The Zong

Actually, don’t kid yourself. There were always two.

With Edwards out of the race, my vote for Edwards in the primary seems like it’s gonna be a little tough to pull off, and I guess I won’t be finishing my voter’s guide to the primary because it’s pretty clear at this point that Barack Obama is far, far more progressive than Hillary Clinton.

It’s a disappointing development, to be sure. Edwards was never a perfect candidate, but he evolved into one of the most progressive presidential candidates that this country has ever seen. Mother Jones has a nice little obituary for his presidential campaign:

Edwards staked out clear and progressive positions on health care, poverty, labor, and economic stimulus weeks and sometimes months before Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton did. He took standard Democratic positions, but bled them of their prevarications and their hesitancy and, yes, their cowardice. He took the rhetoric of the Democratic Party and gave it backbone. In New Hampshire, I heard him compare at length the economic struggle of one hard-working family with the insane annual salary of a corporate CEO. He was the only serious presidential contender I’ve ever seen that was willing to engage in open and unapologetic class warfare.

As a result, he repeatedly pulled his competitors for the Democratic nomination to the left. In fact, this may have hurt him: Obama and Clinton adopted his polices and to some degree, his rhetoric. With little substantive difference with the frontrunners, he didn’t get the media coverage he deserved (He got it from Mother Jones!), but his fingerprints will remain on this race and possibly on the next presidency.

I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. It’s crappy to think that Edwards’ campaign was doomed from the beginning because the media simply decided who was going to be a viable candidate, and although he may never be president, there will be a lot of room in an Obama or a Clinton cabinet for Edwards, whose desire to fuck up greedy corporations might fit in nicely at the Justice Department.

Anyhow, this is the second time in a year or so that I’ve had my heart broken by a Southern Democrat. I guess it’s time to start looking northward for a leader. Best of luck to you and yours, Senator Obama.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot: Suck it, Rudy!

As someone who became hyper-aware of the difficulties facing the uninsured and underinsured American (by force) a few years back. This issue is pretty close to the most important thing on the agenda for me looking at the presidential race. Again, it slips down to number 4 on my list because of the massive similarities between the democratic candidates, but unlike environmental and energy issues, these three health care plans are actually pretty different, and much to the dismay of myself and others, I have to admit that Hillary is right: only two of them are universal health care plans.

Before getting into specifics, I have to briefly cover my own idealistic transformation on this issue. I believed for a long time, and continue to believe, that the only real permanent solution to this problem is the dreaded single-payer system of health care. I used to be very vocal about it, because I can’t really see how anyone in the whole country doesn’t appreciate the value of such a system; Liberals are for it because it covers everyone and makes the entire population healthier, and conservatives SHOULD like it because it takes a huge financial burden off of the shoulders of their old flame, Big Business. Alas, due to an insanely strong insurance and pharmaceutical lobby and the conservatives’ creed involving not taxing the rich, it has become clear that the single-payer system isn’t gonna happen overnight. Thus enters the great compromises offered by our three contestants:

Barack Obama is a great speaker. He really, really is. I have a lot of faith in his ability to lead this country and will vote for him in the general election without a shred of remorse or reservation, if it comes to that. That said, after reading his health care plan, I’m unhappy to report that it probably the weakest of the three. Short on actual numbers and long on pie-in the sky, here’s the basic rundown:

• Guaranteed eligibility. No American will be turned away from any insurance plan because of illness or pre-existing conditions.
• Comprehensive benefits. The benefit package will be similar to that offered through Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), the plan members of Congress have. The plan will cover all essential medical services, including preventive, maternity and mental health care.
• Affordable premiums, co-pays and deductibles.
• Subsidies. Individuals and families who do not qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP but still need financial assistance will receive an income-related federal subsidy to buy into the new public plan or purchase a private health care plan.
• Simplified paperwork and reined in health costs.
• Easy enrollment. The new public plan will be simple to enroll in and provide ready access to coverage.
• Portability and choice. Participants in the new public plan and the National Health Insurance Exchange (see below) will be able to move from job to job without changing or jeopardizing their health care coverage.
• Quality and efficiency. Participating insurance companies in the new public program will be required to report data to ensure that standards for quality, health information technology and administration are being met.

