Showing posts with label David Broder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Broder. Show all posts
Monday, July 30, 2007
Incoherent Centrism
"The Dean" of the press corps David Broder takes on health care today. His column is just as big a mess as the health care crisis.
Better late than never, President Bush has provoked what could be a serious debate on the future of health care by threatening to veto an extension of one of the most popular and successful government programs in that field. The fight he has started over the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, as it is known, is -- in the words of Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt -- "a surrogate for the larger philosophical debate on the role of government in health care."
Had Bush joined that debate before his time in office had dwindled to 18 months and his approval scores slumped to Nixonian levels, the chances of something positive emerging would have been much greater.
Now, as Leavitt conceded in an interview, "it may take another election" to bring the country face to face with the larger issues Bush has raised: how big a role the federal government should take in providing medical services and how that role should be financed.
I just give up on Broder. Seriously. Is there any point to even rebutting the man, pointing out how ludicrous his alleged centrism is when put into practice? Yes. Bush brings up a very important issue for debate.
Should we not allow people to see a fucking doctor. It's a crying fucking pity that his numbers are Nixonian (which Broder is admitting for the first time), or he could have used the power of the Presidency to say shots are for wimps.
Retire already.
Friday, July 06, 2007
Populism Redefined Washington Style.
David Broder in yesterday's Washington Post had another column that made me scratch my head and wonder what the heck is going on. He worries that there is too much accountability and small 'd' democracy occuring with leaders paying too much heed to the rabble down below. As examples of this, he mentions the killing of the immigration bill and the loss of fast track authority for the President in negotiating trade deals.
The belief that official Washington is deaf to the people's wishes is a staple of political rhetoric for both Republicans and Democrats -- even those, including Thompson, who have operated inside the Beltway for decades.
Let a reporter who is not running for anything suggest that exactly the opposite may be true: A particularly virulent strain of populism has made official Washington altogether too responsive to public opinion.
Too responsive? Supermajorities of 70% plus want universal health care and for us to leave Iraq. How is that going David? The reason the Republican base was followed in their nativist orgy on the immigration bill was because the moneyed interests who fund the GOP didn't want the bill either. It was bad for business. The status quo is fine for them. They get the cheap labor, who are in a legal neverland, and profits keeps rolling in.
We have had a 15 year experience with Free Trade agreements in this country btw Mr. Broder. How is that manufacturing base doing? I think that in an era of engine coolant poisoned toothpaste, baby bibs and children's toys covered in lead paint, and some stories too sick to mention, there might be a very good fucking reason to take a step back and figure out what we are trying to achieve with trade.
If the goal of free trade is to enlarge the potential labor base driving down wages as more workers compete for the same manufacturing jobs, it is working beautifully. The fact that communities have had their $20 an hour manufacturing jobs replaced with $8 jobs at Wal-Mart doesn't make me people xenophobes, or viurlently offensive. It means that they have been screwed.
If pompous blowhard columnists were being outsourced for half the price to India, David Broder would be singing a quite different tune. There are real people who hurt from the ability of reporters to buy fedoras at a cheaper price, to borrow a construct from Al Franken.
Never do you once acknowledge the pain of people who have lost either purchasing power, or jobs, crushing their American dream by immigration or trade hitting their industry hard.
What amazes me is that Broder is known in his industry as the guy in touch with main street. If they renamed Wall Street, Main Street maybe so.
Broder is the kind of guy who can say nothing about non violent drug offenders rotting in prison, but have tender concern about Scooter Libby having his hair mussed.
I am sick and fucking tired of elites who ignore the genuine concerns of working people, then scream raging mob when coincidentally things go the people's way.
Just trying to be responsive to you Dave.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Read This Please
This was today's column by David Broder. It will take a long form essay to state how wrong and insulting was this piece of drivel. I am too woozy tonight from the fourth of July road trip to give it the justice that is due. Tomorrow it will be venting time.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Missing The Point Entirely
David Broder, "the dean" of D.C. journalists, has a column today where he once again takes shots at liberals and totally misses the point about campaign finance reform. It must be Sunday.
If you believe most of the newspaper editorials and the outraged complaints from self-styled reform groups last week, the Supreme Court opened a huge "loophole" in campaign finance law that will enable corporations and unions to pollute the political process with their ads.
It is astonishing to me that a decision grounded in the First Amendment right to address basic public policy questions should be objectionable to people who consider themselves liberal.
No Broder. That is not the objection and you know it. Basically, third party groups can't run ads mentioning a candidate by name 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election. There is a solid reason for this. It is a way to use a subterfuge to get around campaign finance limits for a campaign.
