From Political Animal:

• Mexico: “President Barack Obama is ‘deeply saddened and outraged’ at news of the murders of a federal employee and two relatives of workers at the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, an administration spokesman said.”
• Netanyahu is sorry U.S. officials are upset, but Israel isn’t changing course: “In the face of sharp American disapproval of an Israeli plan for an East Jerusalem building project, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu firmly rejected Monday any curbs on new Jewish settlements in and around Jerusalem.” (ed. This is a big deal. This is a very big deal.)
• And predictably, GOP leaders are attacking the Obama administration for being unhappy with Israel. (ed. the knee jerk reaction of conservatives is nauseating but what is worse is that democrats are apologizing for standing strong and asking Israel how are more settlements helpful?)
• Step one is done: the House Budget Committee voted 21 to 16 this afternoon to send the final health care reform package to the House Rules Committee. Two Blue Dogs — Texas’s Chet Edwards and Florida’s Allen Boyd — voted with Republicans. Both voted against reform in November.
• Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) kicks off his initiative to reform the way Wall Street does business. The White House is pleased. More surprisingly, Elizabeth Warren seems to like the plan, too.
• Good to see industrial production edge up.
• Eyeing an overhaul of No Child Left Behind.
• Student aid bill “hobbles forward.”
• Fantastic interview with Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens from Jeff Toobin. Of particular interest: Stevens will retire before the end of Obama’s first term.
• Fareed Zakaria on the success of Obama’s approach to Pakistan.
• After Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s (D-Ohio) votes against health care, against the hate crimes bill, against the Democratic budget, against the cap-and-trade bill, and against financial regulation, Nate Silver considers the liberal lawmaker’s value to the Democratic Party.
• Utah’s House Republican majority leader resigned in the wake of his under-age, hush-money, hot-tub scandal. Probably a good idea.
• Fact Checking the Sunday Shows.
• Harry Reid issued a statement today, noting that he still expects his wife to make a “full recovery.” (ed. I’m happy for Reid and his family. Both his wife and daughter were in a serious car crash on Thursday.)

From Glenn:

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about what seemed to be a glaring (and quite typical) scam perpetrated by Congressional Democrats:  all year long, they insisted that the White House and a majority of Democratic Senators vigorously supported a public option, but the only thing oh-so-unfortunately preventing its enactment was the filibuster:  sadly, we have 50 but not 60 votes for it, they insisted.  Democratic pundits used that claim to push for “filibuster reform,” arguing that if only majority rule were required in the Senate, then the noble Democrats would be able to deliver all sorts of wonderful progressive reforms that they were truly eager to enact but which the evil filibuster now prevents.  In response, advocates of the public option kept arguing that the public option could be accomplished by reconciliation — where only 50 votes, not 60, would be required — but Obama loyalists scorned that reconciliation proposal, insisting (at least before the Senate passed a bill with 60 votes) that using reconciliation was Unserious, naive, procedurally impossible, and politically disastrous.

But all those claims were put to the test — all those bluffs were called — once the White House decided that it had to use reconciliation to pass a final health care reform bill.  That meant that any changes to the Senate bill (which had passed with 60 votes) — including the addition of the public option — would only require 50 votes, which Democrats assured progressives all year long that they had.  Great news for the public option, right?  Wrong.  As soon as it actually became possible to pass it, the 50 votes magically vanished.  Senate Democrats (and the White House) were willing to pretend they supported a public option only as long as it was impossible to pass it.  Once reconciliation gave them the opportunity they claimed all year long they needed — a “majority rule” system — they began concocting ways to ensure that it lacked 50 votes.

All of that was bad enough, but now the scam is getting even more extreme, more transparent.  Faced with the dilemma of how they could possibly justify their year-long claimed support for the public option only now to fail to enact it, more and more Democratic Senators were pressured into signing a letter supporting the enactment of the public option through reconciliation; that number is now above 40, and is rapidly approaching 50.  In other words, there is a serious possibility that the Senate might enact a public option if there is a vote on it, because it’s very difficult for these Senators to vote “No” after pretending all year long — on the record — that they supported it.  In fact, The Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim yesterday wrote:  ”the votes appear to exist to include a public option. It’s only a matter of will.” (more…)

From NPR:

Nearly the whole financial system bought into subprime mortgages and the securities that were backed by them — and amounted to bundles of bad debt.

