Right Wing Nut House

There are times that I want to take some of my fellow conservatives by the scruff of their neck and shake some sense into them. Or at least kick their behinds until some semblance of reason penetrates their thick skulls.

The blow up over the 7 Department of Justice lawyers who represented terrorists at Gitmo and elsewhere is mostly idiotic - especially the name given to them; the Al-Qaeda 7. I say mostly idiotic because AG Holder might have avoided any controversy at all if he had simply responded to a simple request from a senator and released the names of the detainee advocates and listed what actions they took in that capacity.

But Holder, who has continually stiffed Senator Charles Grassley over requests for information on the IG scandals and the New Black Panther party mystery, really screwed the pooch here. Any neophyte political hack could have told him that trying to hide their identities by refusing a reasonable request for information from a senator would lead to the kind of hysteria on the right that Holder was covering for “terrorist sympathizers” in his department.

As it turns out, the activities of the 7 DoJ lawyers on behalf of their clients (with perhaps one exception) didn’t even rise to the level of eye-brow cocking. And despite the fact that it is now clear that none of the 7 are a national security threat, the exaggeration and hyperbole about the “terrorist sympathizers” continues.

It would be one thing if any of these lawyers while in private practice acted as Lynn Stewart, the convicted terrorist lawyer who assisted her client, the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman, in smuggling messages out of prison that could have incited violence in Egypt. This lefty, loony toons nutjob actually sided with the terrorists.

But the DoJ lawyers who have come under hostile fire from the right don’t come anywhere near that standard. A couple of examples:

An extensive review of court documents and media reports by Fox News suggests many of the seven lawyers in question played only minor or short-lived roles in advocating for detainees. However, it’s unclear what roles, if any, they have played in detainee-related matters since joining the Justice Department.

Before joining the Justice Department, Jonathan Cedarbaum, now an official with the Office of Legal Counsel, was part of a “firm-wide effort” to represent six Bosnian-Algerian detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, according to the web site of the firm WilmerHale.

That effort brought the case Boumediene v. Bush to the Supreme Court, which reaffirmed the right of detainees to challenge their detention.

But, according to a review by Fox News, Cedarbaum’s name appears only once in court records of detainee-related cases. Specifically, he’s named as part of the WilmerHale legal team in a 2007 filing with the Supreme Court, and he was joined in that filing by Eric Columbus, a former WilmerHale attorney who is now senior counsel in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General.

Alongside Cedarbaum in the Office of Legal Counsel now is Karl Thompson, who while working for the firm O’Melveny & Myers became one of seven attorneys to represent Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen who was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 and transferred to Guantanamo Bay.

But, according to court documents, Thompson was only part of Khadr’s defense team for seven months, from October 2008 to May 2009.

These are not wild-eyed lefties who were looking to betray the United States. Call them naive perhaps, but they worked for solid, respected law firms and the minimal actions they performed on the behalf of their detainee clients hardly justifies the wild eyed righty hysteria that is surrounding these revelations. The exaggerated claims - that the 7 lawyers worked for “al-Qaeda terrorists” is, on its face, a crock:

More than five years before that, Joseph Guerra, now Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General at the Justice Department, was one of five lawyers from the firm Sidley Austin to help three civil liberties groups, including the self-described “conservative” Rutherford Institute, file a detainee-related brief with the Supreme Court.

The brief urged the justices to hear the case of Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who was held as an “enemy combatant” before the Bush Administration decided in 2006 to prosecute him in a civilian court.

Does assisting civil liberties groups in the US make one an “al-Qaeda sympathizer?” The government couldn’t prove that Padilla was al-Qaeda, dropped charges against him for plotting to build a dirty bomb, and ended up with a shaky conviction of Padilla aiding terrorists that many who have followed the case closely believe could very well be overturned on appeal.

Many might believe that taking the axiom “everyone in America deserves a defense” to such an extreme to be wrong and immoral. But Padilla is an American citizen and if Jeffrey Dahmer deserved a decent defense under our rules, then certainly Padilla did as well. The other attorneys performed similar tasks for their clients - most of them acting in a more direct fashion in that they filed briefs directly on behalf of the detainees.

The principle at stake was not sympathy with al-Qaeda but the Constitution’s guarantees for those held in American custody. The fact that those rights were so ill-defined during the previous 8 years is the fault of Congress, who could have resolved the detainee rights issue, but chose instead to let the courts handle the matter. We might have had a system that gave the detainees certain rights like habeus corpus, the right to an attorney, and a limited ability to view evidence against the defendant, while fashioning the tribunals in such a way as to allow for some leeway given detainees, if Congress had done its job. Instead, the detainees have been in legal limbo for the most part, relying on the pro-bono efforts of civil liberties attorneys.

Not surprisingly, some of those same attorneys are now working at DoJ. To question their loyalty, or commitment to the law, is absurd. But what we can and should question, is their ability to perform their jobs in an unbiased manner.

Holder still won’t tell us if any of these lawyers are working on detainee cases, and if so, in what capacity. We have the right to demand the strictest adherence to ethical standards when it comes to prosecuting those in our custody who are bona fide terrorists and could do harm to the US or our friends. So why the secrecy?

In a recent letter to Grassley, Assistant Attorney General Ron Weich said nine Justice Department lawyers in total previously represented terror suspects, contributed to court briefs in detainee-related cases or otherwise helped advocate for detainees.

Weich acknowledged in the letter that Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal previously represented a Guantanamo Bay detainee and that National Security Division Attorney Jennifer Daskal previously worked for Human Rights Watch, which advocates on behalf of detainees.

Weich declined to identify the other lawyers, but he insisted that no political appointee at the Justice Department “would permit or has permitted any prior affiliation to interfere with the vital task of protecting national security, and any suggestion to the contrary is absolutely false.”

He also said that any suggestions of a “conflict of interest” are “an apparent misapprehension” of legal standards, adding that all political appointees have taken pledges to meet ethical standards.

Asked whether any of the seven previously unidentified lawyers now work on detainee-related issues, Miller declined to comment.

It appears that, at least on one case, a DoJ lawyer sought advice from career prosecutors about conflict of interest:

As for the two lawyers who were named by Weich in his recent letter to Grassley, Daskal has “generally worked on policy issues related to detainees” while at the Justice Department, said Weich, adding that her detainee-related work “has been fully consistent with advice she received from career Department officials regarding her [ethical and legal] obligations.”

Weich said Katyal “has not worked on any Guantanamo detainee matters, but has participated in litigation involving detainees who continue to be detained” elsewhere.

It is asking an awful lot of even a good lawyer to set aside previous advocacy for a client and dispassionately carry out their duties at DoJ. In a well run department, one would think that even the appearance of ethical problems would be cause to reassign an attorney. Holder is either clueless, or arrogant in his dismissal of criticism. Judging by his actions in connection with requests for information from Senator Grassley, I’ll choose the latter.

