The Republic of T.

• Watching 'Health Care: The Status Quo' video playlist at http://www.veewow.com/playlist-dFa #

• Watching 'Health Care: The Status Quo' video playlist at http://www.veewow.com/playlist-dFa #

Steve Benen asks a question about the Republican health care reform plan — or lack thereof
— that I’m certain I’ve seen answered already.

The House Republican leadership "guaranteed" that they would offer an alternative health care reform bill. If my count is right, that was 134 days ago.

Asked about when Americans can expect to see the GOP plan, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said it’s "pretty difficult" for Republicans to come up with a "solid plan," because the minority caucus is "not quite sure how the majority intends to proceed."

I’m not sure what that’s even supposed to mean. Republicans started putting together their health care reform proposal in June. They’ve had plenty of time to meet behind closed doors and craft the superior plan that will prove the seriousness with which the GOP takes this issue. What’s the holdup?

Boehner wants to know first how Democrats intend to proceed? Well, here’s a tip for the Minority Leader: Democrats will probably hold a vote on the reform bill they’ve spent the last year putting together. The question is, how does he intend to proceed?

The answer is that they don’t intend to proceed. Because they can’t proceed.

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Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for October 29th through October 31st:

• High-Stakes Health Reform –
• Op-Ed Columnist: The Defining Moment –
• Why does Joe Lieberman oppose healthcare reform? Ask his wife –
• Barney Frank: No More Secret Agreements Between Regulators and Banks –
• firstamendmentcenter.org: commentary –
• Michael Jackson's incredibly moving This Is It. – By Dana Stevens – Slate Magazine –
• Overcoming Fear –
• The Party of Choice –

It’s was 80 years ago this week that the Crash of 1929 kicked off the Great Depression.

Not quite 79 years later, the fall of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, sent the stock market into a meltdown precipitated by the crises of such Wall Street Giants as Bear Stears and AIG, among others.

Comparisons between now and then are, of course, inevitable.

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Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for October 27th through October 29th:

• Help gays who aren’t hurt –
• Let’s Make a Deal –
• Rep. Earl Blumenauer: An Historic and Emotional Moment –
• Centrist Democrats = Corporate Sellouts –
• Health Care Hypocrites –
• No Bittersweet Victories –
• America’s Real Death Panels –
• Joe Lieberman’s stance on health care reform makes him even less popular among Democrats. –
• Earl Ofari Hutchinson: Obama Should Tear Up Matthew Hoh's Afghan War Resignation Letter –
• Tea Party Movement Returns, This Time with Much More Dangerous and Explicit Rhetoric –

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for October 26th through October 27th:

• An ever-evolving rationale –
• ‘Too big to fail’ is too dumb an idea to keep –
• How mistaken ideas helped to bring the economy down –
• At Least Pretend You Know What You’re Talking About, Lieberman. –
• The Public Option: Five Reasons Harry Reid Went For It –
• Intersex Awareness Day. –
• The long-sought, still-elusive GOP alternative –
• Will Texas Execute Another Innocent Man? The Case of Reginald Blanton –
• Robert Reich: Make a Ruckus –
• Goodbye GeoCities: 7 Retro Things We’ll Miss Forever –

I’ve referenced this story in a previous post, about a woman who was denied health insurance because (a) she was raped, (b) sought prophylactic HIV/AIDS treatment because it was unknown if her rapist wore a condom, and (c) sought therapy for the psychological problems resulting from being raped (in her case agoraphobia, which made her afraid to leave her home. Because of all the above, she became uninsurable.

The story itself is a jaw-dropper, especially when you consider that she’s an insurance agent. She knows something about the health insurance business, and she couldn’t find anyone who would sell her a policy. This interview with Anderson Cooper puts a face on the story

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Parker brought home an apple from the school fieldtrip to the orchard/pumpkin patch. Of course Dylan had to have one too.

They ate them while watching cartoons this evening, and I had to get a picture.

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for October 24th through October 26th:

• War Is a Hate Crime –
• The Public Necessity –
• Op-Ed Columnist: After Reform Passes –
• What the U.S. military can’t do –
• Elderly Couple "Royally Duped" By Health Care Company: Plan Wasn't Insurance At All –
• GOP: The Party of Rape, Torture, Hate Crimes and Death –
• Thank you, AHIP –
• Greene: Wall St., explain your big payday –
• 8 Reasons Fox Is Not a News Organization –
• Undoing Reagan –

Mike Elk couldn’t have been more right in his thinking about what Martin Luther King, Jr. would have thought of the Teabaggers, Birthers, etc. He would have seen that those faces that at first glance seem twisted in anger are really twisted in pain. He would recognize those faces as well as the source of the fear and anger distorting them.

