees who (mostly) knew nothing about al Qaida or their plans; Junior Bush’s puppet masters Cheney and Rumsfeld used the vast resources of their illegal torture apparatus to try to get that last little bullet-point for their tissue of Hussein lies. This represents a new low for the unredeemable slugs who are singularly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, over 4,000 soldiers and our own national self-respect.

The surprising thing is that the sick, desperate effort did not provide results. There isn’t a respectable Islamic terrorist anywhere who would not have given up Hussein in a torture-enhanced heartbeat. I can see it now – "Give me Saddam!", screams the CIA contractor after the 100th hour of sleep deprivation with manacles attached to the ceiling and floor and the poor naked subject drenched with cold water. I’m guessing the reason they didn’t get the answer they wanted is because the detainees were too busy laughing their ass off (thus, no doubt, making the torture less effective). Hussein, the deliberately secular ruler who killed millions of our brothers in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war? Yeah, we’ll be calling him up real soon.

But, try they did, using torture not for "national security" but for their own domestic political cover. These are some sick bastards that just left the White House. They used their powers in reprehensible, irredeemable ways. Be that as it may...

2) ...there is no point in trying to prosecute them criminally. The legal memos that they directed provide the cover for all of them, which is why they were written. As I discussed previously, the legal parsing of the definition of torture is ludicrous on its face, but anyone who followed that legal advice is off the hook, intent-wise. That includes the higher-ups who ordered the lawyers to give them that advice in the first place. The lawyers certainly can’t be prosecuted for the advice or even for being the legal whores they are and continue to be.

It does make you wonder, though... If I get another lawyer to write a memo saying that murder isn’t really murder because the anticipated pain or danger from my acts is not "severe" enough, does that mean I get away with it? Does he?

I’ll tell you one thing – I don’t want to hear any so-called conservatives complain again about law-and-order or people getting off on "technicalities" or light sentences for small-fry sell-one-to-get-one drug dealers. Turn on the radio any time of the day and night and you can hear all manner of wing-nuts making excuses for the worst kind of law-breaking our nation has ever seen. But, it’s a free-for-all now. The ends justify the means, obviously. I expect quotes from the torture memos to pop up any day now in legal briefs all over the country. In fact, I have this issue I’m working on right now, and maybe I’ll squeeze it in to see if it works.

I’m watching Frost/Nixon, finally, tonight, and I know the impact when the criminal legal record is not made clear. Nixon committed crimes on the White House tapes and, because he was neither impeached or prosecuted for his crimes, the historical record has been and will always be vulnerable to Nixon loyalists who will claim that his resignation was the result of a political coup. But Nixon wasn’t smart enough to get a legal memo saying that he had the power to impede the Watergate investigation using the FBI or the CIA, much less bug the Democratic headquarters in the first place. Speaking of Nixon loyalists...

3) ...Dick Cheney is more than a little confused. With no more power in the government than you or I, he thinks he can order a declassification of some memo he probably ordered, reporting about how wonderful and productive the torture sessions were. If there is such a thing, the Obama administration will probably release it and when it does, you’ll see just another self-serving narrative, much like the legal torture memos, ignoring inconvenient facts (like the L.A. plot in 2002 that was supposedly foiled by the brilliant waterboarding of KSM – in March 2003).

The phantom memo, in other words, will mean nothing. But, for now, its supposed existence provides another cheap dodge for Cheney and others who want to avoid the real issue of who we were as a nation under the dirty Bushies and how we can get back to having the moral standing to tell anyone, anywhere in the world how they should behave.

Torture Logic

I can't imagine anyone will ever be nostalgic for the Bushies. Their exit from the corridors of power and the entrance of the talented, infinitely more moral Obama team has been the most dramatic power-change on this continent since King George was shown the door in 1776. But it’s not too late to be outraged by the damage they have caused to this nation of laws and its diminished status in the civilized world.

The formerly-secret legal memos that purport to provide legal cover for CIA interrogators who were torturing prisoners at Guantanamo provide an appalling look into the minds of the damaged men (and, as it turns out, at least one woman) who overreacted to the events of 9/11 by rending the very fabric of American morality. Reading all 100+ pages of these patheticly result-oriented memos can produce nightmares about what was done in our name. If you manage to work your way all the way through the documents, you will need nothing so much as a shower. Your government was filthy-dirty with the terrorized minds, if not the actual blood, of its prisoners.

