A #reality-community second-term plea for #Obamiacs (updated)

Updated, Dec. 10: Given that the Washington rumor mill, as reported here by Joan Walsh, says Obama's willing to raise the Medicare eligibility age as part of avoiding the fiscal cliff, how much will diehard Obamiacs continue to defend him? 

There are so many things wrong with raising the eligibility age that I still can’t believe it’s under consideration. That’s not doubting Klein; it’s just a failure on my part to imagine that data-driven leaders — Republican or Democrat — would propose it. It doesn’t save money; it’s a shell game that just pushes costs around. While it’s possible that lower-income 65 and 66 year olds would be eligible for Obamacare, that means we’d be subsidizing them anyway. Besides there’s no guarantee such subsidies will exist: Republican governors are refusing to expand Medicaid or create the insurance exchanges to make it possible. Even Obama’s new GOP BFF, Chris Christie, says he won’t do it in the blue state of New Jersey. Remember, too, that Obamacare works through the private insurance industry, which has at least five times the administrative costs of Medicare. 

That's the problem in a nutshell. Lower-income seniors at the mercy of insurers (while they/we can't be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, age as a general factor is a different story). 

Frankly, I think Walsh is spot on ... on a hint she has near the end of the column — this could be the opening move to a discussion of privatizing Medicare entirely, even though she thinks this is just a trial balloon.

That said, Joan, what if the GOP says, "OK, we love it!" Then, will the public think it's now his fault, not the GOP's, if we go over an alleged fiscal cliff? There's other signs, such as his talk about how much Latinos will lose, and making such presentations to Latino groups, that Obama may be, if not quite blinking yet, getting kind of twitchy.

Also, "shock me" that Jon Chait thinks this is a good idea. He's got a track record as a neoliberal fellator of Obama. Further "shock me" that he describes it as "a bone to throw the right," rather than "throwing poorer senior citizens under the bus."

The reality? The Washington Post, of all "insiders," actually has a good answer to Lindsay Graham (and Chait, and Obama). While Medicare is in worse shape than Social Security, it's not going bankrupt now, or even 20 years from now. And, even then, only the hospital bills portion of Medicare faces any near-term problems.

Indeed, the Medicare Part A fund from its inception has been on the brink of going “bankrupt.” The Congressional Research Service, in a report titled “Medicare: History of Insolvency Projections,” shows that in 1970 it was due to go “bankrupt” in 1972.

So, these worries have been around for decades. Or, these "worries."

And now, with Obama looking to a second term, and with an ongoing Democratic majority in the Senate, but less than 60 votes, and a GOP majority remaining in the House, talk is turning to what Dear Leader plans for a second-term agenda, and how likely it is to succeed, beyond, but including, "fiscal cliff" negotations.

In light of his first-term agenda, and how much he did or did not get past Congress, of course, he struggled with GOP obstructionism.

However, while that’s the greater part of the tale, it’s not all of it.

He also struggled with himself, including an unrealistic, arguably even self-delusional, belief in himself and the magical, mystical, messianic (doorknob, I love alliteration) healing powers of himself, his persona, and his voice.

Well, not only was the GOP not going to listen, it made that clear early on.

But, again, that’s not all the tale, just the majority of it.

The fact is, that in general, and specifically on the magical, mystical, messianic healing powers of himself, his persona, and his voice, Barack Obama simply is not all that he or true-blue Obamiac disciples crack him(self) up to be. Period. End of story.

So, I’d like at least a few Obamiac Democrats to admit that at least part of his problems with the GOP in the last four years have been self-inflicted due to the combination of A: Lacking testicles and/or backbone and B: Believing too much in the power of his own allegedly magical voice. Bonus points for admitting nothing major is likely to change on his side as well as on the GOP side in the next four years. C'mon, you science-based/reality-community Obamiacs, time for you, too, to put your money or your Facebook postings where your beliefs are.

Dear Leader isn’t likely to change his second-term stripes. What about you?