In his new book, The Big Short, Michael Lewis writes about people who didn’t buy in. In fact, they bet against the colossal tower of debt that Wall Street built. They shorted it — and they profited from its eventual collapse.

For Lewis, The Big Short is his return to the scene of the crime. Twenty years ago, he wrote about his experience working as a young bond trader at Salomon Brothers. Liar’s Poker was an astonishing tale of kids fresh out of Ivy League schools making huge decisions about other people’s money with no qualifications for doing so.

By the time of the financial crisis, the generation he wrote about in Liar’s Poker was established Wall Streeters, typically up to their eyeballs in mortgage-backed securities.

Part 2 of his interview with 60 minutes is below:

It is the Ides of March. You should beware.

Here is an explanation of what the Term Ides of March means.

(Above–The Death of Caesar. This work was painted in 1798 by Vincenzo Camuccini.)

What books can you read to learn about the events surrounding the rise of Julius Caesar and the fall of the Roman Republic?

I can suggest three.

A classic is The Roman Revolution by Sir Ronald Syme. This book was published in 1939 and has stood the test of time.

A more recent title is Rubicon–The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland. This book was published in 2003.

Rubicon is a bit more modern in style and worthwhile to read. Though the Syme book remains the standard by which histories of the last years of the Roman Republic and the rise of Augustus are measured.

A quality biography is Caesar–Life Of A Colossus by Adam Goldsworthy.  This book was published in 2006.

Though these events may have been long in the past, the impact of the rise of Caesar and the history of Rome is still felt today.

Here is a comprehensive timeline of Ancient Roman history.

Here are some essays Ancient Rome from the BBC.

(Below—Whoopee! It is Cleopatra and Caesar as painted by Jean-Leon Gerome in 1866.)

From 538:

Gallup did something pretty cool in connection with their latest health care survey, which was to provide the verbatim responses (.xls) of the rationales given by people who would tell their Congressman to vote for or against the current health care bills, respectively.

I ran the responses through Wordle, a word-cloud generating tool, omitting certain words that were parts of speech or were otherwise nongermane.

Here are the words that were used most frequently by the 45 percent of the country who would tell their Congressman to vote for the health care bill:

And here are the words used most commonly by the 48 percent of the country who would tell their Congressman to vote against it:

In some sense, this is a very old-fashioned debate about the proper role of government. The message that the pro-reform voters have taken away comes through loudly and clearly: ‘PEOPLE … NEED … INSURANCE’, whereas concerns among the anti’s boil down to ‘GOVERNMENT’ and ‘COST’.

BILL MOYERS: But given that, why have the insurance companies, health insurance companies been fighting reform so hard?

MARCIA ANGELL: Oh, they haven’t fought it very hard, Bill. They really haven’t fought it very hard. What they’re fighting for is the individual mandate. And if they get that mandate, if everyone does have to buy their commercial products, then they’re going to be extremely happy with it.

BILL MOYERS: But this is all about politics now. It’s not about pure health care reform. So given that reality, what would you have the President do?

MARCIA ANGELL: Well, I think you really do have to separate the policy analysis from the political analysis and I’m looking at it as policy. And it fails as policy. Moreover, a lot of people say, “Let’s hold our nose and pass it, because it’s a step in the right direction.” And I say it’s a step in the wrong direction.

You’re right. Politics is different and there are a lot of people who say, “Look, it’s a terrible bill. Even a step in the wrong direction as policy goes. But we need to get Obama elected again and we need to continue with the Democratic majority in Congress. And so we need to give Obama and the Democrats a win. If we don’t, the Republicans will come in and take over Congress in the fall, and then the White House in 2012. But the problem with a political analysis is sometimes you’re right and sometimes you’re wrong. And Democrats and particularly liberals have a history of outsmarting themselves.