This summary sounds great. The problem is, if you read the details of the plan, for me at least, it raises many more questions than it answers. While the plan does an impressive job of gathering important statistics which tell the sad story of our country’s broken health care system (you can download the PDF and all its endnotes here), I get kind of tired of reading the following solutions to these problems:

Obama will require providers to report preventable medical errors, and support hospital and physician practice improvement to prevent future occurrences.

Obama will accelerate efforts to develop and disseminate best practices, and align reimbursement with provision of high quality health care.

Obama will require that plans that participate in the new public plan, Medicare or the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) utilize proven disease management programs.

There is a lot of this kind of rhetoric in the Obama plan, and even without getting into specifics, it’s kind of easy to see that these types of measures suffer from a special kind of optimism that is easy to have when you don’t have to describe exactly how you’re going to get the stuff done. As far as I can tell, the plan doesn’t detail much other than just to say Obama’s gonna “require” and “support” and “accelerate” a lot of shit without getting into anything more specific than that. Do the other plans have this kind of language? Hell yes, but I happen to think they do a better job of qualifying their promises. In addition, many of the stated measures involve a lot of meddling with hospitals, requiring more paperwork and relying on “universal standards” that don’t exist yet. Who decides what the best way to treat a rare type of cancer is, and if someone disagrees (like, say a respected oncologist), you’re gonna penalize his hospital for treating someone differently? I’m all for big government, but this sounds kinda like the way George W. Bush tried to tackle our education problems. I’ll call it “No Tumor Left Behind.”

A couple of large, specific problems I have with the Obama plan are his lack of a personal mandate to get covered and his National Insurance Exchange. Taking the latter in hand first, it is described thus:

The Exchange will act as watchdog and help reform the private insurance market by creating rules and standards or participating insurance plans to ensure fairness and to make individual coverage more affordable and accessible.

As much as I love watchdog groups, I generally like them in the form of independent nonprofits (see: John Edwards’ plan) rather than in the form of government-run sinkholes for money that should be used for subsidizing public health care. This calls to attention the size of the subsidies endorsed by Obama’s plan. While all three candidates plan to subsidize insurance for those who can’t afford it, Obama’s plan actually subsidizes much less than the other two (Obama does not offer subsidies to small businesses and will not commit to a specific expansion of SCHIP and Medicare), and because of its lack of a mandate, the cost of health care will actually be more expensive for those who need it.

Speaking of mandates, which are truly people’s new favorite awesome when it comes to health care, Obama’s plan will leave approximately 8.5 million Americans uninsured (as stated by ontheissues.org), which is a great improvement over 46 million, but certainly isn’t universal. It’s true that Massachusetts’ new health care mandate is meeting with mixed results, but it’s early yet. The simple fact is that, for any of these crazy plans to be affordable, everyone has to share the responsibility, and that’s kind of an immutable fact. Do I wish it wasn’t so? Sure, but it is so, and So Obama comes in last in this horse race.

Between Clinton and Edwards, there are far fewer differences. Both point to specifics when it comes to not only their plans to reform healthcare, but also how they plan to do it. Both plans call for “shared responsibility,” which I really like, and Clinton even has a balance sheet detailing the financing of it. (I’m skeptical of its accuracy, but I guess Hillary Clinton probably knows a little more about the cost of national health care than I do.) Both of them plan to subsidize low-income families using a tax credit, and John Edwards actually promises to refund tax dollars to those who make so little that they don’t pay income tax. This means that, to begin with, the plans favored by both the candidates will cost more than Obama’s plan subsidy-wise. Clinton has as much as guaranteed new taxes to pay for it (really, a repeal of the Bush tax cuts), which I think is inevitable, but Edwards has a creative, and hopefully not completely unrealistic way of bringing overall health care costs down that he refers to as the Health Care Markets. As described by his campaign:

The U.S. government will help states and groups of states create regional Health Care Markets, non-profit purchasing pools that offer a choice of competing insurance plans.

