;)
The Commentariat -- Dec. 19, 2014
Internal links, defunct video removed.
Julie Davis & Michael Gordon of the New York Times: "President Obama will move as soon as next month to defang the 54-year-old American trade embargo against Cuba, administration officials said Thursday, using broad executive power to defy critics in Congress and lift restrictions on travel, commerce and financial activities. The moves are only the beginning of what White House officials and foreign policy experts describe as a sweeping set of changes that Mr. Obama can make on his own to re-establish commercial and diplomatic ties with Cuba even in the face of angry congressional opposition." ...
... CW: So the Prez is going with the infallible pope over bad-ass altar boys Boehner & Rubio, et al. The baby Jesus in his swaddling clothes is smiling. And Santa is marking who's naughty & nice. Sorry, fellas. Look for lumps of coal under the tree. Feliz Navidad. ...
... Jim Yardley of the New York Times: "... if the Vatican has long practiced a methodical, discreet brand of diplomacy, what has changed under Francis — or has been restored -- is a vision of diplomatic boldness, a willingness to take risks and insert the Vatican into diplomatic disputes, especially where it can act as an independent broker. Even as the Vatican has spent decades building trust in Cuba, and working steadily to break down the impasse with the United States, it was Francis who took the fateful risks -- writing secret letters to President Obama and President Raúl Castro of Cuba, and then offering the Vatican for a secret and critical meeting between both sides in October." ...
... Simon Romero & William Neuman of the New York Times: "... Latin American leaders have a new kind of vocabulary to describe [President Obama]: They are calling him 'brave,' 'extraordinary' and 'intelligent.' After years of watching his influence in Latin America slip away, Mr. Obama suddenly turned the tables this week by declaring a sweeping détente with Cuba, opening the way for a major repositioning of the United States in the region." ...
... Josh Rogin of Bloomberg View: "Although President Barack Obama is taking the credit for Wednesday's historic deal to reverse decades of U.S. policy toward Cuba, when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, she was the main architect of the new policy and pushed far harder for a deal than the Obama White House. From 2009 until her departure in early 2013, Clinton and her top aides took the lead on the sometimes public, often private interactions with the Cuban government." (See also Presidential Election, below.) ...
... Zandar in Balloon Juice: "If there was any doubt that President Obama's move on Cuba is a massive foreign policy legacy point for the history books that will stand the test of time, please note the blinding speed at which the credit for the deal is being given to someone else. Also, if there was ever any doubt that Hillary Clinton was not going to have trouble earning the trust of Obama 2008 primary voters, well, please note the same goddamn thing." ...
... Karen DeYoung & Carol Morello of the Washington Post: "In the wake of President Obama's historic decision to mend diplomatic ties with Cuba, U.S. business and potential tourists scrambled to figure out what new opportunities will be available on the island and to position themselves at the head of the line." ...
... The Losers. Katie Zavadski of New York: "... for one particular group of people, this development could mean the end of a long-held island refuge where they were able to escape the reach of American law.As many as 70 Americans are currently fugitives in Cuba, part of a tradition that dates back decades. Among them are some of the most-wanted Americans ever, including suspects in the deaths of law enforcement agents." ...
... Ken Thomas of the AP: "Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said Thursday the lengthy U.S. economic embargo against Cuba 'just hasn't worked' and voiced support for opening trade with Cuba in the aftermath of the Obama administration's policy shift regarding the communist island. Paul became the first potential Republican presidential candidate to offer some support for President Barack Obama's decision to attempt to normalize U.S. relations with Cuba." (See also Presidential Election below.) ...
... Digby: "... you have to wonder if [Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Lindsey Graham, et al.] have the slightest bit of self-awareness.... Just a week ago they were condemning our own government for releasing a report that documented America's own human rights abuses[.] It's absolutely true that the most notorious prison camp on the planet is in Cuba -- but it's run by the U.S. government.... Ted Cruz's lugubrious hand-wringing over the Cuban government holding people without due process would certainly be a lot more convincing if Americans hadn't been holding innocent people for years in Cuba with no hope of ever leaving. To think that just last week the man [Rubio] who is preaching today about America's commitment to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was exhorting us all to thank the people who used torture techniques like 'rectal feeding' on prisoners in American custody.... When you endorse torture, the least you can do is have enough shame not to sanctimoniously lecture others about morality and high ideals of civilized behavior." ...