And I’m not so sure that if this bill goes down, it’s going to make it any harder for them politically. So I think it’s difficult times for the President and for the Democrats. But if you look at it as a matter of policy, the President’s absolutely right that the status quo is awful. If we do nothing, costs will continue to go up. People will continue to lose their coverage. Employers are dropping health benefits. Things will get very bad. The issue is will this bill make them better or worse? And I believe it will make it worse.

Currently, I would hold my nose and vote for this bill. I would work through the progressive movement to try to change the dynamics in Congress. Until the dynamics are changed, I don’t think we can get a better bill through Congress.

Representative Eric Cantor was on Meet the Press last Sunday. He had a few things to say about Medicaid. “The problem is with the president’s bill, it’s about expanding Medicaid. No one wants to, to go onto Medicaid. That’s why physicians in Florida and other states are leaving Medicaid in droves because of the imperfect reimbursement structure.” What I truly love about this statement is that Representative Cantor pretends that the reimbursement structure is because of something else or someone else. Republicans have been cutting physician reimbursement since the mid-1980s. Democrats jumped on the bandwagon sometime later. So it’s completely disingenuous for him to say the problem with the bill is that we are cutting physician reimbursement. He has the power to change that.

I’m really not going to spend much time talking about Eric Massa, because he is more of a side bar or distraction to real health care reform. He is the car crash on the side of the road that everybody stops to look at. You can read more about his craziness — here and here. From a healthcare standpoint, former Representative Massa stated that the Democratic leadership were pushing him out because he voted no against health-care reform. This seems to be completely false with no evidence to support it.

Representative Alan Grayson introduced a bill in the House supporting the public option. The bill basically allows the public to buy into Medicare at the existing cost of Medicare. This would give Americans the choice of buying into Medicare or simply buying private insurance. Personally, I think this is a good idea. It gives Americans options, but it is not the final solution.

Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent from Vermont) stated on Thursday that he was prepared to introduce an amendment introducing the public option into the Senate bill.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that there will not be a public option in the final bill. This is the politics of reform. This is the House and the Senate trying to get a complex piece of legislation passed. There’s been a lot of reporting that the House does not trust the Senate. The Senate has made promises in the past and yet somehow it’s not been able to pass the legislation promised.

Since Rachel Maddow spent a good deal of her show talking about it, I figured I should talk a little bit about Representative Bart Stupak. Mister Stupak is a Democratic representative from Michigan who has tried single handedly to hold up the health-care legislation because of its abortion language. Rachel does a great job trying to figure out who these 12 congressmen are who agree with it and stand with Bart Stupak. It appears that the 12 congressmen may be only three or four. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer stated unequivocally that he was not negotiating with Bart Stupak. It appears that he has neither enough congressmen nor enough votes to hold up legislation.

I saved one of the best statements of the week for last. Former Governor Mitt Romney decided that he would let us know that it is ridiculous that people die without healthcare. He said, “Look, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to have millions and millions of people who have no health insurance and yet who can go to the emergency room and get entirely free care for which they have no responsibility, particularly if they are people who have sufficient means to pay their own way.” This is not the first time a Republican has said that anybody can go to emerge room and get excellent care. This is such a crock of garbage. If you have high blood pressure, the best way to avoid complications of that blood pressure is not to go to the emergency room but instead to go to your family doctor. This is how you keep costs down. Regular checkups. Management by the same doctor over a prolonged period of time. One of the great ways to drive costs up is to wait to have a complication then go to the emergency room.

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I would encourage everybody to take a look at HR 676. This bill was introduced by John Conyers months ago. He introduces that almost every legislative session. He’s done so for more than 10 years. This is the United States national healthcare act. This is the single-payer bill.

Artist: Portrait
Tune: Honey Dip

Matt Damon’s latest movie, Green Zone, is an entertaining tale about the beginning of the Iraq war. Unfortunately, the commercials sell this as another Bourne Supremacy movie. It is not. Those of us who’ve kept up with the minute details of how we got into the war and how the Bush administration sold the war may be disappointed because all of the names are changed. The details are compressed. Blame is not directly placed on any one individual (I place it on Cheney). Nonetheless, I found this to be an extremely enjoyable movie.