Oh, and while you’re at it, would you please have a small bit of admission that he benefited, ironically considering who coined the phrase, from the “soft bigotry of low expectations” in following George W. Bush?

Jonathan Chait, effing moron, fellates Dear Leader

The likes of Jonathan Chait is why I stopped reading The New Republic more than a decade ago. Now, in defense of Dear Leader against critics from his left like Glenn Greenwald and me, he's taken his asshattery to the pages of the New York Times.

First, defending Obama's $800B stimulus by the claim that Nancy Pelosi offered a smaller $500B one earlier? If that's rigorous reasoning, it's no wonder he's still stuck at TNR as a neocon shill for Marty Peretz. First, Pelosi's not THAT liberal herself. Second, that was only her initial offer. Third, the linkage between her position and Obama's was small.

Second, Chait ignores that Rahm Emanuel, hired by Dear Leader, wanted the stimulus to come in under $1 trillion. As part of this Chait claims "everybody who matters" told Obama to scale this back; he has that quote in quote marks in his column without any attribution, meaning it's just a scare quote.

Third, Chait ignores that Obama sold out national healthcare to insurance companies et al.

Fourth, Chait ignores that Obama continues to sell himself out to banksters on mortgage fraud, Friday's lawsuit notwithstanding.

Fifth, he claims that Bush got much of what got done in his first term by using the budget reconciliation process, ignoring that Obama could have used that on some of his initiatives ... including the health care bill that he eventually passed.

Sixth, he ignores that Obama was both naive enough and dumb enough to not include a debt ceiling deal with Republicans last December as part of extending the Bush Obama tax cuts, or was even worse than naive and dumb.

Seventh, he ignores Obama's recent backtracking on environmental issues, compounded by the fact that many of us who aren't "Gang Green" enviros knew that Kenny Boy Salazar was weak tea as his choice for Interior Secretary from the day Obama nominated him.

But, that's all small potatoes compared to what Chait really overlooks.

And that is that, way back in 2003, we had clear evidence Obama wasn't a liberal, followed by additional evidence back in 2006. And that he's this way because much of the Democratic Party (Pelosi included) is this way.

Beyond being a shill for Marty Peretz, Chait is a D.C. Villager who illustrates the moral bankruptcy of more and more of our duopoly.

On the stuff linked immediately above, he knows most of it; certainly the second and third links because Ken Silverstein lived in the Village, though he certainly wasn't of it. So Chait doesn't even have the excuse of plausible deniability.

The time for emails to Obama is long gone

First, on issues like Social Security and Medicare, he is NOT Bill Clinton "triangulating" in the mid-1990s. He actually wants these cuts. That's one reason he has squeezed House Democrats out of the picture. (Take note, David Brookses of the world who critique his leadership style.)

More proof that he wants these cuts? Remember, the "Catfood Commission" was HIS commission and he has never disavowed its recommendations. Second, his knifing in the back single-payer national health care.

The health care issue also shows not just that Obama lied when he talked about how "open" his administration would be, but the degree of brazenness with which he lied.

And, yet, many people think that clicking a link from MoveOn will magically inspire Obama to "save Social Security."

Wrong.

Get it through your thick heads, people who still have Obama love affairs, bromances, unreturned infatuations. Grover Cleveland Obama doesn't care how you feel, unless you finally get a clue and tell him you're voting Green.

And, that you make that a reality, not just an idle threat.

The only things you accomplish by clicking a MoveOn link are encouraging online slacktivism and encouraging MoveOn to try to hit you up for money.

Branding Barack Obama — and his abused "lovers"

Naomi Klein, a while back, reflected on the 10th anniversary of her book "No Logo," The Guardian excerpts here her reflections.

In this, she gets much more into "branding" in politics, noting W. was decent at it, but that Barack Obama makes every predecessor of his look like a piker in terms of modern branding, both in techniques, and degree of use.