... Charles Pierce, along those same lines, but way funnier. With a special shoutout to the Washington Post & "Fred Hiatt's Big House o' 'Ho's." ...
... Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast: "In his aggressive anti-Obama play on Cuba, [Marco] Rubio is pandering to a constituency that barely exists now -- and he looks cowardly doing it.... He is not reflecting here the views of the Cuban-American community of South Florida as they've been repeatedly expressed in polls. He is instead representing the views of only the most reactionary (and rapidly aging and, to be blunt about it, dying off) portion of that community. If he somehow finds himself running against Hillary Clinton in 2016, he -- some 25 years her junior -- will have masterfully turned the neat trick of being on the side of the past while she speaks to the future." ...
... Gene Robinson, who has written a book of Cuba, makes mincemeat of the arguments against the U.S.-Cuba detente, including those of his own editorial board. ...
... Kevin Drum of Mother Jones: "It's been quite the whirlwind month for our bored, exhausted, disengaged president, hasn't it? All of these things are worthwhile in their own right, of course, but there's a political angle to all of them as well: they seriously mess with Republican heads. GOP leaders ... are going to have to deal with enraged tea partiers insisting that they spend time trying to repeal Obama's actions. They can't, of course, but they have to show that they're trying. So there's a good chance that they'll spend their first few months in semi-chaos, responding to Obama's provocations instead of working on their own agenda."
** Ryan Cooper of the Week: "It is now obvious that what the CIA did was illegal, brutal torture. Claims that it kept the nation safe are all that Cheney has left. But Cheney is wrong: Torture doesn't work and never has.... Over 12 years of research, [Darius] Rejali examined the use of torture in the U.S., Great Britain, Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, South Vietnam, and Korea. He looked at torture inflicted during the French-Algerian War, as well as at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at Guantánamo Bay. His research found that there is no record of any successful use of torture to gather intelligence, not even in totalitarian states."
Ali Younes, et al., of the Guardian: "US counter-terrorism officials backed a high-stakes negotiation involving two of the world's most prominent jihadi clerics as well as former Guantánamo detainees in an [unsuccessful] attempt to save the life of an American hostage [-- Abdul-Rahman (Peter) Kassig --] held by Islamic State, the Guardian can reveal." CW: Cue up the Fox "News" Outrage Machine (not that it isn't always in the "on" mode).
Welcome Back, Lobbyists. Anna Palmer of Politico: "As Republicans take control of Congress, they are bringing in veteran influence peddlers to help them run the show. Nearly a dozen veteran K Streeters have been named as top staffers to GOP leaders or on key committees as lawmakers prepare to take the gavel in January.... There is a notable increase in the pace of K Streeters making the move back to Congress this month."
Benjamin Weiser, et al., of the New York Times: "Federal prosecutors plan to sue New York City over widespread civil rights violations in the handling of adolescent inmates at Rikers Island, making clear their dissatisfaction with the city's progress in reining in brutality by guards and improving conditions at the jail complex, a new court filing shows. The decision to go to court comes more than four months after the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, issued a blistering report that cited a pervasive and 'deep-seated culture of violence' directed at teenage inmates at Rikers."
Commenters in yesterday's thread pointed to two NYT articles about how the high cost of healthcare is hurting Americans:
... Elisabeth Rosenthal: "... in an increasingly common practice that some medical experts call drive-by doctoring, assistants, consultants and other hospital employees are charging patients or their insurers hefty fees. They may be called in when the need for them is questionable. And patients usually do not realize they have been involved or are charging until the bill arrives." ...
... Elisabeth Rosenthal: "While the Affordable Care Act has expanded insurance to millions of Americans, including those with existing conditions, it does not directly address cost. And cost is becoming increasingly problematic.... Newer insurance plans -- including policies under the Affordable Care Act -- are designed to make sure patients have 'more skin in the game,' so they will be more discriminating users of health care. Fixed co-pays, say $20 for a visit to a doctor, are being replaced by requirements that patients contribute a percentage of charges, which often ends up costing them far more."