Matt Damon plays a soldier whose job it is to find weapons of mass destruction. The movie picks up as Damon and his crew are entering the third site that he has searched. They find nothing. Damon begins to question the intelligence. As expected, there are forces for good and forces for evil. The Iraqis in the movie are somewhat cliché-ish.

If you remember that this is a movie made in Hollywood and don’t dwell on the politics too hard, the movie is fun and action-packed. It brings up again why we went to war. There are several points in the movie in which the lines between right and wrong are somewhat or completely blurred. Nonetheless, I found this a blast (pun intended) of a movie. It does not fix our political situation or the one in Iraq. Enjoy!

From HuffPo:

New Rule: Let’s not fire the teachers when students don’t learn – let’s fire the parents. Last week President Obama defended the firing of every single teacher in a struggling high school in a poor Rhode Island neighborhood. And the kids were outraged. They said, “Why blame our teachers?” and “Who’s President Obama?” I think it was Whitney Houston who said, “I believe that children are our future – teach them well and let them lead the way.” And that’s the last sound piece of educational advice this country has gotten – from a crack head in the ’80’s.

Yes, America has found its new boogeyman to blame for our crumbling educational system. It’s just too easy to blame the teachers, what with their cushy teachers’ lounges, their fat-cat salaries, and their absolute authority in deciding who gets a hall pass. We all remember high school – canning the entire faculty is a nationwide revenge fantasy. Take that, Mrs. Crabtree! And guess what? We’re chewing gum and no, we didn’t bring enough for everybody.

But isn’t it convenient that once again it turns out that the problem isn’t us, and the fix is something that doesn’t require us to change our behavior or spend any money. It’s so simple: Fire the bad teachers, hire good ones from some undisclosed location, and hey, while we’re at it let’s cut taxes more. It’s the kind of comprehensive educational solution that could only come from a completely ignorant people. (more…)

Artist: Taj Mahal
Tune: Queen Bee

From TP:

The Texas Board of Education has been meeting this week to revise its social studies curriculum. During the past three days, “the board’s far-right faction wielded their power to shape lessons on the civil rights movement, the U.S. free enterprise system and hundreds of other topics”:

– To avoid exposing students to “transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else,” the Board struck the curriculum’s reference to “sex and gender as social constructs.”

– The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”

– The Board refused to require that “students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others.”

– The Board struck the word “democratic” from the description of the U.S. government, instead terming it a “constitutional republic.”

As the nation’s second-largest textbook market, Texas has enormous leverage over publishers, who often “craft their standard textbooks based on the specs of the biggest buyers.” Indeed, as The Washington Monthly has reported, “when it comes to textbooks, what happens in Texas rarely stays in Texas.”

Today at 5 pm EST, I’ll have Heidi Shierholz from the Economic Policy Institute. I will also have Andy Coates from Physicians for a National Healthcare Program. This is going to be a GREAT show. Now, this is truly Progressive Radio.

In a completely different story, Utah House Majority Leader Kevin Garn appears to have had an interesting incident 25 years ago which has come back to haunt him. It appears that he got together with a woman whom he described as “nearly half [his] age” got together in a hot tub. Of course, they were naked. The House Majority Leader was 28 years old at the time. Now, after a hard day’s work, sitting around in the hot tub can be perfectly relaxing. If you happen to have a hot tub in your backyard and it is appropriately secluded, being naked is your prerogative. On the other hand, being in a hot tub with a girl who was 15 years old should cause a 28-year-old man to get out of the hot tub and say “see you later.”

Garn released a statement which contain the following: “Shortly thereafter, my wife and I met with her, and at her demand, I paid her $150,000. While this payment felt like extortion, I also felt like I should take her word that the money would help her heal. She agreed to keep this 25-year-old incident confidential. Now that this issue is coming up again, it is apparent to me that this payment was also a mistake.” Wait a minute. Earlier in the statement, Garn stated, “although we did not have any sexual contact, it was clearly inappropriate, it was my fault.” I don’t understand. You and a woman are in a hot tub and neither of you have any clothes on. And you say there was no sexual contact? Seriously? What were you paying $150,000 for if there was no sexual contact? This sounds absolutely ludicrous.

