Rahm Emanuel on The Huffington Post

Jane Hamsher, Grover Norquist Call For Rahm Emanuel's Resignation

2009-12-23T15:44:21Z

Today, Grover Norquist and I are calling for an investigation into Rahm Emanuel's activities at Freddie Mac, and the White House's blocking of an Inspector General who would look into it. The letter follows:

December 23, 2009

Attorney General of the United States of America
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

Dear Attorney General Holder:

We write to demand an immediate investigation into the activities of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. We believe there is an abundant public record which establishes that the actions of the White House have blocked any investigation into his activities while on the board of Freddie Mac from 2000-2001, and facilitated the cover up of potentially malfeasance until the 10-year statute of limitations has run out.

Paul Helmke: Gun Lobbyists Against 'Wellness And Health'

2009-12-22T18:43:46Z

One would think that the massive health care reform package hammered out in the back offices of the Capitol over recent weeks would have kept Senators busy with issues focused on better health, but they still found time to bend over backwards for a non-healthy conspiracy theory from the Gun Owners of America (a gun lobby organization even more extreme than the National Rifle Association).

At the behest of GOA, Sen. Charles Grassley was able to get a little-noticed provision tucked into Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's "manager's amendment" (the compromise version of the health care reform bill coming out of the Senate) which takes pains to say:

A wellness and health promotion activity implemented under [this bill] may not require the disclosure or collection of any information relating to -

(A) the presence or storage of a lawfully-possessed firearm or ammunition in the residence or on the property of an individual; or

(B) the lawful use, possession, or storage of a firearm or ammunition by an individual.

I wonder if Sen. Reid recalls the words of his colleague from Nevada, Sen. John Ensign, who in September recognized (albeit accidentally) the high costs of gun violence in our health care system, relative to much of Europe. Sen. Ensign said:

If you take out accidental deaths due to car accidents, and you take out gun deaths -- because we like our guns in the United States and there are a lot more gun-deaths in the United States [than Europe] -- you take out those two things, you adjust those, and we're actually better in terms of survival rates.

Sen. Ensign was right about the high number of gun deaths in America relative to Europe. Every year, 30,000 people in America are killed by gunfire, while another 80,000 are wounded. (By contrast, England and Wales have about 200 gun deaths total in a year, including 60 gun homicides, with a gun homicide rate over 30 times lower than ours.)

I wonder if Sen. Reid is aware that, as far as Nevada is concerned, the Silver State has the fifth highest overall gun death rate in America, including the 11th highest gun homicide rate, according to the latest government figures.

I wonder if Sen. Reid knows that states with the highest levels of gun ownership have 114 percent higher firearm homicide rates and 60 percent higher overall homicide rates than states with the lowest gun ownership.

I wonder if Sen. Reid knows that the risk of homicide is three times higher in homes with firearms; the risk of suicide is three to five times greater; and that a gun in the home is 21 times more likely to be used against the homeowner or family member in a completed or attempted suicide, a criminal assault or homicide, or an unintentional shooting death or injury, than used in self defense.

I wonder, finally, whether Sen. Reid knows that among gun-owning parents who reported that their children had never handled their firearms at home, 22% of those children, when questioned separately, said that they had, and that of youths who committed suicide with firearms, 82% obtained the firearm from their home, usually a parent's firearm.

Regardless of whether it was even conceivable that health care providers could "require" disclosure of a firearm in the home under health care reform - and it never was - the research is clear that keeping a gun at home increases the risk of serious injury or death to those inside.

Doctors and health professionals asking patients about firearm ownership and safe storage practices is just common sense in the full evaluation of risks to their health.

On this issue at least, it seems clear that some Senators were more concerned with pleasing the extremes of the gun lobby and less concerned with the actual health of American children and families.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

Cenk Uygur: What the Media and Obama Never Understood About the Public Option

2009-12-21T16:33:59Z

People who support the latest version of the health care reform bill can't understand why progressives have been flipping out over the public option. By the end, it was so compromised that it covered a minuscule portion of the population, its cost controls were significantly reduced and it was a tiny portion of the bill. All of that is true. So, why all the sound and fury over something so small?

Well, it's the same reason that private insurance companies fought so hard to kill it (how come no one ever asks why they cared so much about it if it was so insignificant?). Because it was the one provision that addressed the cancer of the system: private insurance.

To be more accurate, there are three main cancers that are killing our health care system. 1. Fee-for-service system that encourages providing more services so that providers can charge more fees. 2. No effective competition between insurance providers to drive down costs and improve care. 3. The inalterable incentive of private insurance to lower costs by denying policy holders care and charging them more for the same or less services.

So, the Senate version of health care reform admittedly applies some mighty large band-aids to these problems. It has huge subsidies so that more people can afford the ever-increasing premiums. It has regulations meant to curb some of the worst abuses in how insurance companies deny us care. But it leaves the cancer alone; in fact, it grows it. That's the problem.

Again, to be fair, the first two problems might be addressed by the bill. That's why this is not a black and white issue and why it's so hard to make definitive conclusions about the bill. Efforts at bundling, new experiments in how to pay for care and a Medicare commission to study these issues might really help with the fee-for-service problem. The exchanges that are created by the bill and new program managed by the Office of Personnel Management might create real competition between providers.

But would you trade those two maybes for the definitive lack of action on the last cancer? That's a real tough question and that's why we have smart, thoughtful, caring people on both sides of the issue.

Here's why I ultimately say no to this bill. Because the last cancer is probably the most important one. If the whole system is designed so that private insurance companies can make as much money as possible, the incentives are always going to be wrong. Since they have a permanent incentive to lower costs by denying care and increase profits by charging more, they will always find a way around the regulations and reforms. And they have an army of lawyers and lobbyists to help them do so.

Having private insurance is like having the Sword of Damocles hanging over your head. You never know when they are going to deny you care or for what reason. You never have peace of mind that's supposed to come with insurance. Because their goal is not to treat you, it's to make money off of you.

I don't blame them; that's the way the system is set up. That's why the system is wrong. This bill tries to regulate that system, but it winds up reinforcing it because it strengthens the underlying structure by making private insurance companies even larger.

And as far as the money that's supposed to help us afford insurance, the insurance companies will find easy ways to gobble up all of the subsidies and then come back and ask for more. And those subsidies actually cost the American taxpayer a tremendous amount of money - which you can argue is a good thing because it goes to people who can't afford insurance - but as we have learned many times in the past, if it doesn't help everyone across the board, eventually there will be a limit to the generosity of the American people. And what happens when we run out of those subsidies and the system is still broken?

Worse yet, this version of the bill feeds the cancer. The extra money and customers being funneled to private insurance will only make them stronger, and more resistant to change later.

In situations like this, I'm always reminded of the great scene in Planes, Trains and Automobiles where John Candy and Steve Martin are headed the wrong way on a one-way street. People are screaming, "You're going the wrong way!" And John Candy (played by Rahm Emanuel here) leans into Steve Martin (played by Barack Obama here) and says, "How would they know where we're going?" Of course, they run into two eighteen-wheelers a little later down the road and find out what people were trying to warn them about.

Going along wit this road metaphor, let me do one more analogy here. The Obama team is telling us that they just loaded up the car with gas (subsidies) and did a comprehensive tune up (regulation). So, even if the road is long and there are some twists and turns in it, with the car all loaded, it's better to start down the road now then not to get started at all. Yes, but that depends on which direction you're going. If you start driving the wrong way, it doesn't matter how much gas the car has or how well it's been tuned. You're still going the wrong way and getting further away from your destination.

What I'm afraid of is that this bill makes private insurance larger and stronger - and hence, gets us further away from curing the main problem of our healthcare system. Apparently, Wall Street agrees because the three largest health insurance companies just hit their 52-week highs. The rest of the industry is also soaring and investors are confident that the industry insider who proclaimed this to Politico is exactly right:

"We WIN. Administered by private insurance companies. No government funding. No government insurance competitor."

In the end, of course, I might be wrong (and I would love to be since it looks like this thing is going to pass) and Wall Street might be wrong in how much they think this kicks ass for the insurance companies. And those maybes above might turn into positive change and lead to an overall improvement. But the reason we cared so much about the public option or the Medicare buy-in (or even my version of the Medicare buy-in that got some traction among progressives online) is because it addressed the core of the problem. It might not have gone very far down the road, but at least it wasn't going the wrong way.

So, if it turns out we were right and this version of reform heads in the wrong direction, then you'll know why we cared about something that seemed so insignificant to you. Because we wanted to be good friends and good citizens and yell, "You're going the wrong way!" before you hit the trucks down the road. The reason the public option mattered so much was because it was the one thing we were sure was headed in the right direction.