Reid Wilson of the Washington Post: "Members of the Wyoming legislature will debate a measure to expand Medicaid during next year's session...."
Luke Brinker of Salon: "Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin announced Wednesday that he was dropping plans for a government-provided health insurance system in the state, citing the measure's cost. The decision comes three years after Shumlin, a Democrat, signed into law legislation that paved the path for a single payer health system, called Green Mountain Care, by 2017. Under the law, state officials needed to come up with a financing plan by this year. But Shumlin missed two deadlines for developing a financing plan before determining this week that paying for Green Mountain Care would have required drastic tax increases. According to the governor's financial models, financing the system would have required an 11.5 percent payroll tax on all businesses in Vermont and a sliding-scale, income-based premium assessment of up to 9.5 percent."
Neighbors v. the Stoner State. Jack Healy of the New York Times: "Two heartland states filed the first major court challenge to marijuana legalization on Thursday, saying that Colorado's growing array of state-regulated recreational marijuana shops was piping marijuana into neighboring states and should be shut down. The lawsuit was brought by attorneys general in Nebraska and Oklahoma, and asks the United States Supreme Court to strike down key parts of a 2012 voter-approved measure that legalized marijuana in Colorado for adult use and created a new system of stores, taxes and regulations surrounding retail marijuana."
Your Elected Ambulance Chasers. Eric Lipton of the New York Times: There is "a flourishing industry that pairs plaintiffs' lawyers with state attorneys general to sue companies, a collaboration that has set off a furious competition between trial lawyers and corporate lobbyists to influence these officials.... Plaintiffs' lawyers working on a contingency-fee basis have teamed up mostly with Democratic state attorneys general to file hundreds of lawsuits against businesses.... Private lawyers, who scour the news media and public records looking for potential cases in which a state or its consumers have been harmed, approach attorneys general. The attorneys general hire the private firms to do the necessary work, with the understanding that the firms will front most of the cost of the investigation and the litigation. The firms take a fee, typically 20 percent, and the state takes the rest of any money won from the defendants."
In Austin, Texas, male cops think rape is pretty funny. And this: "You want to go fight in combat and sit in a foxhole? You go right ahead, but a man can't hit you in public here? Bulls--t! You act like a whore, you get treated like one!" That wasn't just guy talk; the said that to a female reporter. The officer who made that comment is "retiring."
Paul Krugman: "The kind of crisis Russia now faces is what you get when bad things happen to an economy made vulnerable by large-scale borrowing from abroad -- specifically, large-scale borrowing by the private sector, with the debts denominated in foreign currency, not the currency of the debtor country. In that situation, an adverse shock like a fall in exports can start a vicious downward spiral. When the nation's currency falls, the balance sheets of local businesses -- which have assets in rubles (or pesos or rupiah) but debts in dollars or euros -- implode. This, in turn, inflicts severe damage on the domestic economy, undermining confidence and depressing the currency even more.... A more open, accountable regime -- one that wouldn't have impressed [Rudy] Giuliani so much -- would have been less corrupt, would probably have run up less debt, and would have been better placed to ride out falling oil prices. Macho posturing, it turns out, makes for bad economies."
Pamela Brown, et al., of CNN: "U.S. used signal intelligence and other means to trace the [Sony hack] attack to North Korea, finding digital footprints that pointed to North Korea. The statement to be issued as early as Friday morning will provide some of the evidence behind the U.S. government's conclusion, but not all. Though officials say they are planning to lay blame on Friday, they haven't yet decided how to respond to the attack." ...
... Jonathan Chait: "Sony is a for-profit entity, and not even an American one, that effectively has important influence over American culture. We don't entrust for-profit entities with the common defense. And recognizing that the threat to a Sony picture is actually a threat to the freedom of American culture ought to lead us to a public rather than a private solution. The federal government should take financial responsibility." ...