Now, here’s the really crazy part of the story. Utah’s leading paper, the Desert News, had this story. They decided not to print the story because Kevin Garn was in the middle of a primary. They did not want to affect the outcome. Isn’t that nice of them? It turned out that Garn lost the primary and dropped out of politics. So the newspaper sat on the story for years. Why? This whole thing is a bunch of craziness.

Last week, we had the rare opportunity to see Republicans and Democrats sit down and discuss a single issue. For over seven hours, we got to see our political leaders argue over healthcare. Yes, there was some political posturing on both sides but one thing should be clear to all Americans. The Democrats have a plan and a passion for health-care reform. Republicans had no plan, but they definitely have passion for stopping health-care reform. From Republican Minority Whip Eric Cantor to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, not one Republican put together a thoughtful argument that would control the escalating healthcare costs, cover the 45 million people who live in the United States without health insurance, nor a plan that can be taken from Maine to Florida to California.

Democrats, for all of our passion, where is our spine? Democrats are causing me to reach for my Pepto-Bismol especially, those who cannot stand up for healthcare reform.People who follow politics, as I do, have seen for over a year that it is going to be nearly impossible to get 60 votes in the Senate to stop debate on healthcare reform. Therefore, the Senate would need to go to reconciliation to pass health care reform. I talked about this on my radio show back in February of 2009. This summer, Senator Jay Rockefeller made an impassioned speech for the public option. He said it was morally right. It was only a couple weeks ago he said that he did not believe that we should use reconciliation to get health-care reform passed. What? Didn’t he say it was morally right? Senator Rockefeller was 100% correct when he said this was a moral issue. We need to get health-care reform passed.

Meet 11-year-old Marcelas Owens. Watch the video:

I would urge you not to fall for the same old clichés about our government. Government can do this right. We have to get this right. This is as important as landing on Normandy beaches on D-Day. If we want to have money for defense, homeland security, bridges and roads, education and green energy we have to control costs of health care now. Economists have estimated that health care will eat up 25% of our gross national product in 20 years if we don’t do something.

Finally, I’ve been listening to these talking heads on the Internet telling me that Democrats, liberals and progressives are not energized. Someone even suggested that we are depressed. Depressed? From what? I’m not sure who thought electing Barack Obama would be a panacea. I know that I’ve talked about the need for progressives to push harder with a Democratic Congress. We’ve seen Democrats in the past waiver and succumb to the whims of Republicans. We knew this would happen. Deep in our hearts, we knew this was going to be a huge undertaking. Just look at what we’re trying to accomplish – reversing 30 years of Republican rule and ideology (Clinton was the only bright spot). We are trying to reverse 30 years of giveaways to major corporations. We’re trying to put the American citizen ahead of big business. Even Democrats have bought into the ideology that the markets could fix everything. This is an idea that’s been pushed by the Republicans for decades. We have a lot of work to do. President Barack Obama has told us that this is not going to be easy. So, it is time for us to be fired up. Once we get health-care reform passed, we still have more work to do – create a green economy, create millions of green jobs, fix the Patriot Act and concentrate on lasting financial reform that will work for all Americans. We need to write and call our legislators. We need for them to support health-care reform. It is time to get busy.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

From C&L:

The Rachel Maddow Show did some digging and it appears that Bart Stupak may not actually have all the votes he’s claiming he has to stop the health care bill from being passed in the House. As Rachel also notes, since Stupak’s requests for changes to the bill are either impossible to get passed under reconciliation or just based on lies about what’s even in the bill, it’s pretty obvious that he’s just doing his best to get himself on the television for some face time so he can demagogue the abortion issue and it has nothing to do with the health care debate.

Bart Stupak might come to regret that if Rachel doesn’t let up on the reporting she has done on the C-Street House and The Family. And as Susie noted, he’s now got himself a primary challenger.

You can Send The Democrats A Message They Can Understand and make a donation at Blue America to help Bart Stupak’s challenger Connie Saltonstall among others.

This is the same line of questioning that the deniers are using. Yet, the same scientific methods that convinced us that oxygen exists have been used to prove climate change secondary to man’s burning of fossil fuels.

