Oh no you dih-uhn’t!

David Frum:

Over time, the public option will grow, setting private insurance on the road to extinction – or at best to a tightly regulated new role as the health equivalent of public utilities.

Conservatives, are you sure you wanna go there?  Really?

Last I checked, electricity in this country was extremely safe and reliable, and available to effectively everyone.  Water in this country was extremely safe and reliable, and available to effectively everyone.  Phone service in this country was extremely reliable, and available to effectively everyone.

People like to complain about their public utilities for the same reason they like to complain about the weather: it’s always there, every day, without relent.  But that’s sort of the point with utilities, isn’t it?

If you want to hear some real howling, ask people how they feel about, say, their cable tv service — something that is run much more like the current health care system.

In short, I really don’t think the GOP wants to start people thinking about what life would be like if their health insurance were as reliable, automatic, and available as their electricity, no matter where they went.

Adventures in Ethics

It’s nearly always entertaining to watch members of the D.C. cocktail circuit try to talk about — try to pretend to suggest that they practice — ethics.  The current saga has to do with the lobbying firm Bonner & Associates, and a political ethicist at American University.

See, Bonner & Associates did some lobbying for the coal industry.  Part of this lobbying consisted of sending members of congress forged letters from various grassroots environmental groups.  In these letters, these grassroots organizations opposed some new coal regulations.  Counter-intuitive, no?  Yes.  But also very effective, because, honestly, who checks into these things?

Well, somebody did this time, and Bonner & Associates got covered up in stink.  They’re currently under investigation.

To try to control the damage, head honcho Jack Bonner ballyhooed that he had retained a pro bono independent ethics advisor, who would train his people and be something of a watchdog until things were straightened out.  That advisor was Dr. James Thurber, a professor of political science and director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, where he teaches classes on ethics and lobbying.

Thurber explicitly confirmed this, adding that he was doing it because he “believes in doing the right thing.”  Admirable, no?  Ay, a very treasure-trove of ethicky goodness, sez I.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the ethics theater.  Shortly after Bonner’s announcement, Dr. Thurber took out an ad in Roll Call (a Capitol Hill insiders’ newspaper) praising Bonner for all the great teaching he had done over the past 15 years for Thurber’s CCPS program, and for . . . um, you know, hiring so many of the program’s graduates to do . . . wait for it . . . grassroots lobbying.

Riiiiiight.

This raised some questions about just how effective a watchdog Dr. Thurber would be.  So Thurber backed out, and now can’t seem to put enough distance between himself and his old buddy: he now claims, contrary to his own previous statement, that he never agreed to work with Bonner in the first place.  Bonner insists he did.

Oh!, what a tangled web we weave when we practice to make people think we give a hoot about doing the right thing while actually continuing to be utterly hootless on the matter.

My favorite part of this whole thing?  The good doctor’s reaction to the stink his Roll Call ad created.

Thurber said he’d learned his lesson.  Something about conflict of interest, you say?  Something an ethics professor should have learned in ethics grammar school, perhaps?  No, no; you’ve run off with the wrong idea.

No, the lesson he learned was if nobody knows about it, it’s ethical:

I never am going to do [ads] like this again, thanking people. I’ll do it through personal correspondence.

Them’s crackerjack ethics, Professor Thurber.  Crackerjack.

Ricky Gervais and Elmo

Courtesy of our old buddy, Ari, over at EotAW, I bring you hijinks and tomfoolery:

Deep Stupid

Hey, 2 in one week!

Today’s winner is Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC).

As you probably heard, the GOP had a bit of a problem in this week’s special election for the congressional seat from New York’s 23rd District.  The local GOP chose Dena Scozzofava as their candidate.  Meanwhile, a member of the Conservative Party — i.e., not the GOP — also decided to enter the race.

Things got weird when a lot of high-profile, movement-conservative GOP politicians trashed the GOP candidate, and backed the Conservative Party candidate.  These were people like Dick Armey, Sarah Palin, and, you guessed it, Jim DeMint.

As a result, the GOP lost the NY-23 seat . . . for the first time since before the Civil War.  And they didn’t lose it to the Conservative guy.  They lost it to the Democrat.