Watch The Young Turks Here

Blagojevich Aide Googled Law On Temporarily Filling Rahm Emanuel Congressional Seat

2009-12-21T12:38:18Z

CHICAGO, Dec. 21 (UPI) -- Illinois' ousted governor researched if he could keep the White House chief of staff's former U.S. House seat warm for him, The Chicago Sun-Times said Monday.

Jeffrey Feldman: Year of the Rahm: Get 'Em, Then Gut 'Em

2009-12-19T12:06:06Z

As frustrated as the base of the Democratic Party may be in this late stage of the health care reform battle, few have reflected on the force behind every legislative battle this year: Rahm Emanuel.

In a blunt remark to the Wall Street Journal, the White House Chief of Staff tipped his hand on how he planned to get 60 votes in the Senate: bring left-wing Democrats on board early to generate enthusiasm, then turn on them in the end game to woo conservatives.

In other words: Get 'em, then gut 'em.

Responding as to whether or not the White House was concerned about "noise" from liberals, (i.e., threats that liberals will "kill" rather than vote for a health care bill that includes a mandate, but no public option), Emanuel made two very telling statements.

First, Emanuel gestured to the vote tally by saying,"There are no liberals left to get." In other words: liberal Democrats committed to supporting the White House early in the game, such that Emanuel has long since given up in interested in the concerns of those who support left-wing Democrats.

Second, and in jarring contrast to his first statement in the Wall Street Journal interview, Emanuel then blamed liberal Democrats for every failure to pass a health care bill in the past, "Every time they've gotten close to the deal, they've passed up the opportunity and chosen to walk away from a particular [sic] where they've lost the forest for the trees." By referring to the liberal Democrats as "they," Emanuel makes it clear that to bring on conservative Democrats in the Senate, he is willing to split the party into two sides: those who are working to pass a health care bill, and those with a long record of blocking a bill--us and them.

Indeed, if we recall the way the health care bill was unfolded, the White House began by wrapping their early efforts in the most liberal of liberal Democratic packages: the image of Sen. Edward Kennedy. This early phase of the debate featured liberal Democrats in the Senate as a tactic for bringing in the base and generating enthusiasm. Certainly, health care reform was also Kennedy's legacy, but in terms of political strategy Kennedy was also Emanuel's early game outreach to the liberal base.

And once he "got" liberals, Emanuel turned his attention to conservatives.

Short of Emanuel calling liberal Democrats "socialists," it is difficult to imagine a more direct attack on early supporters of his own whip effort than his inflammatory statements in the Wall Street journal. Emanuel makes it clear that, at this late stage of the game, liberal Democrats will be castigated as the killers of health care reform throughout American history, if they dare to complain about discrepancies with earlier versions of the bill.

"Get 'em early, gut 'em later" is a strategy that leads to 60 votes and a base that feels like they have been sold down the river. And, yet, it leads to 60 votes. Thus, every legislative item on the Obama White House reform agenda has passed, while the base has slowly simmered to the boiling point.

Curiously, liberal and progressive members of the Democratic Party have felt the downside of Emanuel's strategy at a visceral level, but have not yet found an effective way to make it work to their advantage.

Most liberals and progressive in the Democratic base insist that Emanuel's "get 'em early, gut 'em later" strategy will lead only to Pyrrhic policy victories for the White House: legislation so compromised that party activists refuse to turn out the vote in 2010 and 2012.

And yet, if considered from a more tactical perspective, Emanuel's Wall Street Journal interview suggests that the base of the party suffers from a fundamental weakness when it comes to legislative negotiations: liberal idealism leads the base to sign on so early to White House reform efforts, that it forfeits any subsequent role in the critical end game.

Greater end game influence for liberals and progressives, in other words, is about strategy, not ideals--tactics, not rhetoric.

Given the likelihood that elected Democrats would rather stiff arm activists in their own base than be publicly accused by their own President of blocking health care reform--meaning that the current health care bill will likely be signed into law rather than killed--what can the base of the Democratic Party do to guarantee they have more end game influence in the next legislative battle?

As painful as it may seem, the best tactics just might come from the likes of Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman.

Learn from Lieberman? Just reading that suggestion is enough to make most liberals want to gauge out their own eyes in horror. And who can blame them. Lieberman has become the symbol of political egotism who has stood up and blocked reform.

And yet, both Nelson and Lieberman have managed to make themselves key players in the health care end game by following a few basic tactics. They stay relatively quiet early, keep an ace in the hole (such as, anti-government spending or an anti-abortion amendment), avoid inflammatory rhetoric in favor of seeing ten steps ahead in the whip count, and finally: they have been willing to step out late in the game to hold a bill hostage no matter how loudly their constituents and the media attacked them.

All of these techniques require party activists to engage in some efforts that have not, heretofore, been their strong suits: back room planning, anticipating the details of legislative fights, cultivating reciprocal relationships on Capital Hill, a well-run ground game, keeping one's card's close, cultivating the media, and--most importantly: good end game timing.

Such a complicated effort cannot happen overnight. By Christmas next year, however, liberals and progressives in the Democratic Party would have had plenty of time to take the first steps towards greater influence in reform legislation.

If the left-wing base can stomach it--if they can learn from Emanuel, Lieberman, and Nelson rather than simply demonizing them--the long term pay off could be the Holy Grail of progressive political activism: ending a legislative battle with a feeling of political victory and a sense that they have finally pushed the party and the country towards the reform they envision.

Retooling the base will not be easy, but the alternative is a collective sense of betrayal that spirals out of control, culminating in a kind of permanent road rage at party leadership. It may seem like the right thing to do in the short run, but in the long run, that kind of anger is neither sustainable nor effective at bringing about reform.

Change, in other words, may indeed come from within--within the base--and not just from Obama.

Rahm Emanuel: Don't Worry About the Left

2009-12-18T16:47:07Z

Turn off MSNBC. Tune out Howard Dean and Keith Olbermann. The White House has its liberal wing in hand on health care, says White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

"There are no liberals left to get" in the Senate, Emanuel said in an interview, shrugging off some noise from the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) that a few liberals might bolt over the compromises made with conservative Democrats.

Jane Hamsher: Left/Right Populist Outrage Will Defeat Senate Health Care Bill

2009-12-18T15:22:06Z

Glenn Greenwald and Ed Kilgore both have very good pieces up today on the impoverished left/right dialectic that dominates the media coverage of politics, and its inadequacy when it comes to discussing the dynamics of the health care debate. The sight of pundits yucking it up about the "Democratic circular firing squad" have become as tedious and threadbare as those counseling "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Both of these admonitions have at their heart the notion that "liberals" are being irrational, unreasonable and rigid in refusing to accept the Senate health care bill.

But in the very next breath, they will then promote statistics that say the tea parties are more popular than either the Democratic or the Republican party, and wonder if it's an opportune time for a third party candidate. (From the "right," of course, because who would take the "left" seriously.) At no time do the synapses firing in their brains make the connection that both the "lazy progressive bloggers" and the tea party activists are saying almost the exact same thing about the Senate bill.

Ben Smith printed a letter from a "liberal blog denizen" (who curiously didn't want to use their name) that I think represents the White House/media thinking pretty well:

The trick is to put a package together that some visible element of "the left" is out there opposing, but that actually has the support of everyone who matters on the left. SEIU isn't opposing the bill. NAACP isn't opposing the bill. Important thought-leaders like Paul Krugman aren't opposing the bill. Surf over to MoveOn.org and you'll see they're highlighting some "f*** you Joe Lieberman" stuff, but not seriously trying to push liberal Senators to vote "no" (indeed, during an earlier iteration of the argument they espoused the view that any filibustering Democrat deserve a primary challenge.). But members who want to feel like they're doing some meaningful triangulation get to point to Jane Hamsher on MSNBC denouncing the whole thing and feel like they're getting one over on the left.

This is probably the most useful role that the existence of a large and feisty activist blogosphere can play during a non-election time. Their existence and their passion shift the whole public conversation to the left. They make it possible for governing from the center to be *seen as governing from the center* rather than having a replay of the Clinton years when centrist governance came to define the left-most pole of the possible.

I read that letter and marveled that this is the thinking of the White House. And yet, I think it is. It's got the blueprint for holding the "veal pen" captive, and then triangulating against those (bloggers) whose financial structures make them much more responsive to populist sentiment -- and hence difficult to neuter. It's the only way that lashing out at Howard Dean and coddling Joe Lieberman -- something guaranteed to galvanize the netroots instantly -- makes any sense.