It’s not about adopting their politics, compromising our own, or even tolerating their tactics. It’s about reclaiming “We” — The same “We” that Dr. King and civil rights workers sang about, and that I remember singing about myself in church, on the occasions when we sang “We Shall Overcome.”

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(Full disclosure: The group that organized the protest is one I work with on my job.)

This is something I wish I’d been a part of, and I hope they call me if they need an extra baritone next time. (It’s rare that my vocal training and my politics intersect.) Plus, the guy who got “punk’d” was none other than Bill McInturff, the guy who gave us Harry and Louise. (Not to mention killing health care reform and giving us another decade of pre-existing conditions, recissions, etc.)

Republican pollster Bill McInturff was the keynote speaker on the final day of the America’s Health Insurance Plans’s state issues conference on Friday morning.

But his speech on how the health care reform debate was playing among the public was interrupted before it even began. A group of protesters began aggressively cheering McInturff for the work he has done for AHIP (he’s a hired pollster for the private insurance lobby and, most infamously, was the force behind the ‘Harry and Louise’ ads in 1994)

McInturff, initially thinking that the cheering was legitimate, thanked the “AHIP officials” in the back of the room for giving him mental encouragement for his speech. He was not being paid for his appearance, he noted.

And then, the protesters — dressed in business attire to fit into the crowd — began singing. A relatively lengthy and harmonious rendition of “Tomorrow” from the musical Annie ensued, only with the chorus focused on government-run insurance. “The option, the option, we must have, the option… ” went the rendition, in reference to the public plan.

The lyrics are available after the jump, if you want to sing along.

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• Pencil iPhone Stand | Geeky Gadgets
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• DIY iPhone Landscape Frame – iPhone – Lifehacker
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• Simple business card iPhone / iPod stand
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• YouTube – The $100 iPhone+iPod Touch Stand
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• DIY compact iPhone stand – a set on Flickr
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• Apartment Therapy Unplugged | DIY: Make Free iPhone Stands with Recycled Packaging
  (tags: iphone diy apple howto)
• Apartment Therapy Unplugged | DIY iStand: Using Binder Clips To Make An iPhone Stand
  (tags: iphone diy howto)
• Recycled CD iPhone Dock | Geeky Gadgets
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• Dean and Ying's Blog – iPhone Paper Clip Stand
  (tags: iphone diy howto)

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for October 23rd through October 24th:

• What’s Killing Conservatism? –
• Balloon Boy’s Lesson: The New American Dream –
• PORTUGAL: Bible Is “A Catalogue of Cruelties,” Says Saramago –
• How Drug-Industry Lobbyists Got Their Way on Health Care –
• Government Paves the Way –

Crossposted from the day job.

If you’re tired of hearing about the recovery you can’t feel, while seeing headline after headline about how well Goldman Sachs is doing — or who’s getting big bonuses on Wall Street now, while the rest of the country is facing the grim reality of long-term joblessness — you might want to come to Chicago on October 25 – 27, where thousands of Americans will “come together on the streets of Chicago to demand a banking system that puts the American people first and a Congress that makes it happen!”

If you’re enraged that the same banksters we bailed out are doing everything in their power to stop much-needed consumer protection, and you’re ready for a showdown, come to Chicago and tell the banksters “No!”

Some time around the the news that 80% of Wall Street got bonuses last year, even as the consequences of their handiwork began trickling down to the real economy, I starting wondering “What’s Wrong With Wall Street?”.

• What would possess AIG, after being bailed-out to the tune of $85 billion by American taxpayers, to hand out millions in bonuses and spend $440,000 on a spa retreat for executives?
• Or what would possess John Thain to hand out nearly $4 billion in bonuses to Merrill Lynch executives, just as Merrill was being sold to Bank of America, and after taxpayers ponied up $20 billion to cover what would have been a losing bet for Bank of America?
• What would possess Thain to then demand a $10 billion bonus for himself? (Let’s not even discuss the $1.22 million redecorating job on his office. See it for yourself.)

Since then, I’ve come to the conclusion that it not because they’re “stupid,” as Rep. Barney Frank said. It’s not because “They don’t get it,” as Sen. Clair McCaskill said. These folks may have cooked up exotic financial instruments that even they didn’t understand well enough to keep from wrecking the economy, but the know they know what they’re doing. They “get it,” as far as the consequences are concerned. They just don’t care.