The right-wing talking pointers have tried to change the facts and the subject from the naked proof of outrageous criminal behavior approved by Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and so on to the release of the memos in first place and the darkly-laughable assertion that torture “worked”. All the Obama administration has done is release “legal” memos from pliant political appointees – one of whom, scandalously, now sits on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals – who parse the word “severe” within an inch of its obvious meaning in order to justify torturous acts. The specific horrific acts of torture used were not news, having been in the public domain through some (but not enough) reporting earlier. But the details of the brutal interrogations – largely conducted, by the way, not by CIA staff, but by profit-centered, soul-selling contractors – still jump out from the pages that seek to justify them, a permanent stain on our national character.

What is most offensive to me, as a lawyer, is the twisted legal logic produced by these partisan hacks, who, in giving Cheney what he demanded, made a mockery of their obligation to their client, who was ultimately not the power-mad greedheads in the White House, but the American people. “In order for pain or suffering to rise to the level of torture, the statute requires that it be severe,” writes now-judge-for-life Jay Bybee way back in 2002. “[T]his reaches only extreme acts...courts tend to take a totality-of-the-circumstances approach and consider an entire course of conduct to determine whether torture has occurred.” Not surprisingly, the Federalist Society lackey finds torture not to be torture, the level of pain and suffering being not “severe” enough; the interrogators not having the requisite intent to impose said pain and suffering; and blah de blah whoosh whoosh. He never does apply the totality-of-the-circumstances analysis that would put the lie to the rest of his Cheney-serving “analysis”.

This is the kind of black-means-white legal logic that gives lawyers a bad name. The torture tactics used by interrogators at Gitmo and elsewhere were reportedly developed by the Chinese to be used against Koreans in the 1950s. They were meant to supercede the more messy leave-a-mark kind of torture used in the uncreative past (although waterboarding is a torture-tactic classic, dating back, at least, to the Inquisition). Bybee seems to say that, since thumb-screws and The Rack were not employed in our new and improved Torture 3.0, then it’s just peachy with him. As lawyers, we are trained to distinguish cases and circumstances to reached our clients’ preferred conclusions. But this is ridiculous.

We strung people up in a standing position for as long a 180 hours (that's more than 7 days) to employ sleep deprivation. We doused naked prisoners with cold water for hours. We banged them repeatedly up against a false wall. We terrorized them by pouring water up their nose -- sometimes six times a day -- to make them think they were drowning.

We did it. You did it. I did it. It was done in our name. We will be endangered and stained with the sins of the Bush Administration for the rest of history. If world opinion some day lets us off the hook for the one radical regime we allowed for eight years, we should consider ourselves lucky. In the meantime, all we can do is make amends. And, for a change, tell the truth.

From the Archives: TV Screams

Back in the summer of 1979, I wandered into the summer version of the Daily Cardinal and offered my services as a writer of...anything. I reviewed some records, some concerts and some movies for the summer. In the fall, I had the idea of writing a daily TV column, just looking at the TV Guide and writing whatever popped into my head about what was on the tube that night. My column ran down whatever empty gutters the editors needed to fill. It was a great opportunity to write daily, hang around the office and get to know some wonderful people putting together what was then an important daily college newspaper.

New stuff to follow....honest.

On Abrahamson's Victory and Butler's Loss

Despite encouragement from well-meaning friends and family, I didn’t do any posts on the Supreme Court race just concluded. There simply was nothing I could have added to IT Tom Foley’s remarkable performance during the campaign. He had Randy Koschnick nailed from the beginning and continued the beat-down for months. If there was an award for advocacy blogging, Tom would win hands down. I am envious of his skill at developing a funny, informative and legally-sophisticated internet presence and can’t wait to see where he goes from here.

Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson’s long, historic career continues, which is a tribute to Wisconsin voters, who, left to their own devices for a change, provided a deserved thumping to the reprehensible Koschnick. Koschnick’s wing-nut-hugging, blatantly partisan campaign was a disgrace, especially for those in the community of former public defender staff attorneys. Apparently, he was in the bargaining unit when I helped organize my former colleagues into a union and bargained their first contract with the state in 1999. I can’t imagine anyone in the defense bar, inside or outside the agency, who did or would have supported his ridiculous campaign.

Koschnick may be wondering, though, what happened to the support I’m sure he expected by the out-of-state interests who bought the last two Supreme Court elections by funneling money through the WMC and other right-wing conduits. Building on and adding to the template dutifully followed by the ethically-challenged Michael Gableman, Koschnick said and did all the right(-wing) things, only to turn around in February and find no one behind him. Not even those who recruited him were willing to stick their necks out in the end, deciding to sit it out and let the Chief stay in place without much of a fight.

I think that decision is an interesting one, especially considering the opponents, the current make-up of the court and what happened to Louis Butler last year.

Last year’s race was ostensibly about which candidate was most friendly to heinous criminals and most hostile to the suffering rich business community. Cases were evaluated by legal-issue nincompoops like Jessica McBride (Hey, Jess! Where ya been? How’s that private blog working for you?) who determined that Justice Butler was "pro-criminal" and other such nonsense.

Looking at the cases to fight back what I knew was a smear campaign (again, IT doing it much better), I noticed that Shirley Abrahamson came off looking much "worse" in this kind of deceptively irrelevant score-keeping. She dissented – often alone – in many cases in which Butler affirmed convictions with the majority. It was fairly obvious that she was the most consistently rights-protecting, freedom-loving (read: "liberal") member of the court. I remember reading the cases back then and thinking, if they can mess up Louis on this kind of ignorant analysis, the Chief would be much more vulnerable.

Likewise the competition. Gableman was an extremely unaccomplished blank-slate coming into the campaign, which is just the way his handlers at the WMC wanted him. He had not distinguished himself in any way as a District Attorney or as judge. In comparison, Randy Koschnick was a legal dynamo, who at least, I assume, litigated effectively while in the PD’s office – including not shying away from tough cases like the Ted Oswald defense. Unlike Gableman – who said nothing of substance during the campaign and, in the one forum I saw, sat quietly like an embarrassed red-faced blow-up doll while important issues were discussed all around him – Koschnick was not afraid to spew his right-wing nonsense, even identifying himself as a Republican after the unfortunate Siefert decision allowed judges in Wisconsin to do so.

So, with a more vulnerable record, advancing age and a stronger opponent than Butler had, why did the bad guys with all the money who have succeeded in stacking the court 4-3 to their advantage not take out Abrahamson too? It’s not like their majority is all that secure – it’s obvious at this point Gableman committed such a severe violation of judicial ethics with his racist Willie-Horton ad against Butler he may well be removed (but probably not – I have an inadequate "60 day suspension" in the office pool) and their majority is otherwise one health issue from flipping the other way on a Doyle appointment.

I think the decision to stay out this year says more about what was going on last year than it does about the relative merits of Abrahamson or Koschnick. In the contest against Louis Butler, the WMC king-makers saw a particular vulnerability that didn’t exist this year with Abrahamson – and that is race. I think an appointed white justice with the kind of extraordinary talent Butler had (and has, as he’ll prove when he gets a well-deserved appointment to the federal bench later this year) would have drawn nothing but token opposition and they would have looked ahead to doing the "liberal" and "elderly" thing in earnest on Abrahamson this year.

Instead, they found a willing cipher in Gableman who was willing to allow them to work the racist angles to get their damn pro-business majority. Shirley Abrahamson, who made history decades ago as the first woman on our Supreme Court, is rightly still on the court. Louis Butler, who made history this decade as the first African-American on our Supreme Court, is not. The WMC and other right-wing power-grabbers were willing to exploit latent and blatent racism to accomplish their selfish goals of establishing predictable pro-business justices. They could not allow an impartial court, and took out the black guy to end it.