This, from the excerpt, sounds all too true and all too depressing. Although I didn't have a label for what I was "seeing through" by the end of 2007, it's clear in hindsight, and with a bit of help from Klein, that I was seeing through his branding, and finding the hollowed-out non-core of neoliberalism inside.

But, she also sounds like an abused woman returning to the man who just slapped, or even punched, her in the face:

Personally, none of this makes me feel betrayed by Barack Obama. Rather I have a familiar ambivalence, the way I used to feel when brands like Nike and Apple started using revolutionary imagery in their transcendental branding campaigns. All of their high-priced market research had found a longing in people for something more than shopping – for social change, for public space, for greater equality and diversity. Of course the brands tried to exploit that longing to sell lattes and laptops. Yet it seemed to me that we on the left owed the marketers a debt of gratitude for all this: our ideas weren't as passé as we had been told. And since the brands couldn't fulfill the deep desires they were awakening, social movements had a new impetus to try.

To me, without the actual violence, of course, that sounds exactly like the psychology of an abused lover, claiming they're not betrayed, that you have to look on the bright side, that it's not really that bad, etc.

It's amazing how someone like Klein can be so insightful and then ... so willfully self-blinded.

Christians? You got an Obamacare loophole — if you want it

You don't have to have health insurance coverage if you sign up for a dubious alternative called a health sharing program.

How dubious? This dubious:

Although they have procedures for dealing with coverage disputes, they're largely unregulated by state insurance departments that oversee private carriers.

And this dubious:

If Medi-Share is an insurance alternative, its guidelines carry an eye-catching disclaimer:

"The payment of your medical bills through Medi-Share or otherwise is not guaranteed in any fashion." Members remain solely responsible for payment.

Indeed, the main part of the story, the hook, is about Medi-Share refusing to pay for brain tumor surgery, and even eventually winning an arbitrator's decision on the matter based on its claimed inability to pay.

And this dubious, in terms of Christian brotherly love:

Nevada pastor Michael Rowden sued Medi-Share over its refusal to pay for treatment of a heart condition. He eventually reached a settlement. "I was actually embarrassed to be associated with them," he said.

So, how does it "work," using that word theoretically? Here's how:
Every month, they pay a fixed "share" to cover the medical expenses of members in need. The cost usually is less than private insurance, but it's not tax deductible. Members use a network of medical providers.
OK, so .... being a hypothetical devil's advocate here ...

What if Muslims, especially based on their history of nonbank lending networks and such, started something similar and got an exemption from Obamacare?

Conservatives would go apeshit. They would probably claim the exemption was because Obama was indeed a Muslim himself. The practice would be touted as proof of sharia law in America.

And, tell me again, how Christians are being "persecuted"?

That said, I seriously expect about the same number of Christians to sign up for this as who drive without auto insurance or who own homes without insurance (or without lightning rods).

The sad part, per my "persecution" crack, is the pandering involved by Members of Congress (and, indirectly, the "Muslim" Obama Administration). That said, by not supporting a single-payer system, or at least making it an option, Team Obama opened itself up to loopholes like that. And, because the Obama Administration has trumped BushCo on faith-based initiative spending and indulgence, I bet Preznit Kumbaya actually isn't at all saddened by the existence of this loophole.

Spare me the "Obama CAN'T get mad" because ...

He'd be seen as an angry black man. Unfortunately, the NYT let that craptacular idea run in its Sunday op-eds.

Ismael Reed needs to read the new book by WaPost columnist Eugene Robinson, "DisIntegration."

Beyond Obama birthers to DNAers

Oy. The real purpose of these folks isn't to find Obama's alleged actual father, it's to humiliate him. The Malcolm X as Obama's father claim, if it didn't start with NYC nutbar Pam Gellar, at least got massive airplay from her. As for to whom you would compare Obama's DNA, that's easy - any black male at least 20 years older than Obama who ever got arrested. That's the "humiliate" part.

Obama hypocrisy alert on campaign finance

Let's see, the presidential candidate who opted out of public financing, and speaking of finances, took in more money from Big Finance/Wall Street than did John McCain, now has the gall to protest, bleat and whine about the Supreme Court's Citizens' United decision?