It’s ridiculous to claim that the “al-Qaeda 7″ are a security risk. And the right does the cause no good by going off half cocked and calling DoJ “The Department of Jihad.” All conservatives are doing by employing these McCarthyite tactics is obscuring and taking attention away from the real issue at stake; whether attorneys who advocated for detainee rights have any business working on their cases at DoJ.

That, and Holder’s intransigence with Congress, arrogantly secretive manner in this and other cases, as well as the AG’s ultra-wrong call on the KSM trial are the real issues.

The rest is a crock.

UPDATE

At least one conservative has got their head on straight:

Finally, it is appropriate to criticize lawyers who defend terrorists and terrorist suspects. Contrary to what Walter Dellinger would like us to believe, these lawyers have no professional obligation to represent terrorists and terrorist suspects. They did so by choice and this choice, like all others, is fair game for criticism.

However, it is entirely inappropriate to suggest that these lawyers share the values of terrorists or to dub the seven DOJ lawyers “The al Qaeda Seven.” Unfortunately, this is what a video released by the organization Keep America Safe does.

I would rather give up my law license than represent Osama bin Laden’s driver, for example. And I take a very dim view of the decision by Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal to undertake that representation.

However, I would not deserve to have a law license if my personal views on this matter caused me to launch vicious, unfounded attacks on lawyers who exercise their right to represent despicable clients.

I first became aware of blogger Al Weisel (AKA “Jon Swift”) when I started my “Carnival of the Clueless” linkfest back in 2005. Al submitted a post each week almost from the beginning.

I have to admit to being had by the Jon Swift character. I never read his submissions closely, scanning them for the essence of what he was writing about, and thus was totally unaware for a couple of months that he was skewering conservatives. It wasn’t until I read on some other blog that he was a satirist that I actually began to read what he wrote with that in mind.

I don’t necessarily feel bad or stupid about it. I apparently wasn’t the only conservative unable to divine the author’s intent. In truth, what Al and others on the left sometimes see as right wing nonsense is occasionally anything but. However, his unerring eye for absurdities on the right, and a pitch perfect ear that regurgitated conservative talking points to make them sound ridiculous, placed him in a class all his own as a satirist.

Al Weisel died on February 27. 2010. The tragedy of his death at age 46 was compounded by the circumstances; he suffered “2 aortic aneurysms, a leaky aortic valve and an aortic artery dissection from his heart to his pelvis,” according to his mother who posted the news on his long defunct blog. And he was stricken on the way to his father’s funeral in West Virginia.

Good satire needs to be subtle enough to sound plausible while giving broad hints that lets the reader in on the fun. It is a tightrope few are creative enough, disciplined enough, and talented enough to walk. Al managed it with apparent ease. At all times, he maintained a sincerity so believable, you occasionally did double takes on what he wrote to make sure he was poking fun at you.

I was an occasional target of his saucy barbs, to which I responded with my usual good humor. The fact that Al was amenable to correcting some of the stuff I complained about always impressed me.

Eventually, we struck up a sort of odd email relationship. Whenever I was a subject of one of his satirical lances, he would email me - usually including a pithy comment. I would banter back in kind (although with less joie de vivre and not half as much talent). I was pleased that he invited me to participate in his “Best Blogs of 2007″ roundup. Not too many conservatives could say that.

Eventually, he mostly stopped linking because we were usually on the same wavelength when it came to criticizing conservative lunacy; me screaming about it and he parodying it. I can’t say I missed being the target of his razor sharp wit and poison pen. But he was a joy to read if only to marvel at the elegance and clarity of his writing.

As with many such email relationships over the years, we fell out of touch. The news of his passing has opened the floodgates to memories from my early days of blogging and has helped me recall how every day seemed a challenge to be joyfully faced.

Can’t say that anymore. Age and burnout eventually take their toll on a blogger’s constitution. Al doesn’t have to worry about that anymore. And I have no doubt that he’s already skewered St. Peter in The Heavenly Times for something he said when Al talked his way past him and through the pearly gates.

UPDATE

Ed Morrissey has an old Blog Talk Radio show of his that featured me on the first half hour and Jon Swift the last half hour.

Recent images of Pluto taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Note the change in features - totally unexpected.

Last night, the PBS science program Nova reminded us what a real scientific debate looks like.

Remarkably, there was a kind of political element to the debate as well as pressure groups advocating for one side or another. But the important thing was that there was respect among scientists and lay people for opposing points of view. No charges of one side or the other being in the pay of corporations. Neither side referred to the other as “Nazis.” And yet, there was real passion and belief animating the debate - and a healthy skepticism from both sides that is the hallmark of true science.

The subject of the debate was the “former” planet Pluto and whether it should be restored to its place in the heavens as one of nine “wanderers” (which is what the Greek word for “planet” means), or whether the decision in 2006 by the Astronomical Union to demote Pluto should be confirmed.

“Pluto Files” was hosted by a national treasure. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of New York’s Hayden Planetarium, has assumed the title, “The People’s Scientist” that had been vacant since the lamented death of Carl Sagan in 1996. He is literally all over the tube these days with appearances on science shows produced for the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, the Science Channel (part of the Discovery Network), Natgeo, and other PBS productions.

I wish we had a dozen Tysons for other scientific disciplines. He, like Sagan, makes the subject matter under discussion lay-friendly. He makes learning fun. He comes across onscreen as approachable, and gives the impression that you can ask any question - no matter how stupid - and he would give you an answer.

His ability to take enormously complex subjects and distill their essence into tolerable, bite sized nuggets of information that everyone can understand is a gift. Or perhaps he works at it more than other scientists. In truth, there is some grumbling among other scientists about popularizers like Tyson. They have the attitude, many of them, that the lay population doesn’t need to know where their billions of dollars are going, what scientists are doing with our tax dollars. They believe that it’s too much trouble to explain to those who pay the bills what their experiments and studies are all about.

This may be true to a certain extent. But there are many scientists who at least try to help us understand the universe and our place in it. Tyson is quite simply, the best.

But it was Tyson who pretty much set off this debate over Pluto’s status by removing the “cosmic body” as he calls it, from the display of planets at the Hayden Planetarium in 2001 when the facility opened. When the New York Times got wind of the demotion and published a front page story, all hell broke loose. Tyson got thousands and thousands of emails and letter protesting his decision. One of them, from a little boy:

Dear Mr. Tyson, I think Pluto is a planet. Why do you think Pluto is no longer a planet? I do not like your anser!!! Pluto is my faveret planet!!! You are going to have to take all of the books away and change them. Pluto IS a planet!!!!! Your friend, Emerson York.

At about the same time, two astronomers who had been looking for other objects in the Kuiper Belt (the location in the solar system where Pluto lies), discovered several round, icy, planet-like bodies - one of which was even bigger than Pluto.

This precipitated a meeting of the IAU in 2006 where the infamous decision demoting Pluto to “minor planet” or dwarf planet was made. In many cases, a decision made by a governing body would satisfy all but the most curmudgeonly contrarians. But for whatever reason - and Tyson offers a few during the show, including the idea that Walt Disney naming the goofy dog after the planet probably contributed to Pluto’s popularity - both the public and surprisingly, hundreds of astronomers objected.