Actually, it’s bullies that kick sand your face. But that’s OK. Not all idiots are bullies, and not all bullies are idiots. But some idiots are bullies and some bullies are idiots. It’s when bullies and idiots team up — with the latter doing the former’s bidding — that we’re in real trouble. I’d say hold on to your lunch money, but they’ve already got it.

How better to describe the way we were herded, cajoled and threatened into coughing up a bailout package. Remember it had to be passed now, now, now? Or else something terrible would happen to us? As a result, we’re paying their bonuses.

If, as Sen. McCaskill said, congress had no idea that these firms would turn around hand out bonuses, buy jets, schedule junkets, etc. after receiving bailout funds, it’s because they didn’t know who they were dealing with anti-socials and narcissists will turnaround and do just that. Because it’s true that they don’t get it, and they don’t care.

…This may very well be the problem with the Wall Streeters and why they “don’t get it.” They have an utter lack of awareness about any connections to the rest of us, even when the rest of us are suffering an economic downturn brought on by the very sector that so richly rewards them even as many of us are hurting.

And when confronted with it, they blink with wonder and ask “What does that have to do with me?”

And when confronted with their outsize compensations juxtaposed against the painful economic reality most Americans are living with, they blink with wonder and say “But I deserve it.” And mean it.

And when confronted by the above, we give it to them.

Now, what does that say about what’s wrong with them? And what’s wrong with us?

Even as the Dow broke 10,000, we learned that the bailouts had revived both the banks and the bonuses, fueling a “new era of Wall Street wealth.” We know it didn’t create jobs, or much wealth beyond Wall Street, by the economic pain we still see in our communities, but somehow the 400 richest Americans got $30 billion richer in the midst of the downturn.

We’ve spend trillions to stretch a safety net beneath these, the wealthiest Americans. We were told disaster would ensue if we didn’t. We are doing so even as the the last thread of the social fabric that was the safety net for the rest of us, is about to snap.

According to official statistics, the unemployment rate in the United States is now 9.8 percent. But those statistics understate the severity of the jobs crisis. The official statistics do not include the 875,000 Americans who have given up looking for work, even though they want jobs. When these “marginally attached” workers and part-time workers are added to the officially unemployed, the result, according to another, broader government measure of unemployment known as “U-6,” is shocking. The United States has an unemployment rate of 17 percent.

And even this may understate the depth of the problem. By adding the 3.4 million Americans who want a job but have not looked for one in over a year, businessman, philanthropist and Obama advisor Leo Hindery Jr. infers an actual unemployment rate of 18.8 percent. In other words, nearly one in five Americans is unemployed or underemployed.

The sound you hear is the sound of the social fabric in America rotting and beginning to snap. Thanks to the unemployment insurance system adopted during the New Deal years, and thanks in part to the stimulus that the Obama administration and Congress passed earlier in the year, we do not have hordes of out-of-work Americans standing in line at soup kitchens and riding the rails from town to town. Even so, the invisible decay of America’s social order is just as real as the highly visible decay of abandoned McMansions in new developments that are turning into ghost towns across the continent.

Lending that the bailout was supposed to enable banks to do never really happened. The banks held on to it instead, preferring to use it to pay off their debts acquire other banks. Thus the that was supposed speed recovery didn’t happen. So, it couldn’t spur the creation of new jobs, or secure existing jobs.

The economy is now coming up short by 9.4 million jobs, including 6.9 million positions that employers have eliminated and 2.5 million jobs that were needed to absorb new workers but were never created.

And unemployment is on the rise, jumping from 9.4 percent in July to 9.7 percent in August. For several demographic groups, the unemployment rate is already in double digits, including men (10.1 percent), Hispanics (13 percent), African-Americans (15.1 percent) and teenagers (25.5 percent). In all, 14.9 million workers are now jobless, of which fully one-third have been out of work for more than six months, the highest level of long-term unemployment by far in any post World War II recession. There are now nearly six workers available for every job opening, up from 1.7 workers per opening when the recession began in December 2007.

Worse, hiring is not expected to rebound anytime soon, even if overall economic growth resumes this year. Employers are likely to fill any additional workloads by adding hours to truncated workweeks and ending worker furloughs. Wage gains, which are always repressed when jobs are scarce and unemployment is high, will be an even longer time coming as employers restore pay cuts put in place during the recession before giving raises.

Without job growth and pay raises, consumer spending will not revive substantially because alternative sources of spending power — home equity and credit cards — are largely tapped out. And without an upsurge in spending, businesses will not add workers, and so on, in a decidedly unvirtuous cycle.