Of course, Obama's populism looks like it has lasted less than a week, anyway.

Basically, it's arguable that Obama can be charged with the sin of of arrogance for either believing activist progressive voters have forgotten about his deal with the devil Goldman Sachs 18 months ago, or else for believing that such voters feel they're "stuck" with him.

Well, we're NOT!

Vote Green, if nothing else!

Obama and no change

Steve Clemons, a sober political analyst and no hard-core progressive, is the latest to weigh in on Obama's failure to deliver on a promised agenda so far.

Unfair, perhaps, but Clemons notes that Obama in ome ways bears the hard bigotry of high expectations, or high needs, at least:

Barack Obama can’t be measured by the same stick as most American presidents. He must be better and do more.

And, in many ways, has failed to deliver:

Obama has failed to realize that the kind of “change” he promised during his campaign is actually the kind of change the nation needs. During the global financial crisis, he elected to ally himself with the architects of the previous financial order -- Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers and their followers. And these neoliberal practitioners delivered a financial recovery course that helped Wall Street and yet again sacrificed the interests of the American middle class, just as they did in the past.

Time to step up to the plate. The end game on health care, and the State of the Union address, will be key touchstones.

Obama: I got 95 percent on health bill

That's exactly what President Barack Obama told Jim Lehrer of PBS. So, I guess the pre-election AND post-election talk about the public option wasn't something he (or Rahm Emanuel) really wanted then, right?

You can fool some of the Obamiacs all of the time, and all of the Obamiacs some of the time...

If healthcare ain’t Obama’s Carter moment, fiscal issues are

First, the idea of Big Ben Bernanke being reappointed to head the Fed isn’t going smoothly. Why? Timmy Geithner at Treasury, and his trying to make his old boss’s job part of Treasury, is a fair part of the problem; add in Larry Summers hovering in the background and you have trouble..

Meanwhile, US income inequality is not just the worst since the Depression, it’s the worst sinced before we entered World War I. It’s no wonder teabaggers are angry, while pseudolibs continue, by silence if nothing else, to defend Pres. Kumbaya.

And, a lot of non-Goldman Sachs real banks could be in bad loan trouble to boot.

Obama platitudinizes while America burns.

Unfortunately for real reform, he, like Reagan, will get lucky to have this recession mostly gone before he runs for re-election.

Frank Rich finally smells the Obama myth coffee

Rich wonders if maybe, just maybe, Obama isn’t that much a reformer after all.

Dude, I knew that 16 months ago.

But, without sparing Obama personally, Rich looks at the system:

In this maze of powerful moneyed interests, it’s not clear who any American in either party should or could root for.

Answer is ultimately nobody from within the two-party duopoly.

-END-

The truth behind Obama’s presser ratings

As Howard Kurtz notes (though doesn’t fully dissect) with his “discursive style” comments about President Barack Obama, on page 2 of an in-depth analysis of Obama, network TV, prime-time ratings and presidential press conferences, the truth is that Barack Obama is NOT “that” dynamic of a speaker. This is another Obama myth that I saw through more than a year ago.

I don’t know if some of that mythos is white “liberal” unconscious racism about him sounding “cool,” but in a “white” way, or what.

National Review to ‘birthers’ – STFU

I doubt even this will put an end to the “Obama birther” tin-foil hattery, but National Review nails all the main points about Barack Obama being born in Honolulu, Hawaii.

‘Traitor’ reservist major dodges A-stan – shyster angle

There’s much more coming out on the case of U.S. Army Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook and his “Obama is not an American” refusal to deploy to Afghanistan when first called up.

Representing him in his quasi-treasonous stance is birth-certificate chasing lawyer Orly Taitz, who has done this before.

Military blog Mudville Gazette has more, including an earlier class-action suit by Taitz that included Cook.

And, it appeared Cook volunteered for call-up to be a claim-tester.