... CW: Sorry, Chait. I feel no compulsion whatsoever to kick in a nickel for Sony, even though the company is a victim here. Sony insures their stars. Maybe they should have taken out hack-attack insurance. ...
Frank Rich on the Sony hack -- and Mitt Romney's proposal. ...
... CW: Although the hack is pretty terrible & surely a harbinger, Sony is garnering from it an incredible level of publicity for a stupid movie. When "The Interview" does make it into theaters or onto the small screen, as I expect it will, anybody who can stand a Seth Rogen movie will be sure to watch it. Wingers will consider watching the flik a right-of-passage. Because freeeedom. ...
... Daily Beast: "Three movie theaters say Paramount Pictures has ordered them not to show Team America: World Police one day after Sony Pictures surrendered to cyberterrorists and pulled The Interview.... (No reason was apparently given and Paramount hasn't spoken.) Team America of course features Kim Jong Un's father, Kim Jong Il, as a singing marionette." ...
... CW: It may come as a shock to you to learn that the Masters of the Entertainment Universe are sniveling cowards. Mike Fleming of Deadline: Actor/director George Clooney circulated a petition supporting Sony & "The Interview," and nobody would sign it. "The most powerful people in Hollywood were so fearful to place themselves in the cross hairs of hackers that they all refused to sign a simple petition of support that Clooney and his agent, CAA's Bryan Lourd, circulated to the top people in film, TV, records and other areas. Not a single person would sign." And Chait wants me to support these guys with my tax dollars. Double no-thanks. ...
... Putin's Response. Reuters: "The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has invited the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, to Moscow next year to mark the 70th anniversary of the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany in the second world war, the Kremlin's spokesman said on Friday." CW: No doubt Rudy Giuliani approves. (See Krugman.)
Presidential Election
... Obama Unbound. Greg Sargent: "... it increasingly looks like a good deal more of the Obama agenda than expected -- in the form of all these unilateral actions -- may be on the ballot in 2016 to motivate [Democratic] voter groups. Republicans delighted in arguing that Obama's policies were soundly rejected in the last election. But we're now playing on a presidential year field, and Obama's new approach appears to be only getting started." ...
... Steve Holland of Reuters: "Potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton knows a political gift when she sees one. She was quick to embrace the step this week when President Barack Obama ... relaxed U.S. policy toward Cuba." (See also Josh Rogin's report & Zandar's commentary, linked above.)
Steve M. writes an excellent post that examines what is certainly part of Rand Paul's rationale in backing President Obama's Cuba move: "Farmers want to do business with Cuba, more than they want to cling to Cold War-era ideological purity. So I think, at least with regard to Iowa, Rand Paul is making a very smart move."
Ken Vogel & Tarini Parti of Politico: "... affluent Cuban American donors [are] already talking about spending big sums to challenge politicians who side with Obama, and to support rivals who oppose normalization. That cash rift could widen further if the presidential election pits a Democrat who favors normalization, such as Hillary Clinton, against a Republican who opposes it, such as Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio -- both of whom hail from Florida, a key swing state with a very politically active population of Cuban expatriates."
I would love to see Elizabeth Warren in this race. I think it would be fantastic. I think that it would help the quality of the debate and she may win, but even if she doesn't, I think she'll make Hillary Clinton a better candidate. -- Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), Co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus
News Ledes
Los Angeles Times: "Lowell Steward, a member of the Tuskegee Airmen who flew more than 100 missions during World War II, died Wednesday, according to Ron Brewington, former national public relations officer for the Tuskegee Airmen. Steward was 95."
NBC News: "The Army has concluded its lengthy investigation into the disappearance of Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl in eastern Afghanistan and must now decide whether Bergdahl should face criminal charges. Bergdahl reportedly walked away from his base into the hands of the Taliban and was held hostage for five years. Based on the investigation, the Army must now decide whether Bergdahl should be charged with desertion or a lesser charge of being 'absent without leave,' AWOL."
New York Times: "The Pakistani military said on Friday that it had killed 62 militants in clashes near the border with Afghanistan, stepping up operations against insurgents after the Pakistani Taliban carried out an attack at a school that left 148 students and staff members dead."