I can actually see a lot of value behind this idea, mostly in the spirit that it will line up the available plans for all Americans and allow people to make an educated choice based upon straight comparisons. I’m assuming that, though he doesn’t explicitly state it, he’ll try to make his public health care plan a lot more appealing than the private ones, if not simply less expensive. In addition, it will force private insurers to compete with the public plan, which is good for everyone, and what I really like is this line:

This American solution will reward the sector that offers the best care at the best price. Over time, the system may evolve toward a single-payer approach if individuals and businesses prefer the public plan.

This whole thing is pretty ambitious and will require a lot of government administration to work, I admit, but it seems to make a lot more sense than Obama’s national insurance exchange. Most importantly, the option for the plan to evolve into a single-payer system makes it that much more appealing.

That said, I’m not an idiot. I know that none of these plans is probably going to work out, at least not the way they’re being outlined, but I’m trying to figure out which one I think is the most likely to work. Are you ready for this? I think it’s Hillary’s plan.

Hillary Clinton’s failure to achieve universal health coverage as First Lady is widely pointed to as a liability, but I’m actually of the opinion that she learned her lesson. After reading her health care plan, which is quite simply the most detailed and possibly the most realistic of the three, I’m kind of convinced that, with the right congressional support, she could get it done. There isn’t any fancy nonprofit watchdog scheme, and I think that the idea of a health-care menu is pretty stupid, but I’m trying to look past the gimmicks here. The fact is that, while I find choosing health care options to be much more important than choosing what I want on my next burger, the Clinton plan may actually be the best of the three just based upon its simplicity; she plans to tax the rich to cover the poor, and create a public plan to compete with the private plans. Sounds pretty similar to the other two, but the key here is that the plan options will simply be a broad expansion of the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program. I’ve always kind of thought that when candidates say “You’ll have the same health care plan that Congress does!” that it’s a bunch of gimmicky bullshit, but the fact is that enrollment in the FEHB will be like national enrollment in a group health care plan, with the public plan (essentially an expanded version of Medicare) listed as an option, and I guess that seems like a more direct, easier-to-get-through-congress type of approach.

It’s fair to mention here that Edwards was in front of the pack on this issue (again), and all the similarities you’ll see in the three plans are probably a result of the other campaigns simply trying to match what he outlined at the outset. This is yet another reason that Edwards seems like a great candidate to me, and it certainly seems as if universal health care is among the more important causes to him. In stark contrast to what Obama is proposing, I think a lot of thought and tough decisions were made when formulating the Edwards plan, and his campaign came up with a great (if not difficult to implement) compromise. As much as all us sane folks want a single-payer system in this country, it’s simply not realistic at this point, but I do believe that the Edwards plan is the one plan that will push towards single-payer in the future.

That said, it’s important to get something done, and I just think that Hillary’s plan, though she piggybacks Edwards on many points, is much more of an achievable goal. I’m certainly not voting for her in the primary, but if this was a one-issue election and that issue was health care, I’d have to consider it.

Next Up - Education.  Who will truly make sure our kids is learning?

I believe the definition of a Progressive, in the political arena, is someone who believes that the purpose of government is to do for the People what they cannot do for themselves (to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln). I count myself among the growing ranks of bleeding-hearts who value common sense over blind idealism these days, and I really do believe that the Progressive Liberal, insofar as he or she wants to see this country improve after the next election, is the new sheriff in the Democratic party.