All of this set up Tyson’s journey across the country to unravel the mystery of people’s love affair with Pluto. His trip took him to Harvard where he faced off with a scientist who disagreed with him. He went to Walt Disney World to hug a costumed Pluto.

And then, he traveled to my adopted hometown of Streator, Illinois. Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto back in 1930, was born in Streator and the townsfolk here revere him as a hometown boy made good. Tyson conducted interviews at the barber shop and next door coffee shop with people passionate about keeping Pluto’s designation as a planet. Indeed, the state of Illinois (and Tombaugh’s adopted home state of New Mexico) have passed laws proclaiming that while Pluto passes over those states, it is a planet. I kid you not.

Tombaugh is a quintessential American character. He was a farm boy with no college education who built remarkable homemade telescopes out bits and pieces of farm equipment - real Rube Goldberg stuff. To satisfy his passion for the stars, Tombaugh made his way west and got a job at the Lowell Observatory outside of Flagstaff, AZ cleaning the giant telescope. After a few years, he worked his way up to researcher and the observatory brass thought he would be an excellent choice to look for, what at the time was called, “Planet X.”

Since the discovery of Neptune in 1846, perturbations in that planet’s orbit inferred the existence of another planet. Dubbed Planet X by Percival Lowell, the rich astronomer who built the observatory, a fruitless search ensued for 9th planet for the next 80 years.

Tombaugh turned out to be the perfect choice for this thankless task. He was patient, dedicated, and eager to contribute. It was mind numbingly dreary work as night after night, he would expose photographic plates on the same section of sky and then, using a device called a blink comparator, he would patiently and with great diligence, click back and forth between two developed plates looking for a moving blur in the background.

Tombaugh struck paydirt on February 8, 1930. He confirmed the discovery and then measurements were taken to confirm that Pluto did indeed have an orbit outside of Neptune. His discovery made him world famous and garnered him a scholarship to college. He taught astronomy until his retirement in 1975.

Almost from the start, there were questions about Pluto’s status. It’s weird orbit took it inside Neptune’s for a time. It was very small, barely larger than earth’s moon. And then the questions really began once other Kuiper Belt objects were imaged and cataloged. This led to the controversial IAU decision and some serious blowback from astronomers who have not taken Pluto’s demotion lying down:

Within days of the announcement, a petition signed by hundreds of scientists rejected the IAU decision. On his way back to New York, Tyson stops at John Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Lab in Baltimore, Maryland, where he meets Alan Stern, a staunch Pluto supporter and one of the world’s leading experts on Pluto. Stern is the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission—a nine-and-a-half-year voyage to Pluto, which launched in 2006. Stern’s assessment of Pluto is that it is a new kind of planet, a dwarf planet. “It looked like the solar system consisted of four terrestrial planets, four giant planets, and misfit Pluto,” says Stern. “But today, instead, we see a solar system with four terrestrial planets, four freakishly giant planets, and a whole cohort of Pluto-like objects that turn out to be the dominant class of planet in our solar system.”

The spacecraft New Horizons is streaking toward Pluto, the fastest object ever built by man. It’s current speed is over 38,000 mph and will fly by the minor planet in July of 2015. At that point, we may be in for a huge disappointment. Pluto is so far away and gets so cold that it is very possible that its atmosphere actually freezes and descends to the planet’s surface due to its weight, obscuring any features we might make out. The spacecraft might be blocked from seeing the surface via visible light but the craft also has the capability of imaging in the infrared and ultraviolet as well. At the very least, we’ll get some idea of mountains and valleys that might exist on Pluto.

None of this will settle the debate over whether Pluto is a planet or not. And watching the back and forth between Tyson and those who disagree with him, you are struck by the contrast between those who passionately believe in climate change and the climate skeptics. It makes you wish that the debate over global warming could be carried out this professionally, and with due regard for the scientific process and the welcoming of diverse viewpoints.

It will never happen. The investment of the climate change scientists in maintaining their position is far greater than any astronomer engaged in the defense of the planet Pluto. Still, the debate over Pluto is indicative of real scientific inquiry and not the politically motivated and manipulated results we appear to be getting from climate change scientists.

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, I welcome AT’s Rich Baehr and Dan Riehl to discuss the uproar over Jim Bunning’s maneuver to block a $10 billion spending bill. We’ll also look at the status of health care and the presidents plan released today.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

Ten billion dollars. Ten lousy billion dollars held up by Jim Bunning and Washington explodes in tears, hand wringing, and vituperative finger pointing at the retiring senator, the author of all this pain. (Evidently, Bunning did a little finger pointing of his own, but it was the middle digit and was directed at an ABC News producer - not necessarily a bad target but I question the timing.)

Welcome to the future. This is how it will be when even minimal, nonsensical, irrelevant, and paltry cuts in federal spending are attempted. It can be argued - and I am happy to do so - that Bunning chose the wrong time, the wrong place, and the wrong bill to fight for fiscal sanity.

But ten lousy, fricking, billion dollars engendering an explosion of hate and angst directed toward Bunning? What in God’s name is wrong with this country?

By the reaction, you would think that Bunning was trying to throw poor people out into the street, force grandma and grandpa to eat Meow Mix, strip soldiers naked and send them into battle, while singlehandedly increasing his carbon footprint to the point that the ocean drowns Los Angeles in a wave of melting arctic ice due to global warming.

The reality is, that what Bunning is asking is impossible; that the Congress find $10 billion dollars to cut at the same time they want to spend $10 billion on all these worthy, and necessary programs.

That’s $10 billion out of a budget of $3.6 trillion that the Congress can’t find. Are you getting the sense that Washington has turned into some bad Dadaist dream - a surreal nightmare with rabbits in top hats, chameleons sitting on park benches that change colors in rapid succession, while toothless hags wander among the ruins cackling uncontrollably? (That’s MY surreal nightmare, thank you. Butt out.)

Harry Reid farts and the EPA spends $10 billion on air purification. Nancy Pelosi sneezes and NIH gets a $10 billion grant to study allergic reactions by west coast society matrons. Max Blumenthal picks his nose and Democrats spend $10 billion to memorialize it.

Washington spends $10 billion - and ten times ten billion - without breaking a sweat. The spend $10 billion on their lunch breaks.

“But it’s an emergency!” scream the Democrats and liberals. Fine. If you don’t think a trillion dollar deficit is an “emergency” get the hell out town. When are we going to have the same zeal to cut spending as we do in increasing it? Are you trying to tell me that a couple of committee chairmen from the House and Senate couldn’t sit down for an hour and come up with $10 billion to cut? Are we that far gone where three trillion plus in federal spending has generated such powerful lobbies that Congress fears for its political life if they vote to cut less than 0.003% of the budget? What is going to happen when we are forced to cut hundreds of billions of dollars in order to deal with the deficit crisis?