Climate change. Conservatives have taken this term and run with it. They played on the fact that most Americans know a little bit of science, but not much. Most of us remember that there were many ice ages. The earth warmed iand the ice receded. The earth cooled down and the ice proceeded over the large continents. So, every time a scientist mentions climate change, conservatives point to this natural cycle. They then ask, “how do we know that the warming trend that we’re seeing now is not part of this natural cycle?” Before I get to this answer, let me add one other thing. One of the final arguments that deniers use is that the world is so big and you and I are pretty small compared to the size of the world. How can we, as God-fearing little human beings, have an impact on this great big world of ours? This is probably the deniers’ weakest and simplest arguments. There are multiple ways to refute this argument. Let me just say that currently scientists have tested the air in California and have detected pollutants that were generated, beyond a shadow of a doubt, in China. Therefore, what happens in one part of the world can have an impact on people thousands of miles away.

How can climatologists point to some of the events that are happening now as evidence of climate change secondary to man’s burning fossil fuels? Well, thankfully, I don’t have to come up with an experiment off the top of my head. Smart people, scientists, have done this for us. There are a few places in the world that don’t change all that much. As a matter fact, they haven’t changed for thousands of years. One place would be Antarctica the other would be Greenland. In these two places, it gets extremely cold. The ice in some places is several miles thick. NASA explains it like this:

Throughout each year, layers of snow fall over the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. Each layer of snow is different in chemistry and texture, summer snow differing from winter snow. Summer brings 24 hours of sunlight to the polar regions, and the top layer of the snow changes in texture—not melting exactly, but changing enough to be different from the snow it covers. The season turns cold and dark again, and more snow falls, forming the next layers of snow. Each layer gives scientists a treasure trove of information about the climate each year. Like marine sediment cores, an ice core provides a vertical timeline of past climates stored in ice sheets and mountain glaciers.

The Obama administration is making a new effort to protect barrier islands and other coastal areas in the Gulf of Mexico area. Mississippi and Louisiana seem to be a specific focus of this program.

(Above–A picture of Ship Island off the Mississippi coast. In the background you see Fort Massachusetts. The federal government controlled the island in the Civil war and used the island as a prison for Confederate soldiers. Black combat units were also trained on Ship Island. Here are facts about Ship Island.)

From the Associated Press article on the Obama Gulf Coast effort—

“Since the 1930s, the Mississippi River delta has been slowly falling apart and eroding due to levee construction, oil drilling hurricane damage and other factors. Louisiana has lost about 2,100 square miles of coast and loses about 25 square miles a year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey…With sea levels on the rise due to global warming, experts warn that much of south Louisiana and Mississippi are at risk of being lost for good.”

Here is the full story.

This sure is interesting. You’d think that the good folks down in Mississippi  and Louisiana might oppose federal dollars to help remedy the effects of the great scam of global warming.

Here is a recent New York Times story about how people who think evolution is not real, are now adding global warming to their list of hoaxes.

I’m out of patience with this stuff. People are free to believe what they wish. Freedom of religion is a principle our nation is founded upon. But schools and public debates are places for facts. They are not places for ideologically-driven lies.

Maybe a referendum should be held in Mississippi and Louisiana to be sure that folks in these places believe in global warming. We don’t want to be wasting taxpayer dollars.

Here is a Times of London story about the possible impact of global warming on people and animal life across the globe.

Here is more from the Associated Press story—

“Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said the report “clearly demonstrates a positive shift in direction, but must be coupled with aggressive action on the ground — turning dirt. There is no time for delay.”

You are reading this correctly—Republican Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana wants some swift federal action to help address a problem in his state.

Here is how Governor Jindal felt about federal money last year–

“Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal announced Friday that he will decline stimulus money specifically targeted at expanding state unemployment insurance coverage, becoming the first state executive to officially refuse any part of the federal government’s payout to states.”

I see.

Here is the White House press release about this federal help that the people of Mississippi and Louisiana will no doubt be glad to take.

From the release–

“Ultimately, successful implementation of the shared vision depends on access to the best available science in a form that is useful for management decisions.  The Working Group will assess current capacities and identify gaps in science so the Federal-State vision will be implemented based on the best information.”