With no apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, because fuck that guy, you know you’re a Progressive if any or all of the following are true:

• You believe that a government that only serves the interests of the wealthiest of its people is worse than no government at all
• You’re pissed that there are more Americans without access to health care (around 46 million) than there are Canadians in the whole universe (33 million, all of whom do have it)
• You think that Lou Dobbs has a big secret
• You think big governments are sexy, as long as they’re big in all the right places
• You want to leave Nancy Pelosi alone in a room for 24 hours with 100 members of the Sierra Club. (The San Francisco Chapter of the Sierra Club)
• You understand what Howard Dean was screaming about

I’m offering up some opinions about the upcoming presidential primary as it applies to a few core issues. In the spirit of what I believe the American government can and should help its people out with, the most important issues to me are, by order of priority and reverse order of coverage:

1. Campaign Finance Reform
2. National Security
3. Education
4. Universal Health Care
5. The Environment

There are lots of issues, many of which may be more important to you, but these are, in my not-so-humble opinion, the primary issues facing this government in the nameof representing a people; issues that most people can’t go out and fix for themselves, with some exceptions.

Before I launch into this discussion, I should disclose that I’ll be voting for John Edwards in this primary. As much as I love Barack Obama, and as much as it pains me that I’ll be voting for a white man when I could just as easily cast my vote for a woman or minority candidate, I paraphrase Hillary Clinton herself: This election shouldn’t be about race or gender. This is true, and I believe Edwards embraces the progressive ideal more than either Hillary or Obama. While it looks to be shaping up as a two-person race in the Democratic party, I can only hold out hope that despite massive disparity in campaign money and media exposure, Edwards will somehow close the gap as his message gets out there a little more. It is for that reason that I’ll be looking at the three candidates’ takes on each issue, and will offer an honest opinion on all of them.

The environment is last on the above list of priorities only because all three candidates are pretty similar on it, and I believe it is the one thing that the People can probably address as well as or better than the government. Surely, I’d love to see legislation making it illegal to manufacture cars that get less than 100 mpg, but in reality, if consumers stopped buying cars that are so terrible for the planet, then the government wouldn’t even have to get involved. Before you start pegging me as a libertarian, I should point out that I’m still all for strict emissions standards, but I also really believe that nothing will really change until the general population of this country learns how to control itself.

That said, let’s take a look at our three contestants, and what they plan to do about the environment. As you’d probably assume, all three candidates have exceptionally similar platforms when it comes to energy and the environment. It’s kind of a no-brainer, I suppose, and all three have committed to reducing greenhouse emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 (Edwards was actually the first to commit to this), all three are for cap-and-trade carbon credits, and all three plan to require energy companies to draw 25% of their total output from renewable resources by 2025. In addition, all three are looking towards new global treaties, making federal buildings more energy efficient, and all three probably own hybrids and use energy-saving lightbulbs. John Edwards made his campaign carbon-neutral early last year, and I think the other two have followed suit.

I remember being mystified to hear that all three candidates are big ethanol supporters, although I’m sure it had something to do with the importance of the Iowa Caucuses. As it turns out, all three acknowledge that corn ethanol is only a stepping stone towards a larger biofuel revolution and not a real long-term answer. I hope they are all being sincere about it.

One difference between the candidates can be seen their support for newer coal plants. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both support “clean coal” technology, which in my mind is just a nod to the coal industry. The very term itself was invented by the coal industry lobby, but the truth of it is, no type of coal is actually clean. There’s a decent look at the rundown on clean coal over at grist.org. John Edwards has come out against coal plants entirely unless they employ carbon-capture technology, which definitely sets him apart from the other two in my mind.

Another major difference between the three candidates can be found in their stance on nuclear power. Obama and Clinton are both somewhat noncommittal on the subject, with Obama saying he’s open to it and Clinton saying she’s “agnostic” (no, really) about them. Edwards once again is the dissenter, saying he’s against nuclear power plants because of inadequacies in our ability to dispose of the waste they generate, a big deal for most environmentalists. Here are their three answers to the same question at a CNN YouTube debate:

Edwards: Wind, solar, cellulose-based biofuels are the way we need to go. I do not favor nuclear power. We haven’t built a nuclear power plant in decades in this country. There is a reason for that. The reason is it is extremely costly. It takes an enormous amount of time to get one planned, developed and built. And we still don’t have a safe way to dispose of the nuclear waste. It is a huge problem for America over the long term.