Emergency? Absolutely. Let’s treat it like one. If you’re so all fired eager to spend $10 billion then by God, you should be equally glad to cut the same amount. We’ve reached the point in Washington where cutting a measly $10 billion in order to pay for necessary expenditures causes a reaction more in keeping with a threat to the stability of the republic rather than a simple exercise in minimal - minimal fiscal discipline.

Robert Samuelson presciently describes the mindset in Washington:

There is a make-believe quality to modern American politics: People — and this applies across the political spectrum — say things that are stupid, misleading or unattainable and think (or pretend) that these very same things are desirable, candid and realistic. A disconnect between the language of politics and the nation’s actual problems is growing. The politics of the budget offer a splendid example.

On the right, we have conservatives clamoring for tax cuts when, as a practical matter, today’s massive budget deficits preclude permanent new tax cuts. With present policies and a decent economic recovery, the federal government could easily spend $12 trillion more than it collects in taxes from 2009 to 2020, reckons the Congressional Budget Office. So before reducing taxes, the tax-cut advocates need to identify hundreds of billions of annual spending reductions — or accept huge and hazardous annual deficits. Naturally, a comprehensive list of spending cuts is nowhere in sight.

On the left, President Obama and Democrats have spent the past year arguing that, despite the government’s massive deficits and overspending, they can responsibly propose even more spending. Future deficits are to be ignored (present deficits, to be sure, partially reflect the economic slump). The proposal is “responsible” because it’s “paid for” through new taxes and spending cuts. Even if these financing sources were completely believable (they aren’t), the logic is that the government can undertake new spending before dealing with the consequences of old spending. Of course, most households and businesses can’t do this.

Politicians can, because it’s all make-believe. They pretend to deal with budget deficits when they aren’t.

Certainly part of this “make-believe” is denial. Another aspect of fantasyland on the budget is an adherence to the old procrastinator’s maxim, updated to reflect reality in Washington; “Never cut today what someone else will be forced to cut tomorrow.”

Finally, simple politics is at play. It is more popular to spend money than to cut it out of the budget, more popular to cut taxes than to raise them. I mentioned the lobbies that have sprung up to protect their share of the $3.6 trillion budget. Every program, every proposed purchase that is cut affects real people. Let’s not kid ourselves. It’s not just the poor who benefits from federal spending. It’s the rich, the super rich, the middle class, and everybody in between and above and below. The government has burrowed so far into our lives in the last half century that removing it will be literally like operating without anesthetic.

America has been on a binge since the end of World War II and purging what we’ve gorged on will be worse than any emetic on the market. The problem has been that we - and through us, our elected representatives - have refused to make choices regarding what we want our government to do for us. Some need it to do more than others. Some desire it to do more than most. A few want it to do more than can be accepted in a democratic republic and maintain individual liberty.

Because we refuse to make choices - except that we don’t want to pay for whatever Washington does for us - we are staring upwards at a mountain of debt that will bury us sooner rather than later. And into this charged atmosphere comes retiring Jim Bunning like a bull in a china shop trying to bend the Congress to his will. He has made his point. It is time to relent.

As I said, wrong war, wrong time, wrong battlefield. But Bunning’s piquancy should be a cautionary tale. Samuelson again:

The common denominator is a triumph of electioneering over governing. Every campaign is an exercise in make-believe. All the good ideas and good people lie on one side. All the “special interests,” barbarians and dangerous ideas lie on the other. There’s no room for the real world’s messy ambiguities, discomforting contradictions and unpopular choices. But to govern successfully, leaders must confront precisely those ambiguities, contradictions and choices.

The make-believe of campaigns increasingly shapes the process of governing. Whether this reflects cable TV and the Internet — which reward the harsh hostility of extreme partisanship — or the precarious balance between the two parties or something else is hard to say. But the disconnect between policy and the real world is harmful. Proposals tend to be constructed more for their public relations effects than for their capacity to solve actual problems.

The result is a paradox. This electioneering style of governing strives to bolster politicians’ popularity. But it does the opposite. Because partisan rhetoric creates exaggerated expectations of what government can do, people across the ideological spectrum are routinely disillusioned. Because actual problems fester — and people see that — public trust of political leaders erodes.

When our chickens come home to roost, and the unsustainable debt and deficit has had its way with our economy, our budget, and our way of life, two partisans will be seen standing in the rubble tossing bricks at each other, screaming vile epithets back and forth, blaming each other for the collapse. Meanwhile, the rest of us will be sitting in the smoking ruins of a once dynamic, liberty loving country wondering pitifully what the hell happened.

The best article I’ve read to date on how we have become a bailout nation and why was published about 2 weeks ago in Rolling Stone. It was by the estimable Matt Taibbi and is entitled “Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle.”

I dare you to read it and not be grinding your teeth by the end of it.

Recognizing a certain class bias inherent in Taibbi’s explanations of what the Wall Street banks have wrought doesn’t diminish the impact of this horror story in the slightest. The bottom line, as Taibbi explains is that nothing has changed since September 2008. The same practices that got us into trouble then, have been resurrected and, if anything, are being used with even more gusto by the Wall Street Raiders who are now working hand and fist with the government to rob the taxpayers:

That’s why the biggest gift the bankers got in the bailout was not fiscal but psychological. “The most valuable part of the bailout,” says Rep. Sherman, “was the implicit guarantee that they’re Too Big to Fail.” Instead of liquidating and prosecuting the insolvent institutions that took us all down with them in a giant Ponzi scheme, we have showered them with money and guarantees and all sorts of other enabling gestures. And what should really freak everyone out is the fact that Wall Street immediately started skimming off its own rescue money. If the bailouts validated anew the crooked psychology of the bubble, the recent profit and bonus numbers show that the same psychology is back, thriving, and looking for new disasters to create. “It’s evidence,” says Rep. Kanjorski, “that they still don’t get it.”

More to the point, the fact that we haven’t done much of anything to change the rules and behavior of Wall Street shows that we still don’t get it. Instituting a bailout policy that stressed recapitalizing bad banks was like the addict coming back to the con man to get his lost money back. Ask yourself how well that ever works out. And then get ready for the reload.

Taibbi - sometimes to the detriment of his narrative - uses various plays by con-artists (a society of criminals unique in their vocabulary and history) and compares them to what J.P. Morgan and other Wall Street outfits did to get the trillions in Fed money that have made them so profitable today.

In essence:

A year and a half after they were minutes away from bankruptcy, how are these assholes not only back on their feet again, but hauling in bonuses at the same rate they were during the bubble?

The answer to that question is basically twofold: They raped the taxpayer, and they raped their clients.

Beyond that, either the big banks haven’t learned a thing, or more likely, know a good thing when they see it:

The bottom line is that banks like Goldman have learned absolutely nothing from the global economic meltdown. In fact, they’re back conniving and playing speculative long shots in force — only this time with the full financial support of the U.S. government. In the process, they’re rapidly re-creating the conditions for another crash, with the same actors once again playing the same crazy games of financial chicken with the same toxic assets as before.

