Can the Public Option Be Saved? Winnie Blasts Nelson, Cole on Biden in Holy Land

March 11th, 2010 - by: danny

I will be hosting News Dissector Radio today on ProgressiveRadioNetwork.com 10 AM to 11 AM EST. Guest: Seth Adler form LeftForum.org

No More Earmarks For Private Contractors
Biden Blindsided In Israel
Action Alert For PBS: From Moyers to Meachum

Washington Post: House Democrats ban earmarks for private contractors

House Democratic leaders banned Wednesday the practice of doling out multimillion-dollar, no-bid contracts to private contractors, a move that will shake up the lobbying industry that has come to rely on securing these so-called earmarks for their corporate clients.

At a meeting of the Democratic caucus, leaders unveiled the new rule that forbids private contractors from receiving earmarks, part of the party’s effort to reclaim the reform mantle that it used successfully in its 2006 midterm campaign to reclaim the majority.

Winnie Blasts Nelson

Note: Mrs. Mandela was in Parliament and in the government and did make these criticisms then.

JOHANNESBURG — Nelson Mandela’s ex-wife has bitterly criticized the 92-year-old anti-apartheid icon as having “let us down,” prompting outrage Wednesday in South Africa.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela said she could not forgive him for accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 alongside F.W. De Klerk, according to Tuesday’s Evening Standard, a British newspaper. The white president released Mandela and went on to participate in negotiations that ended apartheid.

“He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks. Economically, we are still on the outside. The economy is very much ‘white.’ It has a few token blacks, but so many who gave their life in the struggle have died unrewarded,” Madikizela-Mandela was quoted as saying.

The Star newspaper in Johannesburg accused Madikizela-Mandela of unleashing a “rant.”

The governing African National Congress said it would not comment until its leaders could discuss the article with Madikizela-Mandela, who was traveling abroad Wednesday.

Dave Zirin, Invictus in Reverse (The Nation)

Saving the Public Option

At a panel-teach-in by the think tank Demos Tues night, political scientist Ben Barber said that when President Obama took the public option off the table, he was pushing the public off the table. It now seems that the public option may be coming back:

A whopping 40 senators have now said they are willing to vote “yes” on a public option in reconciliation…including 2 senators from the “red” states of Montana and North Dakota yesterday.

“The White House obviously said the votes don’t exist before ever bothering to count the votes. It’s time for both houses of Congress to commit to an up-or-down vote on the public option — and to invite the White House to help lead or get out of the way.” — Charles Chamberlain, Democracy for America “With 40 senators on board, there is no excuse for anyone who claims to support the public option to not join us in fighting for it.” — Adam Green, Progressive Change Campaign Committee

Campaign for New Priorities Reports:

Speaker Pelosi aiming for vote on Senate bill this month, waiting for CBO. CNN: “Asked if House leaders want a letter or some other concrete assurance about what the Senate can pass in a reconciliation bill, Pelosi, D-California, said no. ‘… It’s not a question of confidence. It’s a question now of making sure those numbers are what we represent them to be and we have to have that validation from the CBO.’”

Sen. Minority Leader McConnell tries to scare House Dems that Senate won’t pass changes in reconciliation, previews smear campaign. W. Post quotes: “House Democrats will have to decide whether they want to trust the Senate to fix their political problems … They will be voting, when they pass the Senate bill, to endorse the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, the Gator-aid, the closed-door deal, the special deal for the unions…”

Its Not Just the Right Attacking Obama Health Care Plan

Scott Schneider writes:

Only in America — with its vast disinformation machine greased by media whores -could such convoluted, overcomplicated crap which Steals Quality Services from the Majority to Benefit Parasitical Middlemen AND increases total costs to the system!! be touted as progressive reform without causing Profound Revolt, General Strikes, massive defiance on every level.

It’s truly nauseating to watch Obama’s latest push for such bullshit and the totally scripted parameters of “debate” given a free ride in the public information space. Even for America this sets new lows. But America’s narcotized and culturally bankrupt population is too bewildered to stop the train or even notice that it’s moving with deadly swiftness to screw them. The few that do vaguely notice are too lethargic or intimidated to try to stop it.

Dan Gross on the so-called Government “Takeover” of Healthcare?

What “Government Takeover”?, by Daniel Gross:

“There have been lots of absurdities in the debate – such as it is – about health care reform. There’s the hypocrisy of people dependent on government-run health care complaining about government-run health care. And now comes the Republican canard that the current health care reform proposal constitutes a government takeover of one-sixth of the economy. Here are Rep. Steve Buyer of Indiana, Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana, and Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina making precisely that argument.