Obama: I actually think that we should explore nuclear power as part of the energy mix. There are no silver bullets to this issue. We have to develop solar. I have proposed drastically increasing fuel efficiency standards on cars, an aggressive cap on the amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted.

Clinton: I’m agnostic about nuclear power. John is right, that until we figure out what we’re going to do with the waste and the cost, it’s very hard to see nuclear as a part of our future. But that’s where American technology comes in. Let’s figure out what we’re going to do about the waste and the cost if we think nuclear should be a part of the solution.

Personally, I love the idea that one day we’ll be able to use nuclear resources to provide clean and safe energy, but once again, I’m with Edwards on this one: I think that until we’ve proven that we can provide the proper infrastructure for it, the environmental risks far outweigh its benefits.

Apart from these issues, there aren’t a ton of differences. Edwards and Obama seem to have a more detailed summary of the economic ramifications, and each candidate has his or her own little flourishes (gimmicks?), like John Edwards’ GreenCorps sector of the PeaceCorps, and Barack Obama’s phaseout of incandescent lightbulbs, but the bottom line is that this is a pretty easy subject on which democratic candidates to hang their hats. I know it’s kinda lame to say you were into something before it was cool, but it is true that Edwards was out in front on most of these issues, and was the first to outline his plan, many tenets of which are now being echoed by both Obama and Clinton.

You can find each one of the plans below. Read them for yourself and make a decision.

Clinton

Edwards

Obama

If Edwards loses in South Carolina on Saturday (which I imagine he will), there’s a possibility he won’t even make it to Super Tuesday. I guess that will make this series pretty much pointless, but a man can hope.  Next up: Universal Health Care.  Stay tuned.

Is there a more boring day for progressives than the fucking Michigan primary? I was just sitting here thinking about how hilarious it is that, for the purposes of selecting a representative to be leader of the free fucking world, Michigan isn’t even part of the United States today. Unless you’re a Republican, in which case, the following two tidbits about your possible front-runners should prove somewhat hilarious.

Wearing his lucky green sweater and clutching his lucky penny, McCain visited a polling place early in Traverse City.

“It’s going to be a very close race,” he told reporters who outnumbered voters at the polling site shortly after voting began. “We’re confident because of the enthusiasm at the town hall meetings and the rallies but we’ve got a long way to go.”

That’s right. John McCain has a lucky green sweater and a lucky penny, and evidently the Straight-Talk Express runs on eye of newt and magic farts. I don’t know much about the penny, and maybe it’s an Indian Head or something, but someone should tell the man that lucky charms should usually have some sort of rare quality about them. This isn’t to say I haven’t had a few lucky pennies in my day. In fact, I think I had close to 1,000,000,000 of them. When I was seven years old. I guess the sweater is fine because McCain is kind of Irish-sounding, and I guess praying to Leprechauns for a win in Michigan is pretty much the same as anything.

But today is exciting in one place: Mitt Romney’s Magic Underwear!

Romney, stressing his experience running the Salt Lake City Olympics as well as a venture capitalist, has called McCain a pessimist. He has said he would restore Detroit’s lost power by lifting the regulatory burden on companies and boosting research to generate new jobs.

“I spent my life in the private sector. I didn’t spend my life in government. If you only talked, and didn’t get things done, you got fired,” Romney told supporters at the rally.

I guess that’s pretty inspirational. I mean, Obama’s speech in Iowa was pretty great, but it doesn’t really compare to “If you only talked and didn’t get things done, you got fired.” Let’s be honest here: wouldn’t America be awesome if it was being led by an arrogant, rich executive asshole? If Romney wins the presidency, I’m sure his first act will be to make every man, woman and child in the whole country interview for their jobs.