So now Sen. John Cornyn, who’s in charge of trying to win senate races for the GOP, is backing the less right-wing Republican in a California senate primary.  Jim DeMint, et al., have once again started trashing that candidate and backing the most right-wing candidate.

Asked to comment on this situation, Sen. DeMint said:

He [Cornyn] is trying to find candidates who can win. I’m trying to find people who can help me change the Senate.

I’m no insider to the senate’s labyrinthine ways, so can somebody explain to me how these people will help DeMint change the Senate if they can’t win election to the senate?

TMI Time

I don’t know why I’m posting this, but for some reason I feel a need to do so.

Almost exactly 10 years ago, I was diagnosed with clinical depression.  It didn’t start 10 years ago; it just wasn’t diagnosed until 10 years ago, when my brain decided it had had enough and started shutting down my body.  The depression itself is well controlled at this point.  I’ve learned some coping skills; learned how to live with it.  And my meds are well managed.  It’s no biggie.

Nonetheless I went to see my therapist, today, for the first time in about 2.5 years.

I was frustrated — again — with my complete (and pretty much life-long) social/interpersonal dysfunction.  My ineptness with people.  My knack for giving offense without knowing it.  For creeping people out and generally being rather off-putting.  My complete lostness in social situations.  Periodically, I get very frustrated with myself about it.

Today, when my therapist asked me what brought me back for a visit, and I told him, he said, “You know, Karen [my doc] and I have thought for a while that you probably have mild-to-moderate Asperger’s Syndrome.”

Not sure when they were planning on sharing this with me, but, regardless, it didn’t exactly come as a big shock.  It’s not upsetting.  It’s just one of those things that — like being told in your 30s that you’ve been clinically depressed most of your life — leaves you trying to reprocess your entire life up to that point.  Trying to re-understand it, and who you are.

So that’s what I’m doing now.  Probably will be for years to come, if the CD experience is any guide.  And for some reason I felt the need to do part of that processing by telling you poor saps about all this.

I guess that’s partly because I’ve had some pretty awkward interactions with several of you — Joe, Whit, & C-Love leap to mind — and, insofar as this sort of thing is worth knowing at all, I thought you should know.

Partly, too, it’s because this blog is one of my main sources of [simulated] social interaction, which is to say, you guys are among the nearest thing I’ve got to friends*, and this seems like the sort of thing one talks over with one’s friends.

(* Some of you, of course, I’ve known forever and actually are friends.  I don’t mean to slight that.)

Deep Stupid

Haven’t done one of these in a while, but tonight’s winner is celebrity Dem pol Lawrence O’Donnell.

O’Donnell just corrected Rachel Maddow’s pronunciation of “Scozzofava,” the last name of a congressional candidate in NY.

What makes this stupid is that O’Donnell is an almost-nightly guest and frequent guest host on MSNBC, and has never — not once — pronounced Rachel Maddow’s last name correctly.

Atta go, Larry.

Bracing, or Shocking?

In retort to Laura Ingraham’s odd claim that conservatism has been the most influential political philosophy of the past 100 years, Andrew Sullivan says:

The past 100 years? I don’t know any Hooverites who think the last century was a triumph for small government and individual liberty. Look at the size of government since 1909. Look at the level of taxation. Look at the welfare state. Look at racial civil rights. Look at the role of women.

I guess it’s good that a conservative will come right out and say conservatism opposes equality for racial minorities and women.  Opposes it just as much as it opposes (or, as Sullivan goes on to point out, at least thinks it opposes) taxes and deficits and big government and helping poor people.  Not that iconic conservatives like Bill Buckley ever bothered to keep their racial animus a secret, but most nowadays at least try to deny it.

So it’s good to hear somebody admit it so starkly, but also shocking.

It’s also interesting to hear somebody say — or at least strongly imply — that, by conservatism’s lights, individual liberty has been in decline for the past 100 years despite the huge leaps forward in personal liberty for over half of our population: blacks, women, religious minorities, and other of America’s historically most oppressed groups.

I know from reading his blog for a few years that Sullivan personally disagrees with his fellow conservatives about the race and gender stuff (and sexual orientation).  But the fact that he doesn’t try to shine conservatism’s record by just writing this stuff out of its history is refreshing — approaching unique.