First, the proposed health care reform does not take over the system in any sense. Much to the chagrin of progressives, the bills under consideration don’t contain a public option and don’t provide for a single payer. In fact, they provide subsidies for millions of people to purchase private insurance.

Second… We’re already halfway toward socialized medicine, but not because of Obamacare. … Over the last couple of decades, as the private sector has done a miserable job controlling costs, as employers have felt less and less compelled to offer health care benefits as a condition of employment, as the population has aged, and as the government created new health care entitlements, the government has been slowly assuming a higher portion of health care spending in the United States – or “taking it over…”

Supreme Comment

WP: Roberts: Scene at State of Union ‘very troubling’ By JAY REEVES

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts said Tuesday the scene at President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address was “very troubling” and that the annual speech to Congress has “degenerated into a political pep rally.”

Anwaar Hussain Afghanistan: Everyone Bleeds

EXCERPT: Robert Michael Gates needs to go to a game of Buzkashi in Afghanistan.

A time-honored game of the steppe people in Central Asian region, Buzkashi is a wild sport. Skilled riders attempt to grab the carcass of a headless goat or calf from the ground while riding a horse at full gallop. The aim is to get clear of other players and throw it across a goal line or into a target circle.

From Scythians, Bactrians and Aryans to the later Arachosians, many civilizations of the yore have played the game of Buzkashi for countless centuries over the region with Afghanistan being the prized carcass. In time, from Median and Persian Empires to Alexander the Great, the Seleucids, the Indo-Greeks, the Indians, the Turks and the Mongols, a host of other people appeared on the horizons to join the game on one side or the other. No sooner would one team exit when another would join the activity. Called the Great Game in recent times, the blood sport was continued with old fervor by the British, the Soviets, and most recently by the United States and their allies.

Land grab then and land grab now has been the chief aim of the invading teams all along. The invaders and the defenders, though, have been responding to various rallying criesÃ¢â‚¬Â¦.Historically, however, in Afghanistan the winning sides stayed the winners for short spans of time. They came, they won, they sparkled for a brief moment and then faded into the mist of times as if they never were. After a brief revival period of an expectant lull, the game would start afresh. In the current game, America and its allies are on one side and most of the rest on the other.

There is only one consistent lesson one learns from the eons long game played over Afghanistan. Everyone bled then, everyone bleeds now and everyone will bleed long after the current spell of the game is over whatever the outcome and whatever the American decisions to affect that outcome.

Alice Slater: NATO Goes Anti-Nuclear?

Support for nuclear disarmament has spread to the heart of the Atlantic alliance and beyond.

President Obama’s call for a nuclear-weapons-free world in Prague last April unleashed a great outpouring of support from international allies and grassroots activists demanding a process to actually eliminate nuclear weapons. One recent and unexpected initiative has come from America’s NATO allies. Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Norway have called on NATO to review its nuclear policy and remove all U.S. nuclear weapons currently on European soil under NATO’s “nuclear sharing” policy. Despite U.S. insistence on strict adherence to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which prohibits the transfer of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear weapons states, several hundred U.S. nuclear bombs are housed in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Turkey.

Channel4 Exposes Swine Flu Scam [h/.t Jayne Stahl]

Informed Comment: Juan Cole on Biden in Israel

Binyamin Netanyahu in Israel majorly sandbagged Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday, demonstrating once again that it has not the slightest interest in pursuing a just peace with the Palestinian people or in trading a cessation of its colonization of the Palestinian West Bank for a comprehensive peace with the Arab world.

Biden went to the Mideast to kick off negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and reassured the latter of undying US support for them. On Chris Matthews’ Hardball, Biden explained that when you marry someone, you tell them you love them, but that does not remove the obligation to keep saying it years later. Apparently, however, Washington is henpecked by Tel Aviv to the point almost of being a battered spouse. In response to Biden’s loyal support for Israel over decades, the Likud-led government kicked him in the teeth. Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai abruptly announced that he would build 1600 new households (for 8,000 people?) in a part of the Occupied West Bank that the Israeli government had annexed to Jerusalem District. It was precisely such new and increasing Israeli building on Palestinian territory that had led Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to reject negotiations and to threaten to resign. The announcement put in doubt whether the negotiations would go forward, and made Biden and the United States government look like fools.

Joe Biden should have turned around and left the country. Instead, he showed up 90 minutes late to a state dinner hosted by Netanyahu and dared actually directly complain about the way he was treated, “I condemn the decision,” he said, calling it “precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions that I’ve had here in Israel.”

The News Dissector