The tides are changing, my friends. See those large waves wash over the prow of this little ship. Watch so many old precepts, records, and platitudes be caught in those cold dark waters and be taken over board, sinking to the deepest darkest recesses of those rocky ocean bottom of the historical record. Look out, it’s a revisionist kraken! Augh!

All kidding aside, these days are heady days for me. With the results of the Iowa caucuses in the bag, and my favorite team of all time having just completed a sweep of the season, the the times, they are a-changing, and the old guard, all those little Shulas and Clintons, are being slowly but surely etched into the history books. I couldn’t be more pleased.

Considering the virtual cacophony of vitrolic diatribes that occupies this space on a regular basis about Bay Area “sports” “teams”, I feel it is my solemn duty as someone with a rabid love of the New England Patriots and Boston Red Sox, as well as a precious login to this blog, to gravely and seriously impart some words to the rest of the nation’s fans, as well as to the supporters of HIllary Clinton:

Neener, neener, neeeeener.

No, I take that back. That’s not fair. I’ll admit it. It’s been a good year. In fact, as far as sports is concerned. it’s been a pretty great decade for me so far. And as someone who prides themselves on his basic fairness and love of the true roots of the games involved, I concede there has been some unfortunate events.

There’s a lot of talk of ‘change’ in politics and in sports, and more often than not, the personnel in both are shuffled around so rapidly and with such vigor that it seems to encapsulate some type of hope that change is like a thermostat: dial up the right number, and the roomer will get hotter or colder, left or right, win or lose the championship. But that’s not really the way it works, is it? Some organizations in recent years have tried to dial up change like that and have failed miserably.

Let me impart for our admittedly Bay-centric audience something that may catch their eye a bit more than my ranting, from SI.com’s Peter King, on the recent retirement of Forty Niners great Bryant Young:

“San Francisco DL Bryant Young had just one tackle in the last game of his life, the 49ers’ loss at Cleveland, but the game has lost an excellent player and an even better ambassador. Young, as classy a guy as the NFL employs, bent down at midfield after the game and became emotional, his 14-year career over. “I was just taking a minute there, giving thanks and realizing how blessed I’ve been to play a game every kid grows up dreaming of playing,” he said via cell phone afterward. “All good things must come to an end, and my life has been blessed because I’ve been able to be a pro football player.”

That, my friends, is what sports is about. Effort. Dreams. Perseverance. Gamesmanship.

Brady just broke the single season TD record, Moss broke the TD reception record, and in the age of salary cap and free agency, they went undefeated, smashing that pathetic old man’s record.

Barack Obama has just won the Iowa caucus, one of the whitest state’s in the nation, on the backs of young people and independents, with a message that the status quo is not acceptable anymore.

Even Huckabee’s success is remarkable, and as the Salon implies, may have a little more to do with economics than God.

These are all remarkable achievements, regardless of where your loyalty lies. They have a long way to go to the finish line. But they have all performed a remarkable feat, and when it’s all said and done, you will talk of the days when you saw it happen.

Try and enjoy it. Pull a Bryant Young. There’s room in this party boat for all of us, from Obama fans to Bengals fans.

Except for Guiliani and Cowboys fans. Who needs those lunatics?

In case you missed it, Barack Obama woke up last night.

Perhaps just in the nick of time, the Obama of the ‘04 Democratic National Convention has shown up and thrown his hat into the presidential race. His skills as an orator have never been in question, and although he had been running what I thought was a somewhat disappointing campaign to this point, his people sure earned their paycheck in Iowa, and that speech has got to scare the shit out of the Clinton camp.

A look at the Iowa numbers suggests that far from simply appealing to younger voters, a trait boasted by just about every progressive candidate I can remember, they actually showed up for Obama at the caucuses. I think things are obviously far from settled, even if Obama takes New Hampshire, but if younger voters actually show up this year across the rest of the country, (entrance polls in Iowa showed a 5% increase over 2004 in younger voters) Obama should easily win the nomination, and the story of 2008 will be the uprising of young voters. As long as it isn’t about swing states or butterfly ballots, I’ll be just fine with that.