That’s why this bonus business isn’t merely a matter of getting upset about whether or not Lloyd Blankfein buys himself one tropical island or two on his next birthday. The reality is that the post-bailout era in which Goldman thrived has turned out to be a chaotic frenzy of high-stakes con-artistry, with taxpayers and clients bilked out of billions using a dizzying array of old-school hustles that, but for their ponderous complexity, would have fit well in slick grifter movies like The Sting and Matchstick Men.

Why we have been sanguine in the face of what Taibbi describes as these “old school hustles” is the result of the extraordinarily arcane nature of the cons being visited on the Fed and Congress by the banks.

To appreciate how all of these (sometimes brilliant) schemes work is to understand the difference between earning money and taking scores, and to realize that the profits these banks are posting don’t so much represent national growth and recovery, but something closer to the losses one would report after a theft or a car crash. Many Americans instinctively understand this to be true — but, much like when your wife does it with your 300-pound plumber in the kids’ playroom, knowing it and actually watching the whole scene from start to finish are two very different things.

Taibbi lists 7 of these con games that the gamblers at J.P. Morgan and other big banks have been running at our expense. Here is a too brief description of a few of them:

* “The Swoop and Squat.” How counterparties - including a French bank - played both sides in the AIG meltdown and forced it into bankruptcy. The big banks had been using AIG to “insure” the toxic mortgage backed securities, for which AIG received a substantial cut, but was unprepared when hundreds of billions in bad paper drowned it.

The “swoop and squat” is the well known insurance scam where your car is boxed in by 2 or 3 other cars and a deliberate “accident” ensues so that the scammers can collect:

This may sound far-fetched, but the financial crisis of 2008 was very much caused by a perverse series of legal incentives that often made failed investments worth more than thriving ones. Our economy was like a town where everyone has juicy insurance policies on their neighbors’ cars and houses. In such a town, the driving will be suspiciously bad, and there will be a lot of fires.

When AIG was drowning, the banks hurried its collapse along:

So Goldman and other banks began demanding that AIG provide them with cash collateral. In the 15 months leading up to the collapse of AIG, Goldman received $5.9 billion in collateral. Société Générale, a bank holding lots of mortgage-backed crap originally underwritten by Goldman, received $5.5 billion. These collateral demands squeezing AIG from two sides were the “Swoop and Squat” that ultimately crashed the firm.

Of course, Goldman demanded the government reimburse them for the full “value” of the $5.9 billion in collateral they ripped from AIG. If the insurance giant had gone through bankruptcy, Goldman would have received virtually nothing. Just one way that Goldman gamed the government and the Fed in gorging itself to bursting.

* “The Dollar Store.” In grifter parlance, this refers to something like what we saw in the movie “The Sting” where a lot of con artists set up a fake front to fool the mark. Goldman and Morgan Stanley applied for, and received in record time, a charter that redefined the kind of bank they were just 5 days after the AIG bailout:

By law, a five-day waiting period was required for such a conversion — but the two banks got them overnight, with final approval actually coming only five days after the AIG bailout.

Why did they need those federal bank charters? This question is the key to understanding the entire bailout era — because this Dollar Store scam was the big one. Institutions that were, in reality, high-risk gambling houses were allowed to masquerade as conservative commercial banks. As a result of this new designation, they were given access to a virtually endless tap of “free money” by unsuspecting taxpayers. The $10 billion that Goldman received under the better-known TARP bailout was chump change in comparison to the smorgasbord of direct and indirect aid it qualified for as a commercial bank.

Before reading this next bit from Taibbi on what the banks did with that new charter, I suggest you remove all sharp objects from within reach plus anything that might be used as a missile to hurl through your monitor:

When Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley got their federal bank charters, they joined Bank of America, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase and the other banking titans who could go to the Fed and borrow massive amounts of money at interest rates that, thanks to the aggressive rate-cutting policies of Fed chief Ben Bernanke during the crisis, soon sank to zero percent. The ability to go to the Fed and borrow big at next to no interest was what saved Goldman, Morgan Stanley and other banks from death in the fall of 2008.

[...]

In fact, the Fed became not just a source of emergency borrowing that enabled Goldman and Morgan Stanley to stave off disaster — it became a source of long-term guaranteed income. Borrowing at zero percent interest, banks like Goldman now had virtually infinite ways to make money. In one of the most common maneuvers, they simply took the money they borrowed from the government at zero percent and lent it back to the government by buying Treasury bills that paid interest of three or four percent. It was basically a license to print money — no different than attaching an ATM to the side of the Federal Reserve.

That’s right. They borrowed interest free money from the government and lent it back to us - with interest. This is one con game used by Taibbi that has a direct application to what occurred in the real world.

* The Rumanian Box. This is an age old scam invented by a guy named Lustig where the con man shows the mark a magical machine where you put a blank piece of paper in one end, turn a crank and out pops a $20 on the other end. Here’s how the banks used this concept and bilked the Fed:

The brilliant Lustig sold this Rumanian Box over and over again for vast sums — but he’s been outdone by the modern barons of Wall Street, who managed to get themselves a real Rumanian Box.

How they accomplished this is a story that by itself highlights the challenge of placing this era in any kind of historical context of known financial crime. What the banks did was something that was never — and never could have been — thought of before. They took so much money from the government, and then did so little with it, that the state was forced to start printing new cash to throw at them. Even the great Lustig in his wildest, horniest dreams could never have dreamed up this one.

The big banks threatened to freeze lending even more unless the Feds came up with more goodies. The government didn’t disappoint:

The ploy worked. In March of last year, the Fed sharply expanded a radical new program called quantitative easing, which effectively operated as a real-live Rumanian Box. The government put stacks of paper in one side, and out came $1.2 trillion “real” dollars.

The government used some of that freshly printed money to prop itself up by purchasing Treasury bonds — a desperation move, since Washington’s demand for cash was so great post-Clusterfuck ‘08 that even the Chinese couldn’t buy U.S. debt fast enough to keep America afloat. But the Fed used most of the new cash to buy mortgage-backed securities in an effort to spur home lending — instantly creating a massive market for major banks.

And what did the banks do with the proceeds? Among other things, they bought Treasury bonds, essentially lending the money back to the government, at interest. The money that came out of the magic Rumanian Box went from the government back to the government, with Wall Street stepping into the circle just long enough to get paid. And once quantitative easing ends, as it is scheduled to do in March, the flow of money for home loans will once again grind to a halt. The Mortgage Bankers Association expects the number of new residential mortgages to plunge by 40 percent this year.

The last con game Tabai uses to highlight what Wall Street has been up to is called “The Reload.” This refers to a mark who comes back for seconds.

It’s important to remember that the housing bubble itself was a classic confidence game — the Ponzi scheme. The Ponzi scheme is any scam in which old investors must be continually paid off with money from new investors to keep up what appear to be high rates of investment return. Residential housing was never as valuable as it seemed during the bubble; the soaring home values were instead a reflection of a continual upward rush of new investors in mortgage-backed securities, a rush that finally collapsed in 2008.