New York Times: "Mandy Rice-Davies, a nightclub dancer and model who achieved notoriety in 1963 in one of Britain's most spectacular Cold War sex scandals, died on Thursday after a short battle with cancer, her publicist said on Friday. She was 70."
Denver Post: "James Holmes, the man who killed 12 people inside an Aurora movie theater two years ago, is 'a human being gripped by a severe mental illness,' his parents write in a letter that pleads for him to be spared from execution.'" The letter is here.
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Reader Comments (14)
Judging by this NYT article, I have grave doubts that ACA will offer much relief for people who face hospital care since it seems that half the doctors in the US are rip-off artists. You'll need a lawyer to protect you from surprise out-of-network docs, labs, and drive-by visits. Hundreds of comments report their horror stories. The only happy ones are the writers from Canada.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/us/drive-by-doctoring-surprise-medical-bills.html
Ooops. I see Unwashed and Marvin touched on this yesterday, however my link is a different article and also worth reading. I differ with Marvin - I think it would be pretty simple to protect patients from out-of-network surprises and drive-by visits. Make the practice illegal.
Haley, I agree with your assessment about half of US physicians but making things illegal won't stop the mess. In NJ more than 20 'doctors' have been charged with fraud for accepting bribes for sending patients to a lab for unnecessary testing, doctors send patients for MRI's at places that happen to be owned by their brother. And then there are the tens of thousands of unnecessary surgeries every year and millions of worthless tests. No law can be made to assess the justification of every medical procedure. All designed to make money. And of course there is the insurance industry that makes money by denying care.
There is only one fix. One insurance called Medicare from the day you are born and all physicians are on fixed salaries. But this is America, the land of the free and the home of the greedy. It will never happen.
While the nation's attention is on the latest Obama diplomatic rabbit drawn from his suddenly commodious hat, an old rabbit is more quiet but alive, well and growing.
Two ACA references from my doctor son, who follows these things closely:
http://obamacaresignups.net/14/12/16/bonus-graph-overlaying-2014-top-2015
My son's analysis: "There are a lot of subsets of data/assumptions in this (like how many people will be/were automatically renewed on 12/15/14, w/ various rolling later deadlines in the state exchanges), but Gaba--the site's author--uses conservative numbers and, even so, it looks pretty impressive."
I'll take his word for it.
And this:
http://acasignups.net/14/12/12/next-medicaid-expansion-utah-wyoming-andalabama
Those last three on top of another red state: Tennessee
Seems that the posturing, the huffing and puffing is giving way to realism....even in red states.
Now we'll just have to wait and see if the Supremes are willing to take health insurance away from a mere five million people to make a political point.
(Maybe I'll take Akhilleus' and Marie's the hypertext tutorial after Christmas, and make all this easier on everyone...Maybe)
As Frank Rich says in the article about the Sony hack: "we are almost sheeplike (and I include myself in that we) in the docility with which we turn over personal information to Amazon, Google, Uber, Facebook — you name it — in pursuit of convenience, shopping, entertainment, and facile social engagement." Lying and truth stretching and adjusting to faceless corporate interests is not the same as lying to your spouse, even if corporations are people too. If you're interested Darrell Huff and Irving Geis wrote a nice little book in 1954, "How to Lie with Statistics". This gets done to us every day by corporate interests and their government.
Ken,
Access to decent and affordable medical care is one of the great benefits of living in a civilized first-world country. However, the fact that one of the two major political parties, their supporters, and almost 100% of their media shills have been pulling double shifts to make sure millions are denied that care (along with their recent high frequency vocalizations in favor of torture) puts a big fat question mark after the word civilized.
Having gone stretches of my life with little or no insurance, it's no surprise to me that millions have signed up for healthcare under the ACA. It's a completely different life when you have it. You're no longer one twist of fortune from penury. But it won't be a surprise to me either if the wingnut elites on the Court take it away. "Let them eat band-aids", I can hear Scalia sniffing.