But on Wall Street, times are almost back to where they were, as many of those whose actions and decisions led to the current crisis are rewarded. Goldman Sachs, for example, made huge profits from the subprime loan debacle, and even paid $60 million to settle a Massachusetts investigation into the firm’s role in the packaging of mortgage securities that drove the disaster. Now, Goldman is boasting record profits and paying record bonuses, despite the bailouts. Meanwhile, foreclosures are driving more homeowners into homeless shelters.

If you want to speak out against any of the above, and join your voice with others demanding accountability and commonsense financial reform NOW. Come to Chicago next week, and speak out!

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for October 21st through October 22nd:

• Sexual Assault As Preexisting Condition –
• How Drug-Industry Lobbyists Got Their Way on Health Care –
• An 83-Year-Old Republican Vet Talks About the Need for Equal Rights for Gays –
• The Village and its Idiots –
• How the Media Treat Murder –
• A Cruel and Unusual Waste of Money –
• Lose the Base, Lose the Election –
• Is this why Republicans can’t support health-care reform? –
• Innocent Until Proven Dead: Will Texas Execute Another Innocent Man? –
• Built to Trash –

Someone once suggested that all I ever blogged about was gay marriage. Well, I haven’t blogged about it in a while. And while I said earlier that I’d probably do my substantial blogging on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I can’t let pass up a chance to share this right now.

There’s a fight going on in Maine, about marriage equality — an an attempt to repeal a bill to legally recognize same-sex marriages that was passed and signed into law in May of this year.

Here, and 86-year-old WWII vet explains why he supports marriage equality. When asked that question at a polling place, he was incredulous for a moment and then responded: “What do you think our boys fought for at Omaha Beach?”

Watch the rest:

Support No on 1!

I thought perhaps I was gong crazy when I noticed that my iPhone still displayed several “bars” by the time I took my seat on the Metro yesterday evening. But the mobile browser was working even as the train pulled away from the station — now I know why.
 
Mobile service has expanded on Metro, to include my phone and several of the stops on my usual route.

Expanded cell phone service is now available in 20 of Metro’s busiest underground stations. As of 5:30 a.m. today, October 16, Metrorail riders are able to use three major cell phone providers in addition to the existing Verizon Wireless service to make calls from 20 station platforms. Eventually, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile services will be available from anywhere inside the stations.

“It’s important for Metro customers to realize that, initially, expanded cell phone service is only from the platforms of 20 of our busiest underground stations,” said Metro General Manager John Catoe. “Customers should expect to see continual improvement in their cell phone coverage and call quality as additional enhancements to the wireless network are made.”

“This will really help people communicate. I am glad we are at this point,” said Metro Board Chairman Jim Graham.

AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless have installed hardware at no cost to Metro that will allow Metrorail customers to make calls, send text messages or surf the Web from inside the following 20 stations: Ballston, Bethesda, Columbia Heights, Crystal City, Dupont Circle, Farragut North, Farragut West, Federal Triangle, Foggy Bottom-GWU, Friendship Heights, Gallery Pl-Chinatown, Judiciary Square, L’Enfant Plaza, McPherson Square, Metro Center, Pentagon, Pentagon City, Rosslyn, Smithsonian and Union Station.

During the next few weeks, the team of cell phone providers will continue to enhance the wireless network at these stations to provide callers with continuous coverage from the street into each station. Customers also will have broadband data network access.

Not that I make very many calls while on Metro, but it would be nice to be able to call home and say I’m going to be late, or to get a call from the hubby.

When I was up
You would always come round
But when I needed a friend
Oh, you could never be found

I got a hole
Where my heart used to be
I wouldn’t treat a dog, no, no
The way you treated me

Cher, “I Wouldn’t Treat a Dog the Way You Treated Me”

Hey, Sen. Landrieu. Here’s another American who just wants “free health care.” Of course, that depends on your perspective.

As far as his private insurance company is concerned — you know, that “private market” you’re so keen on protecting? –he’s a “dog” siphoning off their potential profits. but as far as Ian Pearl is concerned, a guy with muscular distrophy who just wants to live.

I am not a “dog.” That’s what health insurance executives called me because I have a disease. I’m also not a “trainwreck,” another term they used for members like me.

Soon after I was born in 1972, I was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy. By the time I was six years old, I was confined to a wheelchair. Doctors doubted I would survive, but I inherited my parents’ determination, and I proved them wrong.

His insurance company would eventually come to understand the strength of the Pearl family’s determination.

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I swear, if I could find an app like this, I’d buy it.

But, then again, if you read blogs on your iPhone — particularly progressive blogs — you kind of have this app already.

[From Now This is a Republican iPhone App : Dispatches from the Culture Wars]