Let's say Senator X is for removing tax breaks to oil companies. Challenger Y loves it, and the campaign contributions he receives from the oil company executives. There is a problem. They are maxed out in what they can give.
A lightbulb goes off in their heads and 5 days before the election, a massive ad buy sweeps across the state.
Senator X, why do you oppose saving kitties? Please call Senator X and tell him to support legislation to protect little furry balls of adorability.
(This ad paid for by Citizens for Patriotism, Mom, & Apple Pie)
In reality, this "issue" group, with the banal sounding name is trying to not influence the kitty protection issue, but to assist the campaign of Challenger Y by running a negative ad against the incumbent. They already gave their $2,000 and now they are trying to give more. This is why these advocacy group ads were banned.
It is not about mean liberals trying to stop free speech. Broder knows this. Instead of speaking truth to power, he is being their tool.
This is what puts you at the head of the class? These objections aren't shocking to anybody who is being honest.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Atrios posted a piece by David Broder from back during the impeachment era where Broder launched a broadside against noted historians such as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. for well saying that impeaching Clinton over lying about a blow job was dumb.
Atrios' angle is a bit different than mine. I just want to know what gives is all. "Mainstream Journalists" such as Broder, Chris Matthews, Maureen Dowd were raging out of control. Off with his head was the tenor of their columns. This was because he lied about oral sex with an intern.
We now have two trillion in long term costs estimated for the Iraq snipe hunt. Bush thinks that whole 1215 habeas corpus thing is outdated, the Geneva conventions are quaint, torture is a good thing, and the list goes on. Where is their outrage now?
This is not an exercise in bashing them. I genuinely want to know. How could Clinton getting his rocks off literally send them over the edge, but this doesn't. It doesn't even have to make logical sense, it's just the process of thinking that fascinates me.
Anybody have any ideas?
Update:To be clear, I am not being snarky. Clinton's love life genuinely upset them in ways Bush's conduct hasn't. The pathology is intruiging.
Today it's time to just say no mas. David Broder's column today is both erroneous and offensive at the same time. I want to blame it on age. Otherwise, the man is just a horse's ass. Today's column is about the Scooter Libby trial.
Now, many conservatives are up in arms about Walton "throwing the book" at Libby. Part of their criticism is based on their belief that Libby's long and effective government service -- attested to by former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and a host of other worthies-- should mitigate whatever errors in judgment he made in this case.
It goes downhill from here. One would think that referring to Henry Kissinger, Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, et al as "worthies" would be the low point of a column, perhaps even a career, but Broder was just getting warmed up.
Despite the absence of any underlying crime, Fitzgerald filed charges against Libby for denying to the FBI and the grand jury that he had discussed the Wilson case with reporters. Libby was convicted on the testimony of reporters from NBC, the New York Times and Time magazine -- a further provocation to conservatives.
The CIA said Valerie Plame was covert, the Special Prosecutor said she was covert, the congressional testimony showed she was covert. Former colleagues, the judge agreed. How also are conservatives supposed to be provoked here? Libby leaked to all these "liberal" media outlets, whose reporters were willing to go to jail to protect him? It's their fault now?
I think they have a point. This whole controversy is a sideshow -- engineered partly by the publicity-seeking former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife and heightened by the hunger in parts of Washington to "get" Rove for something or other.
They have a point??? His wife's name is Valerie Plame Wilson. She was a career CIA agent and she is a patriot whose career was ruined by people like Scooter Libby and your friend Karl Rove. You are supposed to be a journalist, not a water carrier. Dismissing her as "his wife" and pretending Karl Rove was a choir boy in all this is a discredit to truth, governmental integrity, and downright boorish.
Like other special prosecutors before him, Fitzgerald got caught up in the excitement of the case and pursued Libby relentlessly, well beyond the time that was reasonable.
A CIA agent named Valerie Plame and her CIA front company Brewster-Jennings were blown by an administration official who did it out of petty spite due to having a problem with her husband. She worked in the field of weapons of mass destruction. Anybody she met overseas was put into danger by this relevation now that their government knows she wasn't a business woman but an undercover operative trying to learn their military secrets.That is old fashioned midwestern values Dave? The mafia has a better code of ethics.
Retire please. What you wrote here was more profane than any common curse word uttered by the critics you too easily dismiss.
Monday, June 04, 2007
No, it's not about granting universal coverage. It's not a remedy that punishes drug companies and HMO corporations for excessive profits, denying coverage to people who need it, rejecting claims for treatments people need.
It's to call everybody too fat.