Because blogs/Dean have been needling the White House's health care shell game, they've turned their attention toward discrediting those messengers and trying to use it to their advantage. I understand the impulse -- when you go into a comment thread of a blog post, the person who disagrees with you is the one who is going to get the emotional rise out of you. But it's a huge mistake to overweight that, because you wind up doing what the White House is doing right now: standing with their backs to a tsunami rising over their heads, of which Howard Dean and the blogs are only a small symbol.

And the media, who are eagerly lapping up attacks on Dean and the crumbs being tossed out of the White House press office, only reinforce that blindness.

There is an enormous, rising tide of populism that crosses party lines in objection to the Senate bill. We opposed the bank bailouts, the AIG bonuses, the lack of transparency about the Federal Reserve, "bailout" Ben Bernanke, and the way the Democrats have used their power to sell the country's resources to secure their own personal advantage, just as the libertarians have. In fact, we've worked together with them to oppose these things. What we agree on: both parties are working against the interests of the public, the only difference is in the messaging.

Harry Reid and Dick Durbin put on a nice show for the credulous. As Durbin said when he was trying to build his email list, "The question is no longer if we will have some sort of public option in the final health care reform bill, but instead what form it will take." But the very same day, he was also warning about "60 votes" on MSNBC, and it was Durbin who whipped Lieberman's vote for PhRMA to kill Dorgan's drug reimportation bill (after Harry Reid kept it off the floor for 7 days until PhRMA could twist enough arms to defeat it).

The end is the same as it was when Medicare Part D passed. Remember how Democrats made a big show of passing negotiation for prescription drug prices when they knew George Bush would veto it? We saw how long that lasted. When it comes to true differences in the parties, only the set dressing on the road to capitulation seems to change.

With unemployment at 10%, the idea that you can pass a bill whose only merit is that "liberals hate it" just because the media will eat it up and print your talking points in the process is so cynical and short-sighted it's hard to comprehend anyone would pursue it. It reflects a total insensitivity to the rage that is brewing on the popular front, which is manifest in every single poll out there.

Yet time and again, we're told "Obama retains his popularity with liberals" and that "screeching liberal bloggers" aren't having an impact. Nobody seems to notice that the "screeching liberal bloggers" are reflecting the very same sentiments of the vast majority of the country, whether the very small segment of the population who self-identify as "extremely liberal" holds the President responsible or no.

Rahm Emanuel has convinced himself that Ron Brownstein is a "liberal" and dismisses all of this as "the progressive backlash against the progressive backlash." He's betting that any inadequacies will be forgotten come November 2010 if the Dems can claim a "w" by passing any crap bill and slapping "health care" on it. And that if Congress just spends the next year naming post offices, any objections that Americans might have to paying 8% of their incomes to private corporations who will use the IRS as their collection agency will just disappear.

It's scary to think that people this obscenely stupid are running the country. All the while, the painfully obvious left/right transpartisan consensus that is coalescing against DC insiders of both parties appears to be taking everyone by surprise.

Glenn Greenwald Writes One-Act Play About How The White House Works

2009-12-17T14:07:24Z

Yesterday, we took up the issue of whether or not President Barack Obama could have done more to pressure Congress to craft a more effective health care reform bill than the one currently slouching out of the Senate towards an uneasy mating ceremony with the House bill in conference committee. Assuming it even gets there! Maybe the only thing Harry Reid can ultimately get 60 votes for is a "Get well soon" card from Hadassah Lieberman -- who knows?

Glenn Greenwald took up the matter as well, armed with the same checklist of tactics from Adam Green. Greenwald went on to conclude that, "contrary to Obama's occasional public statements in support of a public option, the White House clearly intended from the start that the final health care reform bill would contain no such provision and was actively and privately participating in efforts to shape a final bill without it."

It's a compelling argument and the key piece of supporting evidence is the deal the White House negotiated in private with the pharmaceutical industry.

Greenwald also argues, at length, against the notion that the entirety of the failure to reform health care can be laid at the feet of Congressional intransigence. I'd say that Greenwald has far less sympathy for the very real Congressional obstacles the White House faces in advancing their domestic agenda than I do. But I think we'd both agree that this is why you don't take tactics such as the ones Green identifies off the table -- if you can't get health care past your Ben Nelsons or your Joe Liebermans, at least leave no doubt that you tried.

Glenn takes his view of Obama's larger indifference to this and fashions a fun little playlet for his readers. As you all know, I like fun little playlets, too!

Yet numerous Obama defenders -- such as Matt Yglesias, Ezra Klein and Steve Benen -- have been insisting that there is just nothing the White House could have done and all of this shows that our political system is tragically "ungovernable." After all, Congress is a separate branch of government, Obama doesn't have a vote, and 60 votes are needed to do anything. How is it his fault if centrist Senators won't support what he wants to do? Apparently, this is the type of conversation we're to believe takes place in the Oval Office:

The President: I really want a public option and Medicare buy-in. What can we do to get it?

Rahm Emanuel: Unfortunately, nothing. We can just sit by and hope, but you're not in Congress any more and you don't have a vote. They're a separate branch of government and we have to respect that.

The President: So we have no role to play in what the Democratic Congress does?

Emanuel: No. Members of Congress make up their own minds and there's just nothing we can do to influence or pressure them.

The President: Gosh, that's too bad. Let's just keep our fingers crossed and see what happens then.

That's pretty good. If I could offer some dramaturgical advice, however, I think that having Emanuel say, "Oh well, I'm off to key Jane Hamsher's car for insisting that we should 'help people,'" would be a much stronger exit line.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Flashback: Emanuel Penned WaPo Op-Ed Pushing Medicare Buy-In

2009-12-16T14:33:22Z

When White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel implored Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Sunday to agree to demands to drop a provision to expand Medicare coverage, he was abandoning principles of health care reform that he once supported.

Back in November 2007, the then-Illinois Representative and head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee penned an op-ed for the Washington Post in which he specifically vouched for the provision he now opposes.

Titled "Before We're 64", Emanuel and Bruce Reed, president of the moderate Democratic Leadership Council, wrote that allowing those as young as 55 to buy into Medicare was essential to relieve the financial burdens on American workers and businesses.

In 2005, Americans ages 55 to 64 were the fastest-growing segment of the population to become uninsured. For those employees lucky enough to still have insurance, the percentage of workers with deductibles of $500 or more has nearly tripled.

Covering early retirees is the most acute problem for workers and employers alike. Younger workers have fewer health needs and cost far less to cover; older retirees have much of their higher costs covered by Medicare. The average annual cost of covering a 30-year-old employee is $2,222. The average yearly cost for an employee who retires at 60 is $6,139.

We can't afford to let American workers and companies wither on the vine. We can ease the cost crunch for both by giving employers and unions a new option: buying Medicare coverage for retirees ages 55 to 64. Retirees would get quality care from a program they can trust. Employers would get to buy affordable insurance and take spiraling health costs off their books.

At the time, Democrats controlled Congress but not the White House. And the notion of enacting health care reform was tempered by the implicit recognition that you needed a president willing to do the heavy lifting. Emanuel, then and now, was considered a pragmatist above all else. But in writing about the benefits of a Medicare buy-in, he referenced virtually the same arguments that champions of the proposal have today: that it would alleviate costs on companies who provide health insurance to this age group without costing the taxpayers money.

Those points seem largely moot at this juncture of the current health care debate as Emanuel, the president and Democratic leadership in Congress have said they value the passage of legislation over any one particular provision. But the Washington Post op-ed remains a vivid illustration of how the current political system creates an inverse relationship between political power and policy passion. Emanuel, today, is in a far better place to enact the Medicare buy-in proposal. But he reportedly played the persuasive role in getting it sacrificed.

Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter!

Michael Kieschnick: Ignore Lieberman to Win Real Health Care Reform

2009-12-16T14:09:45Z

If I wanted Joe Lieberman to write health care reform, I would have voted for John McCain.

Somewhere in my mind, I thought that. But Jane Hamsher wrote it and that single phrase says it all. Due to the rules of the Senate and the political strategies of Rahm Emmanuel, Joe Lieberman is having the time of his life.

It is time to admit that if we play by Joe's rules, health reform is dead. When we are reduced to Evan Bayh (!) saying let's compromise so that the perfect is not the enemy of the good, it is way past time to try a different path.

The Trojan Horse at the center of the Senate's health care package is the mandate that people without health insurance be forced to purchase it from private health insurance companies or pay a fine. And the dirty secret of the package is that the price they will be paying is quite high -- like up to 10% of income. So the way that we move along the path towards greater coverage is that the taxpayers and poor and working class people pay more to the insurance companies. What part of this is the "good"?