I don't think they'll do it directly. That's hasn't been their style. They don't do the wet work. They farm it out. Instead, as they've done many times, they'll knock out a few vital support beams and open the door for someone else to cripple or kill it. This way, they can wash their hands and deny any responsibility, as evidenced by their refusal to acknowledge the damages caused by Citizens United and the huge potential problems coming down the pike because of their Hobby Lobby lobbying.
Little Johnny has made a specialty of nose in the air, head in the clouds obtuseness as concerns the lives of everyday Americans. As Marie pointed out the other day, he never has to wait in line, so it's no skin off his nose if those less fortunate are forced to stand in line, on their own time, if an employer decrees that it shall be so.
No, they won't kill the ACA. But they'll be happy to find a way to hand the Obama haters a noose, a gun, a razor blade, a bottle of poison, and a couple of garrottes (in case one isn't enough).
There's been some discussion recently about Little Johnny's sense of his own legacy, a possibly vain hope that this thought might moderate his malignity.This is a guy who came up under Reagan. He's been playing a long game. The right has worked assiduously over the last generation to put itself in a position of control. They're very near that now. The best legacy he can imagine, I'm assuming, is the apotheosis of that vision. Win at all costs.
Like the Decider said, there's always the emergency room.
Ah, giving Hillary credit for opening up the door on Cuba. I seem to recall her complaining that Obama allowed a vacuum in Syria in which ISIS could develop, not mentioning that ISIS is an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq and it first emerged there as a result of Iraq's disfunction so it's questionable whether it could have been stamped out on Syria, much less by arming "moderate" forces. This, I imagine, caused a slow burn by Obama, but I don't recall him addressing it. I do remember when he was considering her for secretary of state Senator Kennedy warned him that he was "making a very serious mistake that he would come to regret: that the Clintons are about themselves." Luckily the appointment worked pretty well, but perhaps the credit goes again to Obama for being able to handle someone like Hillary.
So I find it interesting that Hillary has somehow been given credit for the Cuba situation when we now know the details of the long procedure and the few people actually involved. The fact that she was FOR the lifting of the embargo––perhaps even pushed for it–-does not make her a player here.
Um...didn't we hack into Iran's nuclear program files recently?
But now Fox wants us to drop bombs on North Korea because a movie studio was hacked?
Everyone is putting way too much emphasis on this. No one's freedom is being curtailed. The Constitution is not being pissed on by Kim Jong Un and his digital Myrmidons. The screams about Obama not standing up for FREEEEDOM are misplaced. He is standing up for it. He's just not gonna bomb Pyongyang. Sony is a big company. And not for nothin' but it's also a Japanese company. That's not to say that it's okay for them to be hacked, but all this blather about American Freedom being attacked is bullshit.
And I do agree that it's pretty sad that decisions about whether or not to let the public view any work of art or commerce (even something stupid) are influenced by a crazy man on the other side of the world, but film companies routinely edit out scenes and characters from American films that Chinese audiences might find objectionable. And it isn't Kim Jong Un who said we can't see "The Interview". That's Sony's decision.
Entertainment companies are in business to make money. This isn't the first time a film has been pulled from circulation because of potential fallout or embarrassment or sensitivity to real world events (a great film like the original "Manchurian Candidate" with its plot about a political assassination was delayed a year from its original release in 1963 for obvious reasons). Another film involving flying airplanes into tall buildings was likewise nixed after 9/11. Companies make decisions for many reasons, but their primary concerns are financial.
I ain't cryin' for Sony, and neither am I wringing my hands about loss of FREEEEDOM. Everyone with knotted panties over this needs to calm the fuck down.
When Sony does release this thing, it'll make a boatload of money. Remember all the wingers who ran out to buy their very own copies of Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses" (and likely never read it)? When the book was first released, according to Wikipedia, a London bookseller had sold only 100 copies by the first six months. After the fatwa, it flew off the shelves. I bet even Rush Limbaugh bought a copy. (He returned it when he discovered there were no pictures.) In the first six months it sold a few thousand copies. The six months after the fatwa? 750,000. To this day, it's Viking Books' best seller.
Sony should be so lucky.
Loved the Colbert "Final Ending" musicale.
Gonna watch it again! Hey, even Greggers was there...what does Pierce call him? Oh, yeah...Disco Dave.