But by the end of 2009, the unimaginable was happening: The bubble was re-inflating. A bailout policy that was designed to help us get out from under the bursting of the largest asset bubble in history inadvertently produced exactly the opposite result, as all that government-fueled capital suddenly began flowing into the most dangerous and destructive investments all over again. Wall Street was going for the reload.

Why? Why haven’t we woken up to this outright robbery? Well for one thing, the financial services industry gives generously to both parties, thus allowing them virtual free reign to snooker the taxpayer. But even Obama’s new regulations - being watered down even further as I write this - will be inadequate. And the reason has to do with morals, not regulation:

Con artists have a word for the inability of their victims to accept that they’ve been scammed. They call it the “True Believer Syndrome.” That’s sort of where we are, in a state of nagging disbelief about the real problem on Wall Street. It isn’t so much that we have inadequate rules or incompetent regulators, although both of these things are certainly true. The real problem is that it doesn’t matter what regulations are in place if the people running the economy are rip-off artists. The system assumes a certain minimum level of ethical behavior and civic instinct over and above what is spelled out by the regulations. If those ethics are absent — well, this thing isn’t going to work, no matter what we do. Sure, mugging old ladies is against the law, but it’s also easy. To prevent it, we depend, for the most part, not on cops but on people making the conscious decision not to do it.

My concern about Democrats and liberals bashing bankers has always been that they fail to adequately differentiate between the robber barons on Wall Street, and the friendly, smiling face of a loan officer we have dealt with at our neighborhood suburban bank. Those are the guys who suffer because of the indiscriminate class card played by the left. They have as much in common with the crooks at Goldman Sachs as my pet cat Aramas has with a saber tooth lion.

But I think the key here has been misplaced conservative support for these rogues who we see as the ultimate success stories in the free market. The problem, as Taibbi points out and as we should have realized long ago, is that these guys operate on another level of the playing field altogether. They can’t be effectively regulated by the government because they are so powerful both politically and as economic entities that drive the macro economy, that they, in effect, hold most of the cards. They are partners with the government. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the government is partners with them. There is no competition except among the extremely small group of bankers to which they sometimes conspire with to realize their enormous profits.

Maybe tar and feathers isn’t such a bad idea after all.

Reading this New York Times op-ed by Al Gore gives you the distinct impression that he has been off somewhere communing with the global warming gods and hasn’t been paying attention to the collapse of his “overwhelming consensus” on climate change:

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy - the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century.

But what a burden would be lifted! We would no longer have to worry that our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands. We could instead celebrate the naysayers who had doggedly persisted in proving that every major National Academy of Sciences report on climate change had simply made a huge mistake.

A “criminal generation?” This from a Democrat whose global warming “fixes” would bankrupt the western world.

In fairness, Gore makes some good points. Framing our energy policy in terms of national security is a good idea. And highlighting the danger of so much of our debt being bought by China can’t be said enough when the necessity to get a handle on our deficit has become so vital.

And Gore is correct when dismissing snowstorms, and even the Himalayan Glacier kerfuffle as not disproving the concept of climate change. Every time I read an amateur climate skeptic referring to the recent blizzards or cold temps as “proof” that global warming is a fraud, I cringe. It’s winter, people. You make the skeptical community look silly by postulating such stupidity.

Yet, the former Vice President misses the point when it comes to the Himalayan Glacier retraction, and presumably other revelations that have shown the IPCC  as a hopelessly flawed, politicized body. Taken by themselves, these sometimes politicized, sometimes mistaken statements relating to climate change are not compelling evidence of global warming being a total fraud - especially when stacked up against the bulk of studies and scientific articles on climate change that have been published over the last two decades. But he is clueless about the impact of these “errors” on the very people from which he is demanding such extraordinary sacrifice. Even in Europe, skepticism is way up. And despite a virtual blackout in the US of every major story relating to the IPCC’s bumbling, corrupt methods (and its chairman who has been caught red handed in a monumental conflict of interest), skepticism is on the rise here as well.

But the real problem with this little essay is that Gore is taking the now familiar tack of climate change advocates and tut-tutting about the series of revelations that have undermined the science he so confidently - and with the fervor of a religious zealot - believes in.

Weirdly, he mischaracterizes the document dump from East Anglia as an effort by Jones and Mann to push back against the “onslaught of hostile, make-work demands from climate skeptics.” These “make work” demands were citizens seeking confirmation of the science via Freedom of Information laws. In other words, Gore obviously believes we should sit down, shut up, and let him and his buddies reach into our pockets and remove trillions of dollars without demanding proof of the scientific basis for his power grab.

How very democratic of him.

This is an extraordinarily weak and idiotic defense. Poor wittle Jones and Mann. Let us weep for their workload. Let us gnash our teeth at the meanies who put them under so much pressure, that they felt they had not choice but to lie, cheat, cook the books, ruin the careers of fellow scientists who didn’t agree with them, and pressure formerly respected science publications to toe the company line on climate change.

What a crock.

Gore evidently hasn’t read the recent literature:

It is also worth noting that the panel’s scientists - acting in good faith on the best information then available to them - probably underestimated the range of sea-level rise in this century,

Doesn’t he mean “overestimated?”

Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, one of the top journals in its field, confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century.

[...]

Siddall said that he did not know whether the retracted paper’s estimate of sea level rise was an overestimate or an underestimate.

Yes - but remember; the science is settled.

He blames the failure in Copenhagen, not on the common sense objections from China and India regarding the destruction of their economies if recommendations made by the IPCC were adapted, but because the US senate didn’t pass cap and trade.

Finally, this bit of weirdness that shows Gore for what he is; a megalomaniac:

From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption. After all has been said and so little done, the truth about the climate crisis - inconvenient as ever - must still be faced.

Al Gore sees himself as a redeemer - as Jesus Christ. And where is there room in a democratic republic for someone who thinks that the rule of law should be an “instrument of redemption?” Holy Mother, that is the scariest idea ever to drool from Gore’s mouth. The rule of law is just that - the rule of law. There should be no special qualities that animate the enforcement of the law - certainly not a drive to “redeem” anything or anybody. That smacks of titanic hubris to use the law to enforce your idea of “redemption.”

If the shoe fits, Al…

Much of this blog post originally appears in The American Thinker.

The simple minded Congressman who wondered out loud whether abortion in the black community was so rampant that it can be compared to the suffering of slaves inadvertently has done us a favor.

Rather, he would have if the left was willing to engage in a conversation about the efficacy of federal government policies that are specifically directed at poverty stricken black communities. This is a “no go” zone because it challenges the foundation of modern liberalism to ask questions that have no good answers when it comes to the state of the black family, the ravaged inner city black communities, and an African American culture that tolerates a shocking number of teenage mothers, absent fathers, and the social problems that arise from dependency.

“Racism” as an encompassing catch all to explain the above doesn’t cut it. But its all the race baiters like Jackson and Sharpton - and their liberal allies - have because the alternative would be actually examining the problems of black communities in a cold, rational manner, devoid of the kind of emotionalism so beloved of the left, in order to eliminate or adjust federal policies that may in some cases, be contributing to the holocaust.