Nearly all of contemporary conservatism’s leading spokespeople sacrifice history to The Great Cause, much as antebellum Southern theologians sacrificed Christianity to their Cause.

Sullivan goes on to say that, instead of the right just being rejectionist:

social change – a multi-racial society where women and gays seek and deserve full equality – should be imaginatively shaped by the right

Instead of imaginative engagement in policymaking, however, we get active disengagement from the whole legislative process; and irrational shouting about socialism and death panels instead of good-faith negotiation to make health care reform better.

And speaking of brain damage…

In the hearings Al posted about yesterday, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) apparently asked NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to apologize to Rush Limbaugh for saying Rush’s comments about Donovan McNabb were racist:

King said he’d “scoured” Rush Limbaugh’s infamous comment that the media was giving Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb too much credit because he was black and found no racism in it whatsoever — Limbaugh, said King, was calling out the media for reverse racism. Goodell and King went back and forth a bit, but King refused to budge on his position that Limbaugh was being smeared as a racist even though he’s colorblind about race. King went on to say that Goodell was being a hypocrite by failing to criticize some hip-hop stars with stakes in NFL teams.

“I don’t think anything that Rush Limbaugh said was offensive, but with Fergie and with J-Lo, they have, between the two of them, alleged that the CIA are terrorists and liars, they’ve promoted sexual abuse of women, they’ve used the N word, verbal pornography, recreational drug use, etc. And they are owners of the Dolphins. And it’s also ironic that Fergie was approved as an owner on the very day that you made your statement on Rush Limbaugh.”

Here’s the appropriate response — for any witness — to a statement like that by a United States Representative:

“It is utterly irrelevant whether you think Mr. Limbaugh’s comment was racist, sir.  He didn’t say it about you or your race, nor were you in any way a party to it.  He said it about  Donovan McNabb; as an employee of ESPN; as part of their partnership with the NFL.  Mr. McNabb’s opinion matters.  Black Americans’ opinions matter.  ESPN’s opinion matters.  The NFL’s opinion matters.  Your opinion, sir, does not matter.  If you cannot see what is plainly before your face, that is your problem and, unfortunately, this country’s problem.  It is deeply frustrating to me as a citizen that somebody in your position is still defending comments like Mr. Limbaugh’s with arguments from the America of a hundred years ago.”

A Modest Proposal

Just a quick note: Levi and Sarah should just go ahead and get married.  They’re exactly alike.

Using Your Head

Well, the World Series is starting. And with all due respect, I really don’t care.

As a sports aficionado, I like to rank things a lot. I’d now say that baseball is my second favorite sport. I love the strategy, the statistics, and the history. It’s a bit slow, but all in all, I appreciate baseball. But the Phillies and the Yankees? I couldn’t care less. I want to be a National League guy, but I grew up disliking the Phillies in the old NL East. And I don’t hate the Yankees as much as the average guy, but I just can’t root for them either. So I am indifferent.

Let’s talk football instead. Over time, football has become my favorite sport. It used to be basketball, but something about both the college and professional game has just lost my interest over the years. At the same time, both the college and professional football game has captured my attention. I love me a good football game.

Football was in the news today. Congress called a hearing about some very real concerns over the game of football. No, not the salaries. And no, not the steroids. Instead, there are some very real studies concerned with brain injuries coming from the game. Commissioner Goodell was taking heat in front of Congress today, doing his best to field the hard questions. You can read about it HERE.

I am interested in seeing what develops in this regard. I’m going to have a hard time loving a game if it gives people brain injuries. And it doesn’t take that many brain cells to wonder if a sport where human skulls violently crash into a variety of things may have a tendency to do so.

I do have a question myself that I haven’t heard addressed just yet, so if all you in Blog Land will tell me if it is ever addressed, I would greatly appreciate it. Well, let’s say I have two questions:

(1) Are helmets flying off football players’ heads much more frequently these days? (They sure seem to be to me. I’m saying a LOT more than ever before. The few friends I’ve asked about this haven’t really considered it before, but once I mention it, they tend to agree.)

(2) If so, what’s up with that?

I am obviously not an expert on much anything, definitely not helmet design. But I do think that the possibility of playing football without your helmet on your head – even in brief intervals – has got to do bunches to increase the possibility of brain injuries.