On Legends.
When you think of great legends, what do you think of? Helen of Troy? Robin Hood? Knights of the Round Table? El Dorado? Fountain of Youth?
How about Michele Bachmann?
No? Well, au contraire, mes amis, say the experts on legendary type stuff at World Net Daily. Granted, these are the same people who publish shit like "soy products will make you gay", but hang in there for a minute. Let's see about the legendary Ms. Bachmann.
She's been in congress for eight (count 'em) years. A legislator. One would naturally expect that someone whose job is legislatin' would have a passel of fine legislation for display prior to induction into legendary status. So let's see.....hmmmm.....nothing here, not much there, oh wait, here it is: 58 bills introduced. A happy anniversary to Minnesota thingy, a “National Hydrocephalus Awareness Month" resolution, something about children being good to have around....and.....nothing signed into law. Not one. She did offer about 48 bills to ensure that health care was denied to Americans. Does that count?
A true teabagger, folks. Lot's of yapping, no actual work. But she's not alone. Louie Gohmert, after years in congress hasn't gotten anything passed either. Last year he introduced one bill. The EDIBLE Act. “Eliminate Dogmatic Interference by Bureaucratic Lunch Extremists Act.” I guess he wants schools to be able to say that ketchup is a vegetable after all. But nothing passed. Not a one. In years.
Run down the list. It's not surprising. Teabaggers don't do shit. At least on the positive side. But they do plenty of negative stuff. Shut down the government, threaten our credit standing, scream for declarations of war....you know the drill.
All of which brings me back to Bachmann and her legendary status. Her former chief of staff demands that we not consider her legislative record, or lack thereof. His reason is a true teabagging brain twister. Check this out:
“She shows she’s a leader,”... “She’s never been a ball hog, she’s always been a team player.”
Leaders are not usually the people in the scrum. They're up front. And yes, they do "hog the ball" because they know where they want to go.
But she is a leader in backwardness. And about that legend business, Wikipedia says that legends serve "...as a reaffirmation of commonly held values of the group to whose tradition it belongs", which, I suppose, means that Bachmann has been reaffirming the most salient point of the whole teabagging enterprise. Stop everything in its tracks. Say no to compromise. If it won't go along with us, kill it, or try to. The Tea Party attracts and promotes imbeciles who don't actually do anything but obstruct and waste time with pointless message legislation aimed solely at their base. Those who are best at this Potemkin bullshit are considered legends. And martyrs for the cause.
Bachmann, in her interview with the WND guy nicely plays the victim card (another teabag specialty) saying that the left hates her because she tells the truth and try to counter her truth with false myths.
There are true myths? Who knew?
She does actually remind me of another legend: the Loch Ness Monster.
Marvin,
Yes, we can't make assessments about what is necessary and what is unnecessary, although the drive-bys are clearly unnecessary, but we can write legislation that outlaws, or at least severely limits, surprise 'hiring' of out-of-network docs that results in the insured patient getting a $100,000 invoice for an out-of-network 'assistant' surgeon or anesthesiologist.
Bachmann is an embarrassment, but we have Al Franken and Keith Ellison, and Walz and Klobuchar and Dayton for antidotes. Our mostly deep blue leadership has resisted tax cuts and allowed MN to have about the healthiest economy in the country.
Here is a link to the other side of the Cuba story:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/17/the-new-opening-with-the-usa/
If the stated as well as actual purpose of my political movement were to gum up the works of government so that it could no longer protect the public's interests against polluters, financial pirates, and torturers, I would put those like Bachmann and Gohmert on a pedestal. They comprise a new breed of anarchist, the inadvertent kind.
@AK: Your lament (just kidding) on Bachmann's last stand left me in tears (just kidding). I will miss her terribly only because she brought to the congressional table a type of chutzpah that dished out pure applesauce time and again. Such fun to watch her make a fool of herself and she being so earnest about it. I often wondered whether she realized how disrespected she was by many of her colleagues. Her lone stand at her final farewell in the chambers was indicative of the lack of camaraderie and fondness for her; I couldn't help feeling sad––for her––for just a moment.