I cannot imagine that the White House has done focus groups or polling among the surge voters of 2008 -- young people, poor people, single women -- to ask if they want to pay Aetna or Blue Cross or Wellpoint 10% of their income for lousy coverage. Ask your friends. Your recently graduated from college kids. I have -- the mandate is the wet dream of private insurers and will be stunningly unpopular with just about everybody else.

This is bad policy and bad politics. This is not progressive change. Costs will continue to skyrocket and the Federal treasury will suck wind. And surge voters will not come out to vote again.

But it does not have to be this way. It is only this way because in the world of the Senate, if we play by the 60 votes are needed rule, coupled with a weak White House that only threatens progressives, then the 60th Senator -- that is, the most unprincipled paid off Senator -- gets to write health care reform.

Let's not play that game. If Harry Reid and the White House don't have the integrity to kill the package as is, it only takes one progressive Senator to take Joe Lieberman's place. Surely there should be a rush to do this!

And what should take the place of Lieberman's rules? Reid already has the power -- contained in this year's budget resolution -- to enact much of the health care reform through budget reconciliation, which requires 51 votes. There are 51 votes for the best -- not the worst -- elements of great health reform. Or the Senate could change it's own rules to eliminate or alter the filibuster. Any reading of Senate history makes it clear that the filibuster has been used most often to defeat progress, not to stop special interests or reactionary initiatives.

And if Sen. Reid will not use reconciliation or change the filibuster rules, then at a minimum he should hold a series of individual votes on the critical issues currently bundled together in the massive reform bill. If he were to ask for my advice, I would start with a prohibition on discrimination based on pre-existing conditions. Let's put everybody on record whether they are in favor of the current practice of vicious discrimination.

Health care matters far too much to let rules designed to stop change block us. And it is cynical beyond measure to call Lieberman's demands real reform.

Catie Lazarus: The Year of the Man-Child

2009-12-15T19:41:23Z

What Did You Learn in 2009? Test your knowledge by answering these objectively scientific questions about the celebrities, politicians and fifteen minute famers who made headlines.

You would describe 2009: "THE YEAR OF
A) Undermining Uninsured, Unemployed, and Underrepresented Minorities.
B) The Man-Child
C) Hope in a Bottle
(You can answer differently than the scorekeeper)

If a female celebrity accepts an award for her work, a male peer should:
A) Corner her with an unsolicited kiss, you'll never get the chance again and not just because she is married!
B) Interrupt her speech to say she didn't deserve to win.
C) Promote a political cause, even if he can't pronounce Ahmadinejad.

When exploiting children for commercial gain:
A) Buy them matching uniforms.
B) Never read them books, it sends subliminal message to viewers.
C) Keep copies of the footage for their future shrink appointments.

If a male physically abuses his girlfriend or female colleague, he might:
A) Ditch her in their shared office, McMansion, or rental car.
B) Blame the media.
C) Apologize via Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or a YouTube video; someone else can forward her the link.

If a married politician or celebrity cheats, he ought to:
A) Engage in unprotected sex with as many people as possible, because if she takes you back, you may be stuck with her.
B) Do a prostitute or escort, she won't get how to sexually exploit someone for money.
C) Invent an original alibi, as coming out of the closet, hiking, and a fetish for S & M in trouser socks is already taken.
D) Hide any athletic gear or sharp objects from his spurned wife.

When gunning for your fifteen minutes of fame from infidelity:
A) Swipe toiletries from the hotel for proof of your lover's lust and hygiene practices.
B) Keep receipts of your rendezvous for taxes.
C) You want to hone your reality show pitch, like Skanks Doing Pranks or Males Are Hos Too.

After a failed Presidential campaign, politicians will:
A) Serve boxed wine in exchange for donors buying your memoir at full price.
B) Decry reform as socialism, while collecting government subsidized health care.
C) Consult on national security, when your international experience consists of finding a parking spot near the U.N.

If after skipping out on bail, you should:
A) Find a spokesperson whose own biological son is his brother-in-law, ex is his mother-in-law to stump on your behalf.
B) Describe his admitted drugging and raping a minor as not "rape rape."
C) Move to Europe where sexual assault is a poet's personal beeswax.

Say you carry a weapon, you want to:
A) Wear sweatpants without pockets.
B) Test it out on college campus, military bases, or crowded piazza, and then run!
C) Deploy to Afghanistan, apparently we need more armed bodies there.

For religious reasons, people will:
A) Veto gays and lesbian's liberal causes like marriage and the military.
B) Kill other humans, especially over holy land.
C) Practice polygamy, but only if the women dress in corduroy prairie dresses.

To win a US political election, a candidate should:
A) Spend $200 on behalf of voters in lieu of giving them cash during a recession.
B) Rant about immigrants, even if he's not Native-American.
C) Invest hundreds of dollars in hair care (true for tennis players too).

The Banking industry needs to:
A) Build sturdier pyramids.
B) Merge with the other conglomerates to form all we need: US Treasury-Google-Apple-Twitter-HBO-Netflix-H&M-CVS-Ikea-Trader Joe's-US Government.
C) Be paid more than less intelligent peers, like rocket scientists, doctors, teachers, professors, public servants, therapists, engineers, and nurses.

To ring in 2010, US Citizens will:
A) Blog, text, drink red wine, call their congressman, exercise more, eat less, take a second job, sanitize their hands, vote for viral videos, all while driving.
B) Crash a political function, just remember C-Spanners tuck in before the ball drops.
C) Fist bump.

Miles J. Zaremski: The Last Hurrah to Reform Health Care

2009-12-15T10:40:53Z

Okay, Joe Lieberman is a despicable character and not worth a vote the next time he runs for public office. Rahm Emanuel just wants a health reform bill at any cost. Get over it and move on before it is really too late. To use a metaphor from the great American pastime, we are all in the 9th inning, with two outs, and the bases loaded. To win the "ballgame," nay, to see real health care reform come about, we need to see the following items enacted into law in no uncertain terms.

1. From the time health care reform is enacted (2010) to when it becomes effective (2013/2014), there must be a mechanism in place that will prevent insurance companies from gouging on premium increases. This writer has previously suggested placing a freeze on insurance premiums for this time period. The level to be used is 2008 or earlier, so that insurers cannot use present levels or present premium increases we are all seeing in renewals coming in our mail as a floor.

2. There must be clarity in the bill as to who/what will set premium levels once the insurance exchange is established in 2013 or 2014. This cannot be done by the private market, for then it will be like having the "fox guard the chicken coop."

3. We are all pleased to see new insurance regulations come about, like no pre-existing conditions barring coverage; like no ceiling for coverage or benefits; and like no rescission once care and treatment is provided. However, real reform dictates that such new regulations be (1) on an annual, as well as lifetime, basis (presently, there exists only a lifetime basis); and (2) that consumers not pay for these new regulations. After all, the goal of real reform is affordability, and if consumers cannot afford health care coverage now, how can they afford the new regulations?

4. Democrats keep saying 31 million of us will be covered by reform. Just who makes up these 31 million anyway? The starting point for health care reform should be roughly 80 million - - all those who are not insured by big companies (100+ employees) or who are insured or are eligible for present government programs, like Medicare.

5. Any language reflecting the Stupak amendment in the House bill must be stripped away in the Senate bill. Such present language is an anathema to every American woman who has a right to choice, and is also reflective of male chauvinism in the Senate.

6. The exemption from federal antitrust laws the insurance industry has enjoyed since 1945 must similarly be stripped away and included in any final bill.

7. Americans must be allowed cheaper prices for their pharmaceuticals, including allowing the government to negotiate reduced prices for our nation's seniors who have coverage through Medicare.

Politicians can call reform what they will, but without these seven points included, there will be no real reform, even for starters. Again, we need to remember that the insurance industry will be getting 30-40 million new customers, and that means billions in new revenues for this industry. And each American will be forced to have insurance through mandates. Thus, the question becomes, do Americans want to be forced to have insurance without effective protections as outlined in the seven points above? We are now at fail-safe for health care reform; the last hurrah so to speak. It is now "do or die."

Get HuffPost Eyes&Ears on Facebook and Twitter!

Lincoln Mitchell: Keeping the Wheels on the Obama Presidency

2009-12-15T09:27:38Z

The wheels have not yet come off the Obama presidency, but they could next year. The best way to prevent this from happening would be for Obama to reenergize his political base so that they can be help put pressure on uncooperative members of Congress and help work to minimize Democratic losses in November of 2010. This will require Obama to define a progressive position on almost any issue, be it marriage equality, Wall Street bonuses, health care or anything else, and aggressively pursue it.