By contrast, it is much easier to take the inelegant words of Trent Franks out of context, twist their meaning, and play the race card for all it’s worth.

This fellow is a rabid abortion foe - so much so that he hyperbolically tried to connect abortion in the black community to slavery:

We should look back on that with criticism. It is a crushing mark on America’s soul. And yet today, half of all black children are aborted. Half of all black children are aborted. Far more of the African-American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by policies of slavery. And I think, What does it take to get us to wake up?

He’s 100% wrong, of course. The idea that “far more” of the African American community has been affected by abortion than slavery is, on its face, absurd. And Rep. Franks didn’t mention the other half of that equation; 70% of children delivered to African American mothers are born out of wedlock.

What makes Rep. Franks remarks offensive is not the hate, but the tone deafness. It brings to mind a defense of Jim Crow that was common in the south in the 1950’s; blacks were better off when they were slaves and had massah to take care of them. I don’t believe that was Frank’s intent in saying that abortion was more devastating than slavery but it is easy - if you’re simply trolling to score political points against your foe by taking context out of meaning - to promote the perception that he was.

It is tempting to take statistics from 1965 on the effects of poverty on the black family and compare them to today, drawing the easy conclusion that federal poverty programs are to blame for the radical decline in the viability of the black family.

But nothing is ever that simple or easy. The fact is, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan penned his famous “Moynihan Report” when he was Assistant Secretary of Labor in 1965 that eloquently and in devastating detail raised the alarm about the disintegrating black nuclear family, the crisis was already at code red. The litany of statistics used by Moynihan compared the status of the black family in the 1950’s to where it was in 1965. The divorce rate was twice that of whites at 25% (now 68%). Female headed households was at 22% in 1965 (45% today). And while 70% of black children today are born out of wedlock, that number was at 25% in 1965.

It would be wrong to blame all the problems of the black family today for policies promulgated in the 1960’s. But it is a valid question to ask have any or all of those policies made things worse than they would have been if care had been taken to mitigate the impact on black families?

Federal programs targeted the symptoms of poverty largely by granting in kind payments to the head of household. I recall some spirited debates at the time among liberals about whether a guaranteed annual income, or Basic Income, should be substituted for housing vouchers, food stamps, and other Great Society expansion of welfare payments.

What could never be imagined by Johnson, and his social engineers was the devastating impact that dependency would have on the black community, and specifically, the black family. Those policies emasculated the black male, encouraged female welfare recipients to keep having children so that her welfare payments would increase, and made it more profitable for black couples not to marry. In short, all the cultural nuclear bombs identified by Moynihan back in 1965 that were already detonating on the African American landscape were, at the very least, exacerbated by some federal programs. Clearly, the increased opportunities available to blacks in the education and employment spheres had a positive impact. But others engendered consequences we still can’t talk about today.

A guaranteed annual income might have altered that equation. We’ll never know. Along with forcing cities to address the crisis in inner city schools, and more effective job training programs, building self esteem and promoting independence might have gone at least some ways toward saving the black family.

Bobby Kennedy was eager to change the thrust of much of the welfare state from dependency to freedom. How he might have accomplished this if he had been elected president is another of those “What ifs” in history that prick at our conscience. Was there - is there - another way to assist those Americans in poverty that would lift them up rather than keep them down? As long as even discussing the problem brings false cries of “racist,” we’ll never know.

Abortion, drug use, gangs, illegitimacy - all of these are symptoms of the destruction of the black family. Rep. Franks was making an accusation - overripe, in my opinion - that federal policies are responsible for the abortion rate among blacks, and by extension, the other symptoms of decline as well. He is suffering for his inelegance and tone deafness.

Too bad his critics refuse to engage on the substance of his critique.

Yes, it was great the our president reached out his holy hand and tried to bring his adversaries to the promised land of health insurance reform. Just more proof that our president really, really, really wants to govern in a bi-partisan manner. Liberals and little children believe that fairy tale - and if you can point to a difference in emotional and intellectual maturity between the two, I would welcome it.

Only partisans believe the bi-partisan shtick, of course. Just as only partisans on the other side believe that the GOP was anxious to cut a deal. It’s part of the reason that this whole summit idea was stupid to begin with. When the president has been plotting with Harry Reid for weeks to ram health insurance reform through using reconciliation, the idea that there was any attempt to do anything save make the GOP look bad at the summit is absurd. “Bi-partisanship” was the farthest thing from Obama’s mind, and the cynicism it took to stand in front of a television audience and piously proclaim otherwise was breathtaking.

And what of the “start over” Republicans? Yeah, right. Since many conservatives think our health care system is the finest in the world and we shouldn’t mess with it at all, the idea that any of the GOP ideas on health insurance reform - some of them good ones - would be advanced by the Republicans is equally absurd. The GOP was no more interested in bi-partisanship than Obama and the Democrats but at least they didn’t pretend that they could find enough common ground to pass something both parties could support.

Meanwhile, health care costs and the price of insuring Americans continues to go through the roof while millions go uninsured because they can’t afford it or can’t get coverage at any price due to a pre-existing condition.

Earth to Republicans: This is a problem. This is a problem that needs to be addressed by responsible legislators. I agree with you that the ultimate goal of the Democrat’s plan is a single payer insurance system and a near total takeover of the health care segment of the economy. Plenty of Democrats haven’t even bothered to hide their feelings about that and have openly said as much. But this is why God gave you a brain; figure out a way to pass health care reform that will prevent that from happening. Slippery slopes are not inevitable if you recognize them and work to avoid them.

Moon to Democrats: Read any good polls lately? That sucking sound you hear is your ironclad majorities going down the drain because, as the economy slips even further into recession, your constituents are wondering what in the name of all that is good and holy you are doing fiddling with health care reform while they can’t even get a job flipping burgers. Have you noticed those cooking pots of tar and people tearing into feather pillows when you’re speaking to the home folks? Lots of pitchforks in evidence too. The contorted faces of rage that shocked you last summer are nothing compared to the lynch mobs that await many of your colleagues on election day if you continue to pursue this Ahab-like obsession of our presidents’s.

Did one side “win” the day yesterday?” I’d say from what I saw of the summit (the first 4 hrs - then I watched woman’s hockey which was far more interesting), the Republicans had a clear advantage. It’s always better to be on offense and the GOP speakers scored several hard blows to the Democrats while offering some modest reforms of their own. For their part, the Democrats weirdly tried to get everyone watching to break down weeping as they related story after story of Americans losing insurance, having inadequate insurance, or some insurance executive beating them up, eating their children, or sucking their blood vampire like from their necks. I’m sure the wonks who were watching the fiasco had to excuse themselves to dry their eyes and blow their noses. Or not. Such emotionalism plays well on campaign commercials but only made Democrats look unserious and mostly silly for their going for the heart tactics.