I’ll admit that it bothers me how much most of these political cycles are scripted; had Hillary Clinton won Iowa, I’m sure many of the stories surrounding her victory would sound very similar to those surrounding Obama’s. I’m also wary of voting for a candidate based upon a well-manufactured cult of personality, and will struggle hard to separate enthusiasm for a cause with fanaticism for a public figure who speaks really well. Nevertheless, that speech was a great one, and it might be just what’s needed to galvanize the brain-dead electorate of the last two presidential elections into doing something right for a change.

When it’s a spineless majority of assholes masquerading as public servants.

The Democrats’ yearlong fight to boost federal spending on children’s health insurance ended with a whimper Tuesday.

After coming up short in their efforts to enact a $35 billion expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) — enduring two presidential vetoes along the way — congressional Democrats signed off on Republican demands to extend the program until 2009.

So that’s it then. While approximately 10 million children live (or die) without health insurance in this country, our representatives in congress can’t seem to stop tripping over their dicks. I mean, if you thought Democrats couldn’t get anything done when they were in the minority in both houses, take a look at their track record since taking over. From the NSA’s illegal wiretapping to putting a timetable on bringing our troops home to a funding ban on family planning organizations abroad that perform abortions, our newly-minted majority can always be counted on to run from a good fight.

House Democrats are not walking away from SCHIP, said a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). For a start, the House will vote on Jan. 23 to attempt to override President Bush’s second SCHIP veto.

Moreover, the enactment of the extension does not mean Congress cannot do more, the spokesman said. “It does not preclude us from bringing up a strong, bipartisan bill,” he said. “The goal here is to cover 10 million children. That’s why discussions will continue. … If there is an opportunity to have a vote on this legislation, absolutely we will have one,” he said.

I suppose it’s time to start asking Madame Speaker’s spokesman, if not the speaker herself, some questions like: “What the fuck are the uninsured children supposed to do while you wait for the opportunity to have a vote?” Or even: “What happens if the GOP stays in the White House next year?” I guess the kids will have to figure that shit out for themselves.

Remember in 2002 when the National Intelligence Estimate said Iraq was going to use something called Weapons of Mass Destruction to whip America’s ass? I was pretty sure I remembered that, and I went and read some of it. From the “Key Judgements” comes this little tidbit, which I’m sure you’ll remember from the W. Administration’s Greatest Hits album:

“If Baghdad acquires sufficient fissile material from abroad it could make a nuclear weapon within several months to a year. “

That little clause goes right up there with “The smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud” and “We’re fighting them over there so that we don’t have to fight them over here” in the bullshit rhetoric Hall of Fame that was constructed in order to justify invading and pillaging a sovereign nation that never attacked us. At the time, the NIE was touted as a Big Fucking Deal by everyone who supported the war, including Hillary Clinton, and was given to us as pretty much hard factual evidence, even though absolutely none of it was true.

So you can imagine my joy in reading about the new NIE on Iran, which says:

“…Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb”

All political uses aside (ha ha), since the 2002 debacle, I would posit that the NIE has about as much structural integrity as this country’s bridges, but that’s never stopped the Bush Administration from using something to justify a war before, so I expected them to maybe come out and announce the creation of a bipartisan congressional committee to work out what should go in the giant holiday gift basket we’re about to send to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I mean, the NIE says all sorts of things which suggest that Iran is done being part of the Axis of Evil and is more interested in being part of the Cadre of Good Guys. To wit:

Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005. Our assessment that the program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously.

Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs.

There is plenty of bet-hedging in the report, as we are reminded that Iran probably still wants to develop nuclear weapons, and I’m sure that’s true. I want a lot of stuff too, like a swimming-pool full of scotch and strippers, but my intelligence suggests that it will be a few decades before I am able to achieve that objective. Still, you’d never know any of this hearing it from Steve Hadley who loves to read between the lines when it comes to matters of National Security.