The primary political failure of the Obama administration so far is that the president has not delivered one meaningful, major policy change for his progressive base, or more accurately, progressive bases. This not only infuriates many progressives, but ultimately it weakens Obama's presidency. Obama has not taken a strong stand on any of the issues, such as marriage equality, which are important to his base; nor has he responded to the economic problems facing the country by an explicit and substantial jobs program or a genuinely aggressive effort to regulate the economy. Instead, he has charted a course of offering some bailout money to financial institutions while seeking to cajole them into lending more money to small businesses in the hopes that this will generate jobs.

On foreign policy, Obama has sought to wind down the war in Iraq while expanding the war in Afghanistan. He has pursued less confrontational policies regarding China and Russia while seeking to reinvigorate traditional alliances in western Europe. Obama's foreign policy is an improvement over Bush's because it is grounded in pragmatism and realism rather than ideology and fantasy, but it would be very premature to call Obama's foreign policy successful.

Obama has also failed to pass a single major piece of truly progressive legislation. This is most clear in the area of health care. The willingness of the White House to swap the expansion of Medicare in exchange for Joe Lieberman's vote on cloture reveals how far the administration has come from what many progressives hoped health care reform would look like. The White House has compromised away a compromise, expanding Medicare, which was itself a compromise from the public option idea, which was an early compromise away from a single payer approach.

There is, of course, nothing axiomatically wrong with compromise and pragmatism, but a presidency driven by compromise and pragmatism must be judged by the results it produces. So far, in both foreign and domestic policy, Obama cannot really point to any concrete and positive results, only trends.

Politically, pragmatism without tangible results puts Obama in danger of backing himself into a corner. Swing voters will increasingly, fairly or not, judge Obama on outcomes. If jobs do not come back and if success in Afghanistan continues to be elusive, they will not evaluate him kindly. A president can survive this if he still has a strong political base, but for Obama this base is in danger of eroding. Reports that African American members of Congress are increasingly dissatisfied with President Obama suggest that this has already begun to happen.

If Obama is losing support among African American members of Congress, anti-war activists and advocates for marriage equality, he risks becoming a much weaker political figure. This alone will not be enough to cost him re-election, but combined with a continued inability to deliver results from his compromise-driven policies it could. In the short term, this loss of support will make it harder for Obama to drive legislation and policy in Washington.

Nowhere is this clearer than regarding health care, the defining domestic policy initiative of this administration. The White House has seemingly decided that getting a bill, no matter how weak, should be the goal. This is a Clintonian approach which, not surprisingly, was strongly supported by former Clinton aide Rahm Emanuel. It worked for Bill Clinton. However, it worked for Clinton because he presided during a time of relative peace and prosperity. In that context passing reform legislation was not so important to the president's future. It is different today. Because he cannot provide peace and prosperity, Obama needs to pass some meaningful legislation to demonstrate that he is doing something positive as president. Just getting a bill passed will mean nothing to many Americans who are too focused on the economy and, to a lesser extent the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to notice some minor changes in how health care is covered. It will, however, not be lost on progressives who will view the whole episode as another disappointment by Obama. On balance, Obama is better off energizing his political base by sticking to some principles on health care, even if he fails, than by passing a sufficiently weakened bill that nobody even notices, but this is not the path he seems to be pursuing.

Progressive Groups Turn Sights On Rahm Over Health Care (VIDEO)

2009-12-15T08:20:42Z

In the latest salvo in an increasingly bitter health care reform debate, progressive groups are targeting White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, accusing the president's top adviser of abandoning the principles of people in his hometown Chicago.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee released an ad on Tuesday in which, through the voice of a local Chicagoan, they warn that Emanuel risks support in his own district should he "undermine" the public option for insurance coverage. The spot comes the morning after Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post first reported that the White House chief of staff had urged Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to get a deal done with centrist Democrats on health care.

Playing off the widely-held belief that Emanuel will eventually return to elected politics, PCCC is set to air the ad solely on Chicago television. But it will run only as many times as fundraising permits. The initial goal is $50,000 worth of spots.

In addition to the new ad, PCCC and another progressive group, Democracy for America, provided polling numbers to the Huffington Post showing fairly healthy skepticism for the Emanuel's performance as chief of staff. Only 36 percent of Americans said they trusted Emanuel with his job. Thirty-five percent said they did not trust him, and 29 percent were not sure.

Taken together, the ad and the decision to poll Emanuel's popularity reflect a widening schism between progressive groups and the chief of staff. Emanuel, for his part, has been quoted in various outlets scoffing at the role played by these groups in the health care debate, even calling their ads "fucking stupid."

But the attacks also suggest the chief of staff is effective at his job. The more the spotlight shines on Emanuel, the less heat the president takes from these same groups. And while White House officials continue to insist that Emanuel did not urge Reid to compromise on health care during their meeting on Sunday night, they also feel confident that should legislation pass, there will be ample time to repair the hurt feelings that the process produced.

Below is the script for the ad, as narrated by Joseph Breitenbucher of Chicago, Illinois :

My family has lived here in Chicago for 30 years. Rahm Emanuel was our congressman. When I had spinal surgery the medical bills were enormous. My insurance company tried to get out of paying bills they clearly were responsible for. That's how they make a profit, by denying people care. Many families in our situation would have gone into bankruptcy. Luckily my wife is a doctor and she knew how to challenge the insurance company. So after months of paper work we got the bills paid. But not everyone has a doctor in the house who knows how to fight back. We need a public health insurance option now. That is the only way to drive competition and keep the insurance companies honest. Anything less is not reform at all.

All of us back home hope Rahm Emanuel is fighting for people like us as White House chief of staff. But if he sides with insurance companies and undermines the public option, well, he won't have many fans in Chicago.

Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter!

Rahm Emanuel Personally Pressed Reid To Cut Deal With Lieberman: Sources

2009-12-14T16:58:58Z

Rahm Emanuel visited Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in his Capitol office on Sunday evening and personally urged him to cut a deal with recalcitrant Sen. Joe Lieberman, two Democratic sources familiar with the situation told the Huffington Post.

Emanuel, President Obama's chief of staff, has long been identified as leading a faction of White House advisers who have been pushing the Senate simply to pass any health care bill, no matter how weak.

His direct message to Reid (D-Nev.), according to a source close to the negotiations: "Get it done. Just get it done."

Politico reported Monday morning that the White House had pressed Reid to cut the deal after Lieberman (I-Conn) insisted the Senate drop a provision, which Lieberman himself has long favored, to allow those 55-64 to buy in to Medicare. Lieberman is threatening to join a Republican filibuster of the bill if the provision isn't dropped.

The White House denied the report. "The report is inaccurate. The White House is not pushing Senator Reid in any direction. We are working hand in hand with the Senate Leadership to work through the various issues and pass health reform as soon as possible," White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer wrote in an e-mail to the Plum Line.

The report, however, according to the two sources, was entirely accurate. "We're long past time for these kinds of games," one source said. White House spokesman Reid Cherlin stuck to the denial: "Our statement is true," he said.

Senate Democrats plan to meet Monday evening to see if it is still possible to hash out their differences.

This story was updated to make clear that the sources spoke to the Huffington Post. They may or may not have been the same sources who spoke to Politico.

David Helvarg: The Blue Bayou Climate Solution

2009-12-14T11:51:44Z

It's been said that rainforests are the lungs of the world. In fact its tiny photosynthetic algae in the ocean that account for over half the oxygen we breathe. The oceans are the drivers of weather and climate, the generators of rain and storms. The top two feet of the sea contain as much heat as the entire atmosphere. But the oceans are also among the most susceptible environments when it comes to feeling the impact from anthropogenic -- that is to say human generated -- atmospheric carbon (See my Sept. 22 blog 'Bad Acid Trip').

To date much of the discussion on solutions to rapid climate change and ways to reduce our carbon dioxide outputs have focused on industrial sources and on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. The burning and clearing of global forests is the second largest source of human generated carbon after the burning of fossil fuels.

However, on October 14, the United Nation's Environmental Program released a report on "Blue Carbon," showing that as much as 7 percent of the carbon dioxide reductions needed to keep atmospheric concentrations of CO2 below 450 parts per million (the still too-high figure diplomats at the Climate Summit in Copenhagen are aiming for) could be achieved by restoring carbon sequestering mangrove forests, salt marshes, and seagrass beds around the world's ocean shores.

These key marine habitats, along with coral reefs, act as the wildlife nurseries of the sea and provide protection from storm surges and tsunamis and filter and purify coastal waters, so protecting them would also provide additional benefits beyond fighting climate change. That's the good news. The bad news, while covering only about .5 percent of the world's oceans and coasts, they are among the most endangered habitats on earth, being destroyed by coastal development, commercial shrimp farms, bottom dredging and fishing trawls, runoff pollution and landfill.