I put the term “best available science” in bold so that nobody would miss what is being said. The Feds are coming down South to cram global warming down the throats of the people. Time for a tea party!

Is Republican Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi going to tolerate this federal intrusion?

From Think Progress, here is a portion of Mr. Barbour’s record on the environment from when he was a corporate lobbyist–

“Back at his lobbying firm in early 2001, Barbour was hired “to help apply pressure in all the right places.” He convinced President Bush to break his campaign promise to reduce global warming pollution from power plants. Barbour’s memo “Bush-Cheney Energy Policy & CO2” belittled global warming as a “radical fringe issue,” and called the regulation of carbon dioxide pollution “eco-extremism.” He urged the President Bush to avoid making decisions informed by science, which would “trump good energy policy, which the country has lacked for eight years.”

Here is the full report on Mr. Barbour’s record on the environment.

The federal government has dominion over the states. In this case, the federal government is going to provide help for Mississippi and Louisiana no matter if they like it or not.

(Below–Fort Livingston on Grand Terre Island off the coast of Louisiana. This fort, named after a political figure from New York, was built by the federal government and fell back into federal hands after the fall of New Orleans in the Civil war. Here are some facts about Grand Terre Island.)

The public option is been tossed around like a medicine ball. In junior high school, we were asked to throw a medicine ball in order to build up muscle strength and coordination. Every other throw, the ball was dropped, kicked and then picked up and thrown again. This is exactly what has happened with the public option. What was once a robust counterweight to private health insurance has turned into something that states can opt in or opt out of, depending upon the whims of their legislature. Oh, and it seems that opposing healthcare is a great way to get on TV and increase your image/status… as in the case of Bart Stupak.

I have stated both on my radio show and on this blog that health-care reform must include something that is cost-effective, portable and increases access to healthcare. Currently, we are looking at a health-care bill that seems to do none of this. Many progressives have decided that they cannot support this bill. They want something else done. I understand the sentiment. I find this whole process extremely frustrating. Democrats seem to be completely unable to stick to their principles and stand up for the middle class. It seems like the only difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Democrats know what is right but can’t do it. Republicans have no idea what is right and won’t do it. BTW, President Barack Obama is a leader-come-lately. Look, I love this man, but I’m telling the truth. Where was he in the middle of the heat of the summer when healthcare was taking the big hits? He needed to be out of front stating that we HAD to have a robust public option. Alas, he wasn’t there.

Here’s my problem. Washington seems to be controlled by big business. Lobbyists from K St. seem to surround the Capital like locusts. If we scrapped the health-care bill and start all over, how are we going to come up with a different outcome? We’re going to have the same politicians, the same White House and the same lobbyists. As a matter of fact, the lobbyists will be better armed to combat arguments they’ve already heard. They will probably be armed with more money. I’m afraid that starting over will leave us with a bill that’s even worse than what we’re looking at now — if that is possible.

We’re spending $2.4 trillion on health care every year (we spent that much in 2008). Isn’t that enough money? Why do we need to pay any more? Everyone agrees that insurance does not add any value to healthcare. Why is Washington coddling the insurance companies? The whole reason for their existence is not to improve health care, to help doctors deliver better care or to help increase access to doctors by patients. Instead, their whole deal is to simply make money. They make money by not paying claims.

$2.4 trillion is enough money to take care of all 300 million Americans. Combine Medicare and Medicaid and SCHiP and all of the state-run programs into one program. Medicare for All! The government will set up a system to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies and medical device/product manufacturers. Premiums are paid out of our taxes in a graduated fashion. The more you make, the more you pay. Let’s extend patent protection for pharmaceutical companies by 2-5 years. Since the government is negotiating drug prices, pharmaceutical companies can recoup some of their losses through this mechanism. Doctors will be awarded for opening early and staying open late and on the weekends. This way, Americans can go to their physicians without having to take off from work. This increases access. Anyway, Medicare for All, at least for now, is a pipe dream. Right now, I’m good to try to work with my congressional representatives to try to get the best bill possible.

Billy Preston was right. Nothing from Nothing leaves nothing. The Senate is trying to sell us nothing and tell us it is something. They need to do better.

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From Political Animal:

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