For their part, the Republicans scored some good points when pointing out reality about many parts of the bill. There was an interesting dust up over a useless argument on CBO’s estimate of premium costs for the average family. Lamar Alexander said the CBO calculated that premiums would rise, Obama differed. The president was right; the CBO said premiums will go down - except that families may choose to purchase more insurance at a higher cost.

The whole question is moot anyway. The CBO numbers calculate that Obamacare will find $500 billion in Medicare savings. Everyone knows that’s off the table so, while the actual CBO report claims lower premiums for families, the reality is going to be different if Obamacare is passed because the CBO estimates on premiums are based on the idea that the Medicare reduction in hospital and doctor payments will actually come about and lower health care costs. No lowering of health care costs means no lowering of health insurance premiums. So, score one for the president on accuracy, but deduct a half for disingenuousness.

Other than that, Dr. Tom Coburn had some devastating points about malpractice and defensive medicine and really landed some body blows when talking about waste and fraud in Medicare. Since there is no tort reform in the bill, Democrats had no coherent answer. And in one of the few truly bi-partisan moments, the entire room agreed about waste in the system.

Such esoterica was nothing compared to the tour de force presentation by Paul Ryan (video here). Ryan took the Democrats to school with his treatise on the budget and deficits, and how simply dishonest the Democrat’s bill is in presenting itself as a budget cutting measure. Ryan proved once again why he is a young turk in the Republican party. That 5,000 watt brain of his cannot be ignored.

I was wracking my brains thinking of something good to say about another Democrat on the panel but frankly, only the president impressed me. The rest of his colleagues only revealed a “stature gap” as Mike Gerson pegged it. There was the president. And then there were the seven dwarfs.

But no clear Obama advantage this time, as there was in Baltimore at the GOP retreat a couple of weeks ago. There, Republicans sputtered while Obama - completely at ease and in full professorial mode - lectured his opponents and made them look small.

But the GOP came loaded for bear yesterday and it showed. They were sharp, penetrating, and for the most part, reasonable. If the White House strategy was to repeat the president’s performance from Baltimore, they were clearly disappointed. Even David Gergen, who spends a lot of his face time on TV bashing Republicans, said it was the GOP’s “best day in years.”

Considering what has transpired in recent years, that ain’t saying much.

A growing scandal in Great Britain may give us a glimpse of America’s future under a health care system run by the government.

Note, I said “may.” The fact is, government run health care systems in other countries have varying mixes of public and private care available to consumers, which gives many citizens options regarding their care. Canada is a good example. Most Canadians are satisfied with their health care system despite its long waiting periods for routine procedures for many. That’s because private insurance is still available for those who wish coverage for prescriptions, dental and vision, as well as little extras like private hospital rooms. Up to 2/3 of Canadians have some form of private, supplemental insurance, mostly paid by their employers.

And unlike Great Britain, almost all services are provided by private companies. Doctors are paid a fee for services rendered rather than receiving a salary. The industries are heavily regulated and competition is stifled to a large degree. But there is no rationing per se and no lifetime limit on using the system.

But the National Health Service in Great Britain is a different story. Here, only about 10% of citizens purchase supplemental private insurance, although the government will pay for some procedures performed by private concerns if the waiting period in the public sector is too long. We’ve heard of the NICE Commission - the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence - which functions as a de facto rationing body by approving or denying treatments. They say they base most of their decisions on quality of care and only deny treatments that “don’t work” or have limited value in improving the condition of patients. The Medicare Cost Control board that the health care reform bill would set up here would perform similar duties.

Since private insurance companies routinely make those kinds of decisions here already, the difference will be in treating the patient as a number or a customer. While the motivation underlying both private insurer and government may be similar, it is not the same and most critics of Obamacare make the point that the pressure on government to deny services will be greater than on a private insurance company due to efforts by government to not only put downwards pressure on the cost curve of medical care generally, but also meet budgetary targets. It’s a political argument and I’m not sure about it’s real life implications. But looking at the workings of NICE, one has to wonder about some of their decisions.

But the big difference between Great Britain and Canada is that almost all health care facilities are run by the NHS. The result?

Up to 1,200 people lost their lives needlessly because Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust put government targets and cost-cutting ahead of patient care.

But none of the doctors, nurses and managers who failed them has suffered any formal sanction.

Indeed, some have either retired on lucrative pensions or have swiftly found new jobs.

[...]

The devastating-report into the Stafford Hospital-shambles’ laid waste to Labour’s decade-long obsession with box-ticking and league tables.

The independent inquiry headed by Robert Francis QC found the safety of sick and dying patients was ‘routinely neglected’. Others were subjected to ‘ inhumane treatment’, ‘bullying’, ‘abuse’ and ‘rudeness’.

The shocking estimated death toll, three times the previous figure of 400, has prompted calls for a full public inquiry.

Bosses at the Trust - officially an ‘elite’ NHS institution - were condemned for their fixation with cutting waiting times to hit Labour targets and leaving neglected patients to die.

But after a probe that was controversially held in secret, not a single individual has been publicly blamed.

The inquiry found that:

• Patients were left unwashed in their own filth for up to a month as nurses ignored their requests to use the toilet or change their sheets;

• Four members of one family. including a new-born baby girl. died within 18 months after of blunders at the hospital;

• Medics discharged patients hastily out of fear they risked being sacked for delaying;

• Wards were left filthy with blood, discarded needles and used dressings while bullying managers made whistleblowers too frightened to come forward.

If the hospital were run by a private concern, would those kinds of problems exist? There are many private nursing homes and hospices that are a disgrace in this country but a big municipal hospital like the one described above would be under intense examination by state boards and other bodies. And you would think insurance companies would also be concerned if they were paying out for treatment in such a death trap. There’s no way to prove it, but common sense would dictate that conditions like the kind described above would not exist for very long in many privately run American hospitals.

Some Draconian proposals coming out of the NHS in recent years - denying care to the very sick, patients being diagnosed as “close to death who aren’t - only happens when government run health care pays too much attention to budgets and rules and not enough to individual patients and their needs.

To hear health care reform advocates on the left in this country, it is apparent that they wish to do away with private insurance entirely in favor of a single payer system. In fact, the very idea of for-profit health care seems to annoy them. I would guess that if given a choice, liberal health care reform advocates would prefer the British model as opposed to the Canadian model.

In that sense, if they eventually get their way - and they have made absolutely no secret about their view that Obamacare is a gateway to that kind of system - such horror stories could indeed alight here. But we can only hope that a more rational approach, mixing public sector funding and the efficiency of private companies to deliver services, will eventually emerge from the current process.

It won’t happen today at the health care summit. And I’m not sure that President Obama and the congressional Democrats are open to that kind of real compromise anyway. They have used the insurance industry, the drug companies, for-profit hospitals, and doctors as political whipping boys so often in this debate that they are almost forced to forgo any hint of market reforms in their package.

I don’t like much of anything that the Democrats have proposed so far. But if we’re going to have some kind of national health insurance program, we should think about what works in the real world rather than what we would prefer to see as a result of an ideological bent on the part of the legislature.