In a strange and disturbing symmetry the U.N. report suggests that while these habitats could reduce our carbon pollution 7 percent their present rate of loss is also around 7 percent annually so that many of these productive brackish and salt water domains could be gone by 2020.

The report warns there is an immediate need to mainstream an ocean agenda into the climate negotiations now taking place in Copenhagen and to develop a global Blue Carbon Fund equivalent to what's been discussed for the reduction of emissions from deforestation and degradation (a REDD Fund). The report doesn't suggest a particular funding mechanism. Luckily I have an idea.

Almost all these Blue Carbon habitats exist in the territorial waters of coastal nations many of who already generate revenues by leasing their offshore waters to foreign fishing fleets and oil and gas companies. In the United States multi-billon dollar royalties are paid to the U.S. Treasury by the offshore oil and gas industry for operating on our public seas. This revenue stream shifts between the second and third largest source of government income after taxes and in close competition with custom tariffs, generating some five billion dollars a year.

Beginning in the 1960s a large part of these offshore revenues went to support the Land and Water Conservation Fund that offset the negative impacts of offshore drilling by buying up parks and wilderness areas for coastal protection and recreation. This was before we understood that oil drilling also represented a product liability issue. This product, used as directed, overheats your planet.

Today, along with land-based solar, wind, geothermal and other green energies a new sector for clean non-carbon production is emerging in offshore wind and tidal power, wave, current and ocean thermal energy conversion. As with oil and gas these offshore industries will be operating on public waters and subject to state and federal royalty payments.

It would make eminent sense if the public revenues generated by this new climate clean marine energy were used for a dedicated Blue Carbon Fund that would protect and restore carbon sequestering coastal wetlands, mangroves and seagrass meadows.

A recently established 'Blue Climate Coalition,' made up of marine scientists and conservationists from around the world is advocating for a range of funding mechanisms while also seeking increased scientific research funds to better understand the role these 'Blue Carbon' habitats play in regulating our climate.

Large scale restoration in the United States doesn't need to wait on the emergence of a clean-energy boom offshore however but could start immediately if we'd implement existing (though to date largely unfunded) federal and state commitments of over twenty billion dollars for the reestablishment of 'America's Wetland,' the rapidly declining salt marshes known as the Louisiana Bayous, also the recovery of the seriously degraded Chesapeake Bay Estuary and the extensive Florida Everglades, 'river of grass.' These are public works projects that could quickly generate 'shovel ready' jobs for unemployed workers while also protecting us from the worst impacts of climate change.

Saving our Carbon Blue habitats is just one practical way we can start taking climate action while also helping restore the living blue part of our blue marble planet. Like Rahm Emanuel says, 'No crisis should go to waste.'

Rahm Emanuel Lights National Menorah At White House (PHOTOS)

2009-12-13T22:11:28Z

WASHINGTON -- White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel lit the National Menorah in celebration of Hanukkah.

The Sunday ceremony marked the 30th anniversary of the first National Menorah lighting in 1979. President Jimmy Carter attended that ceremony.

Hanukkah commemorates the rededication of the Jewish Second Temple in Jerusalem in 164 B.C. after its desecration by the Syrian-Greeks. The eight-day festival began on Friday.

Emanuel, who is Jewish, was the guest of honor at the lighting on the Ellipse in front of the White House. He stood in a cherry picker to light it in front of more than 1,000 onlookers on a cold, rainy day.

Paul Helmke: NRA Members For Reasonable Gun Restrictions

2009-12-11T17:44:02Z

Republican pollster Frank Luntz conducted a poll released yesterday by the Mayors Against Illegal Guns which helps confirm surveys of National Rifle Association members conducted as far back as 1989.

The Luntz survey shows -- again -- that gun owners strongly support many specific gun violence prevention laws.

For example, the Luntz survey and others show that even NRA members strongly support Brady criminal background checks for all gun sales at gun shows, and also strongly support keeping guns out of the hands of suspected terrorists.

Specifically, 82% of NRA members supported prohibiting people on the "Terrorist Watch List" from buying guns. 69% of NRA members supported requiring Brady criminal background checks for all gun sales at gun shows.

NRA leaders oppose both of these policies. This means they are ignoring not only the wishes of the American people but also their own dues-paying members by blocking these and other policies that would help save lives.

The Luntz survey isn't the only one that shows how out-of-step NRA leaders are with the rest of their claimed constituency.

After Election Day in November 2008, the Brady Campaign commissioned a survey of voters, conducted by the firm, Penn, Schoen & Berland. In that poll, 84% of gun-owning voters favored Brady criminal background checks for all gun sales, while 60% of gun-owning voters even favored the registration of gun sales and the licensing of gun owners.

Data that is now 20 years old tells us much the same thing about the preferences of NRA members on specific gun violence prevention policies. Two researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health examined survey data collected in a 1989 TIME Magazine/CNN survey, and in a peer-reviewed study, the researchers concluded:

[T]he support for the NRA is strongest when measured in very general terms.... However, when gun owners are asked about specific regulatory requirements, they often support the regulation, disagreeing with the stated position of the organization [the NRA]. This finding holds for both NRA members and nonmembers.

For at least 20 years the NRA's leaders have misrepresented to elected officials the feelings of their members on a range of reasonable measures that would help reduce gun violence.

In the face of stubborn data like this, it is time for Congress to start listening to the American people -- including NRA members and gun owners -- instead of responding to the dictates of NRA bosses.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

Paul Helmke: Gaps in Protection for Us and the President

2009-12-09T15:00:44Z

The Washington Post reported Monday about a 2003 Secret Service report which indicates that its security checkpoints had been breached at least 91 times since 1980, including at least eight instances where the intruder reached the president or another subject of protection.

On Sunday, the New York Times reported on a number of serious threats leveled against President Obama since he took office, including one from a U.S. Marine who pleaded guilty to threatening to kill the president (as well as attempted armed robbery).

This servicemember had decided that his own interpretation of his military oath to protect the country required him to identify the president as a "domestic enemy," and to take what he thought was appropriate action.

Another incident involved an airport security guard in New Jersey who had "43 guns and allegedly hollow-point bullets at home" and "was thought to be threatening the president."

This same New York Times article mentions that many suspects had "a history of violence or mental illness and easy access to guns and explosives." Others wanted to see "a 50 cal in the head soon" for President Obama or were "practicing shooting skills" so that Obama could "follow in the steps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy."

These stories should trouble us. We want security not only for the president and our top officials, but also for ourselves and our families. Yet as a nation we make it very easy for dangerous people to arm themselves.

For example, several events attended by President Obama this past summer featured protesters armed with assault rifles and semi-automatic pistols. At least one protester had a state-issued permit to carry a concealed weapon even though he had recently been released from jail.

The Fort Hood shooter had been issued a concealed carry permit by Virginia. This killer raised a number of red flags before the shooting, including several apparent contacts with a radical cleric "sympathetic" to Al Qaeda. Yet he was able to walk into a Texas gun store, pass a minimal computer background check, and easily arm himself with a "cop killer" pistol (capable of firing armor-piercing bullets) and formerly banned high-capacity ammunition magazines which allowed him to fire 20 rounds at a time without re-loading.

Even if the Fort Hood killer had been placed on the "Terrorist Watch List" because of his reportedly erratic behavior and connections to radical ideology, our weak gun laws would not have been an obstacle to his gun purchases.

While he then would have been blocked from boarding a commercial airliner, he still would have been allowed to buy as many firearms as he wanted. After 9/11, law enforcement is still prohibited from preventing individuals on the "Terrorist Watch List" from buying guns as long as they don't have some disqualifying record in the system, such as a felony or domestic violence restraining order.

And now some elected officials actually want to make it easier for "mentally incapacitated" veterans to get guns. Legislation sponsored by Sen. Richard Burr (N.C.) would give immediate access to guns to over 100,000 veterans already found to be "mentally incapacitated, deemed mentally incompetent, or experiencing an extended loss of consciousness."

Sen. Burr wants to take these individuals out of the "prohibited purchaser" category in the Brady background check system even though professional Veterans Affairs personnel made those competency determinations after hearing medical evidence and following a rigorous system which protects due process.

Making it harder for dangerous people to get guns should be part of our nation's security policy. We should do all we can to protect our families and communities from gun violence, along with helping make it easier to protect the President from the next breach of security by someone with far worse intentions than gaining publicity for crashing a White House party.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

White House CEO Visit List: See Which Execs Dined With Obama

2009-12-03T10:18:16Z

The White House has made a quiet but extensive effort to reach out to corporate executives in a series of dinners and lunches at the White House with President Barack Obama and off-site at local restaurants with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers and Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.