Lt. Col. Maria Quon, U.S. Army Public Affairs Officer, said a reservist who volunteers for active duty can request recension of orders up to the day of deployment.

So, he’s not just a traitor, he’s one of those conservative lawyer-haters, except when it’s their own lawyer who’s doing the goring.

I think his two weeks of active training ought to be sending him down to McMurdo in Antarctic winter or something.

Conserrvative treason: Soldier won’t deploy, sez Obama not US citizen

And, this isn’t some redneck private, it’s an officer with a sworn oath. U.S. Army Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook says he should not have to go to Afghanistan because President Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen.

Is it “treason,” beyond a figurative sense, or just “desertion”? Well, it’s an overt act, and, supporting a rumor that arguably could give aid and comfort to the enemy.

I have the perfect solution. Let Dick Cheney assassinate him!

There’s more:

Cook further states he “would be acting in violation of international law by engaging in military actions outside the United States under this President’s command. ... simultaneously subjecting himself to possible prosecution as a war criminal by the faithful execution of these duties.”

It sounds like Cook, a called-up reservist, just doesn’t want to deploy.

Tough shit.

Is there a reservist unit in The Fighting 101st Keyboarders?

The BS of Obama ‘financial reform’

Once again, Just.Another.Politician.™ isn’t wearing very many clothes, as Joe Nocera shows us in detail. In comparing Obama’s work to FDR’s, he says:

Obama plan is little more than an attempt to stick some new regulatory fingers into a very leaky financial dam rather than rebuild the dam itself. Without question, the latter would be more difficult, more contentious and probably more expensive. But it would also have more lasting value.

He then goes on to note that, on the surface, the plan looks impressive and broad-ranging. Gee, isn’t that what would could have said – and I did say – about Obama the first Tuesday of November 2008?

And, beyond my snark, he notes just what’s wrong with the Geithner-Summers-Obama fiscal “regulation” plan:

The Obama plan accepts the notion of (some banks) being “too big to fail.”

In other words, the plan fails to fix what it was allegedly drafted to fix!

Or take derivatives. The Obama plan calls for plain vanilla derivatives to be traded on an exchange. But standard, plain vanilla derivatives are not what caused so much trouble for the world’s financial system. Rather it was the so-called bespoke derivatives — customized, one-of-a-kind products that generated enormous profits for institutions like A.I.G. that created them, and, in the end, generated enormous damage to the financial system. For these derivatives, the Treasury Department merely wants to set up a clearinghouse so that their price and trading activity can be more readily seen. But it doesn’t attempt to diminish the use of these bespoke derivatives.

In other words, the plan fails to fix the second-biggest problem it was allegedly drafted to fix!

The bottom line?

If Obama hopes to create a regulatory environment that stands for another six decades (like Glass-Steagall), he is going to have to do what Roosevelt did once upon a time. He is going to have make some bankers mad.

Fat chance in hell of that. He’s a neolib Democrat whose presidential campaign imbibed at the hog trough of bankers and financiers to the tune of opting out of public campaign financing.

We’re getting Obama’s lipstick on a pig in spades.

Update: Krugman finds further problems, above all, a failure to reform the financial ratings agencies; remember, it was the incestuous relationship between folks like Moody’s, on that side, and those like AIG and major banks on the others, that gave ridiculous ratings to jumbled-together CDOs, etc.

‘Paulsonism’ is the $10 trillion word of the day

And, not a damn thing to legally do…

Well, one of several words and phrases of the day from Matt Taibbi, who explain how former Treasury Secretary (and former Goldman Sachs CEO) Henry Paulson joined with former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg, Phil Gramm and many others royally screwed over the country either directly or indirectly, by commission or omission.

Basically, the thrust of Taibbi’s story, in depth and snarky, is that Wall Street has become like former GM CEO Charlie Wilson, and essentially saying, “What’s good for Wall Street is good for the nation.” And, since these financial instruments are a bit more complex than a 1955 Bel-Air, Wall Street and its government enablers can flip the public the bird:

As complex as all the finances are, the politics aren’t hard to follow. By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future.