But the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, quickly issued a statement describing the N.I.E. as containing positive news rather than reflecting intelligence mistakes.

“It confirms that we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons,” Mr. Hadley said. “It tells us that we have made progress in trying to ensure that this does not happen. But the intelligence also tells us that the risk of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon remains a very serious problem.”

“The estimate offers grounds for hope that the problem can be solved diplomatically — without the use of force — as the administration has been trying to do,” Mr. Hadley said.

In looking over the transcript, I don’t see any pauses or notes to show when Hadley had to clear his throat and cover his mouth to subdue the hysterical fucking laughter that must have been welling up inside him as he said all this. I mean, I understand how politicians learn to spin shit in their favor all the time, but are you fucking kidding me?

The revelation is at hand: It seems that a team of plucky scientists made some stem cells out of someone’s dandruff, and the Times makes it sound like it was pretty easy, ya friggin’ idiots:

All they had to do, the scientists said, was add four genes. The genes reprogrammed the chromosomes of the skin cells, making the cells into blank slates that should be able to turn into any of the 220 cell types of the human body, be it heart, brain, blood or bone. Until now, the only way to get such human universal cells was to pluck them from a human embryo several days after fertilization, destroying the embryo in the process.

Well, if that’s all you had to do, I’m glad you finally did it. Lazy showoffs.

But seriously, folks, Dana Perino is pissed that folks aren’t giving the President more credit for curing the stem cells. She’s cute when she’s angry:

“President Bush is very pleased to see the important advances in ethical stem cell research reported in scientific journals today,” White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said today. “By avoiding techniques that destroy life, while vigorously supporting alternative approaches, President Bush is encouraging scientific advancement within ethical boundaries.

That’s all well and good, only the fact is that if the Decider had decided to fund more stem cell research at the outset, we might have gotten here years ago. According to James Thompson, the guy who discovered stem cells and is therefore kind of like Satan incarnate to embryo-boosters everywhere, maybe Dana ought to remind the President that he’s actually not a scientist just yet. He’s actually kind of a jerk about this kind of thing:

Thomson, who co-discovered human embryonic stem cells in 1998, credited the president with providing some funds for work starting in 2001 but said Bush’s funding limits “represented very bad public policy as far as I’m concerned. The field has been much slower taking off than it would have been otherwise.”

So as much as I’d hate to blame the President for the years his policy has set back stem cell research in general, I guess I’ll leave that to all the families of the dead folks who’s lives would have been saved if he hadn’t tried to impose his religious beliefs on yet another scientific institution.

Imagine that you’re a farmer. Just imagine it. Now imagine that you’re a farmer in the State of Qatar. I’m not sure what you farm in Qatar, but the Wikipedia suggests that you probably farm pearls or natural gas, so your life is probably pretty peaceful. Anyhow, imagine that one day, as you sit quietly watching your herd of pearl necklace-clad natural gases serenely grazing in your fields of whatever, a giant explosion on the grounds of your farm shatters any illusions you might have that your country will remain untouched by war, bringing about memories of the colonial rule of the British and Ottoman Empires that the Wikipedia just told me about.

Then, imagine that you are told that the explosion was an errant Patriot missile, sent to your front door by the United States of America, and then you read a quote like this:

“Those things are not supposed to accidentally discharge,” said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. “It was not supposed to happen.”

I don’t know how to say “No shit, motherfucker” in Arabic, but I’m sure it sounds hilarious.

Maybe the headline is only barely HOF material, but I’m putting it up there anyhow. I wish someone at Reuters had the wherewithal to come with a headline like “Errant Patriot Bombs yet Another Islamic Nation,” but that’s neither here nor there. As it is, I think we can all agree that when someone at the Pentagon refers to any of our advanced weaponry as “those things,” it doesn’t bode well for anyone within range, much lest anyone in the entire Middle East.