Denise Dennis: Obama-nation: From Hope to Cynicism

2009-11-30T17:28:05Z

"Is it not time to awaken from the deceitful dream of a golden age, and to adopt as a practical maxim for our political conduct that we, as well as other inhabitants of the globe, are yet remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue?" --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers, No. 6

In the past two months, I have spoken with Obama supporters across the spectrum of gender, race, class, geography and age who supported, worked for and still believe in President Obama. While they applaud his courage in pushing for health care legislation, all are, if not disappointed, puzzled by some of his decisions and choices.

The President of the United States is neither a dictator nor Santa Claus; he cannot dictate what he wants and have Congress automatically fall in line, nor can he open a bag and miraculously grant our wishes. The President is our leader, though, and we count on him to lead and fight for what he believes in.

As Hamilton pointed out, we are not a nation of perfect wisdom and virtue. Our government operates on a system of checks and balances. Even that system, however, does not always work. For example, George W. Bush had eight long years to embroil the United States in two wars and wreck the economy; and Congress--Republicans and Democrats alike with a few exceptions--did nothing to stop him. It will require more than eleven months or even eight years to undo the damage inflicted on the United States by Bush/Cheney.

Americans who voted for Obama to clean up the mess left by Mr. Bush, believed he could work wonders in his first year--and since he has not--are now turning from hope to cynicism. Even his most ardent supporters are now asking themselves whether, instead of following in the footsteps of such transformative Presidents as Lincoln and FDR, President Obama is following Buchanan and Hoover, the timid men who preceded them.

Some of the people I spoke with blame the President's staff, particularly Rahm Emmanuel, for giving him bad advice; some blame the media for their predilection for controversy and their dismal failure to question the absurdities spread by those who would like to see Obama fail; still others believe the President is relying too heavily on the recommendations of his economic and military advisors who are unwilling to think out of the box; and one sixty-two year old woman wondered whether the President she worked so hard to elect is simply another calculating politician who said what he had to say in order to get elected.

The areas of concern to the President's supporters I spoke with are the economy: specifically, his selection of Timothy Geither, former head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, to be his Treasury Secretary; and his selection of advisor Larry Summers, a holdover from the Clinton Administration, who with Robert Rubin shares responsibility for repealing the Glass-Steagall Act.

The fact that irresponsible financial institutions like Goldman Sachs received bailout money--without conditions--but failed to extend loans to needy mid-and small businesses that support jobs, as they were supposed to have done, is particularly disappointing. Geithner might have saved the country from complete financial collapse, but he is also the regulator who for years failed to regulate Wall Street, thereby contributing to its near-collapse.

The perception in Middle America is that by relying on Mr. Geithner, the President is not acting on behalf of Americans who've lost their pensions and savings, their homes and businesses. With so many people suffering, Geithner's argument that, if the so-called wizards of finance were not allowed to keep their obscene bonuses, they would leave their jobs--is lame. Imposing conditions on the bailout money would have called their bluff and, if they threatened to leave--the President and Congress should have let them go. Standing up to Wall Street would have spoken volumes.

The people I spoke with supported the stimulus because they thought it would benefit Main Street by stimulating the economy. They blame Geithner for protecting his peers on Wall Street rather than helping Americans who are victims of their in-your-face excesses. From the perspective of average Americans, the distribution of stimulus money appears to be a variation on the GOP's "trickle-down" economics--taking care of the wealthiest Americans, in the hope that crumbs will trickle down to the middle and lower classes.

FDR understood that putting Americans back to work was an economic--and psychological--necessity. He knew that working--even with meager pay--has a positive psychological effect on human beings. It isn't enough to extend unemployment benefits--Americans want to work! The New Deal didn't end the Depression, but through creative programs like the CCC, WPA, and TVA, Americans were on the move again; they were earning wages, there was activity afoot and with it the sense that all would turn out well. Also, when one program didn't work, Mr. Roosevelt discarded it and tried another--he kept trying.

Job creation--not bailouts for billionaires--will get the country rolling again.
Another major area of concern and dismay are the costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Candidate Obama never promised to end the war in Afghanistan. During the primary and general elections, he repeatedly stated that while he would end the war in Iraq, he believed the real war was in Afghanistan and that he would prosecute it.

Now, however, Afghanistan is morphing into a monstrous Vietnam look-alike, where we sacrifice thousands of American lives and vast resources to a losing cause. Our military is already stretched beyond its limits, men and women are being deployed over and over again without regard to their physical and mental health, and we cannot afford the financial cost of the war--one million dollars per soldier.

The Afghan government has proven to be corrupt and unreliable, their election was questionable, and we have no guarantees that their military will be able to assume control after we leave. Americans are losing confidence.

Rather than being remembered for his historic achievements like passing the Voting Rights Act and Medicare, President Lyndon Johnson is remembered more for the disaster that was Vietnam. President Obama's supporters fear he is headed in the same direction as LBJ and that Afghanistan, not health care reform, will be his Waterloo.

Everyone I listened to still believes--or wants to believe--in President Obama, but is concerned that if he doesn't act and invest stimulus money in jobs for middle class Americans (after having saved Wall Street); if health care reform does not include low-cost, government-run insurance and legislation to regulate the insurance industry; and if Americans keep returning from Afghanistan in flag-draped coffins--the change they voted for will be merely a "deceitful dream," as Hamilton wrote. Hope is turning to doubt and cynicism--and it could easily turn to despair.

Neither Lincoln nor FDR resolved the enormous challenges that faced the United States during their first months or even years of their administrations, yet they went on to become two of our greatest Presidents. The whole story of Obama's Presidency has yet to be written.

Get HuffPost Eyes&Ears on Facebook and Twitter!

Rahm Emanuel's 50th Birthday: What Does He Want? (PHOTOS)

2009-11-29T07:50:21Z

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is turning 50 today and we'd like to wish him the happiest of birthdays. We also noticed that the silver fox has spent a lot of time whispering in others' ears--not like, that, gosh! But we think he's probably been dropping hints about what gifts he wants his special day. What do you think? Does Rahm want a new set of golf clubs? A Snuggie? A new suit? A health care bill? Take a look at these hush-hush photos and tell us what you'd buy for Rahm in the comments.

Get HuffPost Style on Twitter and Facebook!

White House Party Crashers Met President, May Face Criminal Charges (PHOTOS)

2009-11-27T11:51:34Z

The White House released a picture today of Michaele Salahi shaking hands with the president despite earlier reports that the couple who allegedly crashed the state dinner never came in contact with Obama.

This revelation comes just hours after the Secret Service took responsibility for the breech. Director Mark Sullivan told the AP that his agency failed to verify whether the couple was invited to the party and expressed his deep concern and embarrassment. He went on to say that measures have been taken to ensure this will not happen again.

Despite that, the Secret Service has not ruled out bringing charges against Tareq and Michaele Salahi. The agency maintains they were not on the guest list despite protestations from the couple, who are auditioning for the Bravo reality show "The Real Housewives of DC", that they did not crash the party.

"As this moves closer to a criminal investigation there's less that we can say," spokesman Jim Mackin said. "I don't want to jeopardize what could be a criminal investigation. We're not leaving any option off the table at this point."

No specific charges were mentioned but the Salahis lawyer, Paul Gardner, claims the couple were indeed invited and that there is no risk of punishment. He posted a comment on Facebook saying, "My clients were cleared by the White House, to be there."

William Bradley: Heads Should Roll Over Obama State Dinner Security Breach

2009-11-27T10:25:22Z

It turns out to be shockingly easy to assassinate President Barack Obama.

In a fabulous show of security, it emerged late Wednesday that a pair of reality show contestants succeeded in crashing the Obamas' first state dinner. One posted photos of the couple with Vice President Joe Biden and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who she referred to as "Ron," on her Facebook page.

Amusing though it may seem, this situation is very serious, and totally unacceptable. Heads should roll over this.

President Barack Obama hosted Prime Minister Singh of the Republic of India at a State Dinner on November 24, 2009.

It's great that his Secret Service detail liked Obama enough to give him the watch they wear for his 46th birthday two years ago, a watch he wears constantly -- it's a terrific watch, I have one -- but this is ridiculous.

Especially since Obama, the first black president, assailed by right-wing extremists as illegitimate, gets far more death threats than any previous president.

The guy, who easily penetrated White House security, looks like a total dweeb. Not that appearances mean much. But the reality is that the woman, who also easily penetrated White House security, could have been a serious threat, too.

Let me tell you a little story.

As a political writer, I have frequently penetrated various security schemes to get to a principal. I'm recalling now a cover story I did for the LA Weekly a decade ago on Michael Milken, the infamous global financier. His handlers, Democrats all, imagined I was out to demolish him. Not exactly so. I viewed him as a flawed genius. But they granted no access. So I took to finding out where he would be, showing up there, and chatting with him.