And, speaking of those government enablers …

Forget TARP or TARP 2.0; direct Federal Reserve money-pushing has already shuffled off $3 trillion or so to these monoliths of megalomania, via loans, and perhaps as much as $6 trillion more through guarantees.

That’s nearly $10 trillion to the likes of AIG. And it’s current CEO, Edward Liddy, wonders why we’re so pissed off?

So, who puts the reins on the Fed? According to Taibbi, on page 7, The Accounting and Auditing Act of 1950 – relevant section, 31 USC 714(b) – says NOBODY. That’s right, Ben Bernanke can flip you and me off, too, allegedly.

And, of course, he has, with the full connivance of Geithner, who knows the Fed flip-off ropes from his former position running the NY Fed.

Meanwhile, while cronies of Paulson get the money with no questions asked, after five months of the TARP program, Joe Blow banks, in some cases, not only haven’t gotten any money, they haven’t even gotten a phone call.

Oh, don’t look for Team Obama to change this, either. It, too, gets a full blast of Taibbi’s scorched-earth writing:

The real question from here is whether the Obama administration is going to move to bring the financial system back to a place where sanity is restored and the general public can have a say in things or whether the new financial bureaucracy will remain obscure, secretive and hopelessly complex. It might not bode well that Geithner, Obama's Treasury secretary, is one of the architects of the Paulson bailouts; as chief of the New York Fed, he helped orchestrate the Goldman-friendly AIG bailout and the secretive Maiden Lane facilities used to funnel funds to the dying company. Neither did it look good when Geithner — himself a protégé of notorious Goldman alum John Thain, the Merrill Lynch chief who paid out billions in bonuses after the state spent billions bailing out his firm — picked a former Goldman lobbyist named Mark Patterson to be his top aide.

But, Obama will never fire Geithner. Per the start of Taibbi’s report, Democrats have been in the tank for Wall Street for a decade, and, although Taibbi doesn’t come out and say it, Obama is Poster Child No. 1 for that, worse than the Slickster ever was.

Is that Rev. Jeremiah Wright I hear?

God DAMN Barack Obama; God DAMN Barack Obama …

Warm up the pipes, Rev.; you can substitute for the fat lady

Guess who’s coming to – the AIG – dinner

It’s true that Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd was the largest Senate receiver of AIG largesse in the 2008 election cycle.

But, who was No. 2?

Why, a certain former junior senator from Illinois. The plot and the shit both thicken.

Ahh, you Obamiacs… having fun today? Is this the change you voted for?

All you people, alleged “liberals,” who attacked me (and people like me), for touting a Green Party vote last year, ready to start eating the MASSIVE plate of crow on your dinner table?

Obama surrenders again before the battle starts

OK, I can understand picking a judge from Indiana, since you were the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state since 1964, for the Seventh Circuit Court bench in Chicago. Because he’s from Indiana, I can understand that David Hamilton will lean more moderate.

But, you’re either surrendering before the battle has started, or else this is a(nother) sign of the true, moderate not progressive, Barack Obama:

A senior administration official said Judge Hamilton would have the support of both Mr. Bayh, a Democrat, and the state’s other senator, Richard G. Lugar, a Republican. He will be nominated for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, based in Chicago.

The administration official said part of the reason for making the Hamilton nomination the administration’s first public entry into the often contentious field of judicial selection was to serve “as a kind of signal” about the kind of nominees Mr. Obama will select…

The administration official said the White House was hoping to reduce the partisan contentiousness of judicial confirmation battles of recent years.

“We would like to put the history of the confirmation wars behind us,” the official said.

Ridiculous. Even the Slickster didn’t announce that in 1993, or after the midterm elections in 1994.

That may have been the type of judges he selected. See Ginsberg and, even more, Breyer, at SCOTUS.

BUT… he didn’t announce that in advance.

Kumbaya will get its hat handed to it again, perhaps? Obama again not showing real change or a new way of governing.