Obama's Poll Numbers

Charles Krauthammer and his ilk in the 24/7 anti-Obama echo-chamber industry have been hitting on all cylinders in recent weeks. Slavishly driving GOP talking points, the dedicated and always well-paid roster of gabbering columnists, bloggers, cable talkers and talk-radio squawkers have hammered away at dramatic Obama failures such as inadequate gifts to British luminaries, scandalous overuse of teleprompters...not to mention the installation of socialism, tyranny and the destruction of America As It Was Meant To Be. (My favorite, though, is still Obama the Satanist)

You would think, given apocalyptic tone and sheer volume of WingNut Nation noise that the new president would be suffering from crashing poll numbers, depressing news cycles and numerous failures of his initiatives. But you would be wrong.

To the contrary, public opinion polls in the past week show that President Obama is more popular now than he’s ever been, with fully two-thirds of those polled approving of his performance. According to the Washington Post/ABC poll, he is trusted to handle everything from the economy (60%) to foreign affairs (62%) to even the ballooning budget deficit (52%). Republicans are laughed out of town in the CBS/NY Times poll , with a 31% approval rating and a badly mistaken 20% wanting them to have anything to do with the economy. The brilliant strategy employed by the Party of No is indeed bearing the rotting fruit it deserves.

Most impressive are the numbers regarding the right/wrong direction of the country. The detailed version of the WaPo/ABC poll provides some interesting history. Although the right/wrong numbers are still understandably in the negative at 42/57, the 42% figure is the best since April of ‘04 (which makes one wonder who thought things were going so great in the middle of the Great Bush Slog). This is a major rebound in national perception that has as much to do with the fact that Obama has shown real leadership in the midst of economic disaster and on the international stage as it does with the fact that a certain incompetent pipsqueak is no longer the president and the nation is breathing a collective sigh of relief that we somehow made it though in one damaged piece.

Facts and poll numbers are stubborn things, but the wing-nut message-developers have found a way to spin even contrary poll numbers into more bullshit. Every national and local wing-nut with a microphone or a keyboard has been trumpeting a Pew Research Center poll, which found a "partisan gap" between the Democrats who approve of Obama (88%) and Republicans who do (27%). Pew headlines this meaningless "gap" of 61 points between the two figures as more than the past six presidents at a similar point in their first terms, concluding that Obama has achieved "the most polarized early job approval ratings" of any of them.

The last two presidents are the second and third "most polarized", with post-election-theft/pre-9/11Junior Bush coming in at a 51 point gap, only because all-too-forgiving Democrats gave him 36% approval: and Bill Clinton with a 45 point gap, only because only 71% of all-too-critical-of-our-own Dems approved – Republicans were just as opposed to him as they are to Obama.

Obama’s gap is a result of a combination of 1) justifiable post-Bush, pro-Obama euphoria from Democrats; and 2) the continued diminution of the GOP into an extremist south/prairie regional party of future-denying white males. The percentage of voters identifying themselves as Republicans are an increasingly smaller group – certainly smaller than when 84% of them thought Nixon was so wonderful in 1969; or the 56% who thought the post-Watergate Jimmy Carter wasn't so bad in 1977.

The fact that Republican dead-enders are not exactly on-board with Obama or anyone else with a D in front of their name is not a surprise – these people are not exactly open-minded. The poll numbers don't indicate more polarization as much as they do stronger party affiliation and discipline. Democrats have a leader they can be proud of; the Republicans continue to behave like lemmings, following their "leaders", such as they are, over a cliff.

The fact that, despite all this noise, 59% of independents are still hanging with Obama, is the more relevant finding in the Pew poll -- if they were split 50/50, that would be quite another thing. Independents and Democrats seem to be largely on the same page. The fact that Republicans are in the corner, screeching about socialism, doesn't mean we as a people are polarized -- it just means they are annoying everyone else.

Republicans and right-wingers have made a gamble – to Just Say No to all things Obama and hope they can bleed him by a thousand trivial cuts like they tried (and, except in 1994, failed) to do with Clinton. The wager will come due soon enough in 2010, when, because of the steady progress of the Obama agenda, the Democrats claim even more seats in the Senate and dozens more in the House. Democrats will be rewarded for trying to make the nation a better place. Republicans will be justifiably punished for trying to stand in the way.