A spokeswoman for Bravo says the couple who crashed a White House state dinner were trying to get on a reality TV show.

In the end, I easily penetrated his big dinner at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, despite not having an invitation. What I did have was one of my Armani suits and an authoritative yet polite attitude. Even though Milken's security was seemingly everywhere.

It was child's play, actually, and, notwithstanding his vaunted, and very high-priced, Hollywood security detail, I ended up talking with Milken for 20 minutes as his handlers looked on in dismay.

A skilled person can nose around any situation. It's the role of security to minimize the ability to do that.

It's never occurred to me to penetrate a state dinner at the White House, where I've been several times with appropriate clearance during the Bill Clinton days. I've been to a great many snazzy events, and my observation is that they generally do not live up to their billing, though of course it's always nice to be there. Except when it's a bore.

But if I lived on the East Coast rather than the West Coast, and cared about not being invited to the first state dinner of the Obama era, I see now that I've been missing out.

Evidently all you need is a very nice suit, a pretty blonde, and a bit of attitude. None of which are all that hard to pull off.

So, how could this go very badly for America?

Let's count the ways.

Death threats are mounting against Obama and liberal Democrats. Watch Fox News commentator Glenn Beck "role play" an assassination of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

One could deploy a biological weapon such as anthrax or a radiological weapon. Yet, the reality is that one would not have to be able to do any of that to assassinate President Obama. A fairly pudgy far right blogger, or a benighted admirer of Al Qaeda, would still be able to pull that off.

All that is needed is to get within a few feet of the president.

And it does not require a gun.

Frankly, even the yutz who accompanied the blonde in crashing Obama's first state dinner could have wreaked havoc. We see pix of the couple with Biden and Emanuel. Their deaths would have been disrupting enough.

Now, the White House says that there was no danger for the president because everyone went through a magnetometer.

That's actually rather amusing.

You don't need a gun to kill the president. You don't even need a fork or a knife -- and those were available on every table at that state dinner -- to pull off an assassination. All you need is a few feet of access and a pair of strong and knowledgeable hands.

Now, I don't want to unnecessarily alarm people. But this president has done any number of things to seriously piss off a great many folks.

From the international far left, in the form of Islamic jihadists who have designs on Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, to the domestic far right, which feverishly imagines that Obama isn't really an American at all, but is instead a fraud who owes his election to the manipulation of ACORN and answers to radical Islam. It's all nonsense, but it's dangerous nonsense.

The couple who crashed a White House dinner shouldn't need legal help, an attorney who knows them said Thursday, as the Secret Service remained quiet publicly about the incredible security breach.

I worry about Obama. The far right in this country -- which increasingly dominates the Republican Party (over 40% believe that Obama isn't really an American, and that the relatively powerless ACORN, somehow, bizarrely, stole the election for him) -- is bent on painting him as a "Manchurian Candidate" other.

The jihadist far left -- or is it really far right? -- is coming to realize that Obama is their worst nightmare. He is America's first black president, with an unusual name and an obvious affinity for the "other." Since he is the "other."

As Rachel Maddow pointed out a few months ago, when she merely replayed an assassination fantasy of an increasingly famous broadcaster, the notion of violence and even assassination is being played up in our political "discourse."

Both extremes -- the Glenn Becks and the Osama bin Ladens -- want this president gone. Both extremes are, whether they acknowledge it or not, setting the stage to rationalize an assassination.

If I were in the White House, given the overall situation and the extraordinary security lapses of this first state dinner, I would be sending some folks to guard snow plows in Antarctica this weekend. The snow plows that aren't being used in vain to try to stop ice shelves from breaking off into the ocean, that is. The stakes are simply too high to be nice about this.

You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Phantom America, Thanks For Nothing!

2009-11-26T17:44:05Z

The heart that struggles with disappointment and sadness believes too easily that hope is a lie, a fraud, another hustler's pitch to the next sucker walking down the street. Disillusionment with Obama and the Democrats can turn dark in just this way. The audacity of hope is really the asperity of a hoax, says the wounded heart, and we're just the latest crowd to fall for the same old three-card monte.

"I know thee, I have found thee, & I will not let thee go," wrote William Blake in America: A Prophecy. "Thou art the image of God who dwells in darkness of Africa; And thou art fall'n to give me life in regions of dark death." Meaning what? It could mean that we're a land born of slavery, a nation that made a Faustian bargain for its independence.

Those who are disappointed with the President's leadership - I'm often among them - might do well to remember that he had the real audacity to speak these words to our country about its beloved Declaration of Independence: "The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery."

The President was right - although, as Elvis Costello observed, "there's no such thing as an original sin." That cynical tradeoff, that dream of freedom bought on the slavery of others, had been made many times before 1776 and has been made many times since. Those of us who would judge the Founding Fathers (not a Mother among them) would do well to note how many times each day we purchase our freedom on the backs of slaves - in Third World sweatshops and North American ghettos, in the sinking islands of the South Pacific and the carnage of bombed wedding parties on Afghan highways.

And, though this is the time where we're supposed to give thanks, even this holiday could be considered an illusion. That first settlement of 102 radical British separatists blew it from the start. Half of them died during that first winter. We idealize their Native American rescuers as kindly, Rousseauian "noble savages," but the Wampanoag only saved the colonists because they needed allies for their power struggle against the neighboring Narragansett alliance.

So those sweet cartoons we watched as kids were just another dream. This holiday was really born when a major European f**k-up collided with some indigenous realpolitik. Stephen Vincent Benét, poet laureate of the American dream, had to invoke ghosts to praise the Founding Fathers: "When Daniel Boone goes by at night/The phantom deer arise/And all lost, wild America/Is burning in their eyes."

In this idealized land even the deer are phantoms. That must mean that the USA we were raised to love and believe in is a dream, a lie, a ghost we're trained to pursue so that we'll make good and docile citizens of the Empire, right? And for that we're supposed to give thanks? Thanks for nothing, Phantom America!

Except ...

It is by dreams that we're sustained, that we survive, that we grow. Everything we perceive about our world is a conceptual and emotional construct, a mental model we build to organize and sustain ourselves in a world of nonstop information. The negative model - the one where we've always been deceived and always will be - is just as much a phantom as the positive. We need to pick a construct that reasonably reflects what is, and what can be, and use it to improve our world. As Red America rocker (and noted philosopher) Axl Rose might say, we need to "use our illusion."

Benét's "wild America" exists. I've seen it. So have you. I saw it most recently when I appeared at the Progressive Freedom Festival in Kernville, in the wild canyon country north of Bakersfield. That's native country to two of my favorite singers, Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, two poets of our phantom dreams. Bakersfield is also home to Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez and who I had the privilege of introducing at the Festival. The dream is expanding year by year.

The land in the Kern River Valley is rugged and harsh, beautiful and wild. It's a very Red America up there, an extreme right-wing nation filled with retirees and bikers and residents of the vanishing agrarian nation we were when Benét was born in 1898. Their dreams have made them "tea party" Americans, but our job isn't to condemn them. Our job is to help them understand that we share a common dream. Our job is to respect their idealism and their desire to serve something greater than themselves, even if those impulses have been deformed by twisted mental models, and to harmonize their aspirations with our own.

"My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes," sang the aforementioned (and British) Mr. Costello, using the words of his colleague Nick Lowe: "Where are the strong, in whom I trusted?" They're not in Washington, at least not often enough. But they're right here, walking among us. They are us, and they carry the dream of freedom. "Let the slave grinding at the mill, run out into the field," wrote Blake in that poem. "Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in the bright air."

"Life is not lost by dying," said Benét, "life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways." That's what happens when you lose your dreams. By all means, let's keep the pressure on Barack and Rahm and Harry and all the rest. Let's play the game the way it must be played. But personally, I'll keep repeating that question of Costello's and Lowe's, as dated and naïve as it may sound to jaded ears: What is so funny about peace, love, and understanding?

America, land of phantoms and illusions, the poets and singers have read your palm. You've had hard days in the past and more are on their way. But you have your dreams and they must never be lost. They are beautiful, they are real, and at our most precious moments they are true. They sustain us.

I will love and pursue this dream. I will see reality as precisely as I can, but I will believe. And I'll offer these words of thanks:

I know thee, I have found thee, and I will not let thee go.
___________________

Related: Fourth of July post - "The Bells Say, 'You Cannot Love the Nation If You Do Not Love the Land'"

RJ Eskow blogs when he can at:

A Night Light
The Sentinel Effect: Healthcare Blog

Read more HuffPost Thanksgiving coverage and commentary