Government records show that 75 percent of health-care costs and seven out of every 10 deaths are attributable to chronic diseases such as asthma, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Obesity, which has doubled in 30 years, is by itself responsible for 30 percent of the increase in health-care costs during that period. In far too many cases, perhaps a majority, treatment of these diseases is intermittent and inconsistent. What is worse, little has been done to prevent them or arrest them in their early stages.
"Once you put those numbers on it, the policy implications are pretty clear," Thorpe said in an interview. "You start with prevention and better management of obesity and high blood pressure -- not the contentious issues that have dominated the debate."
Yes, let's forget about the uninsured. That is much too contentious. Most Americans object to people getting insurance. How can this debate ever get resolved? Let's just drop it for a while and get people on treadmasters. I am not sure if it will cure asthma, but let's think outside the box here.
That janitor who makes $10 an hour doesn't need to be able to get treatment in a health clinic. He needs to do some pilates instead. That person who was diagnosed with cancer between jobs doesn't need an oncologist, he needs a protein bar. Keep speaking truth to power Broder.
Listen. I am all for people getting healthier. Let's not forget though that it is large corporations putting crap in our food that is helping us get so unhealthy. David Broder suggesting though that we can safely ignore covering the working poor and the lower middle class in this country with a plan of physical fitness makes me wonder about his commitment to anything other than corporate profits.
Let them eat rice cake David?
Sunday, May 13, 2007
David Broder has a column today that dismissed the idea of election reform. He states that Zoe Lofgren and Rush Holt's bill will be a disaster. He has a non partisan expert to back him up on this fact. If a man with decades of experience in the elections business says the bill is bad, you know that there are problems.
As a non-expert, I turned to the man who knows more about the conduct of elections than anyone else in the country, the director of the Houston-based Election Center, Doug Lewis.
"I have no problem with the objective of creating paper receipts," Lewis said, "But they have rejected every idea we've offered them to show what might work. I've been at this 40-some years, and I have not seen a piece of legislation worse than this. It is overly prescriptive, overly detailed, a cumbersome monstrosity to deal with."
But it is a high priority for the House Democratic leadership -- so watch out.
So watch out. The top expert Doug Lewis thinks this bill is bad. But, who is doug Lewis? I did a google search of "doug lewis election center republican". I was playing a hunch. Here is what came from the first listing from a group called Source Watch.
Until recently, very little information has been available about Lewis's career prior to joining the Election Center. What little information was available from biographies sanctioned by Lewis appears to have been spun to talk up his extremely slim Democratic credentials (he worked for Democrat defector John Connally), and has neglected to mention his very solid Republican credentials (he was executive secretary of the Republican Party in Kansas, executive director and finance director of the Texas Republican Party, and ran the 1976 Gerald Ford reelection bid in Texas).
Hmmm, that kind of makes him look like a partisan, not an independent observer. David Broder doesnt' tell us that. Broder has been around enough to damn well know Lewis' credentials too. By offering him up as the final authority on this bill while at the same time hiding the man's credentials is dishonest, plain and simple.
Broder doesn't like the bill fine. Argue that point. Don't tilt the deck by putting on a journalist hat when you are in editorial mode.
Update:There is also this from an article on election reform from MSNBC. (H/T FSchmitz1 from the WP comments board)
The Election Center has come in for criticism after reports that the nonprofit, nonpartisan group accepts contributions from voting machine manufacturers. Two members of the task force are former local election administrators who’ve formed their own election-related businesses.
Update 2:This is from an article by Jim Hightower three years ago
The corporate and governmental officials saddling us with these paperless touch-screen systems say that the rising public concern is nonsense—" pie-in-the-sky paranoia," as one state official scoffed. They assert that the machines are perfectly secure because they are tested and certified by professional technology labs. Yes, but these certifying labs are not public entities working for you and me—they are for-profit corporations that are hired (and, of course, can be fired) by the very companies that make the machines!
And these "certifiers" refuse to discuss their testing methods, much less reveal publicly the flaws that they find in their clients' computerized voting systems. They've turned voting into a closed and cozy corporate fiefdom. "Oh, fiddle-faddle!" exclaims an outfit called the Election Center, which is made up of state and local election officials. That might be cute, except that the center is substantially funded by the three largest makers of e-voting machines—Diebold, Electronic Systems & Software, and Sequoia Voting Systems.
The relationship is so tight that the center's national conference for election officials, held last month, featured a welcoming reception sponsored by Diebold and a dinner cruise on the Potomac sponsored by Sequoia. The conflicts don't stop at the center. For example, the National Association of Secretaries of State (whose members usually are the top overseers of elections in their states) gets 43 percent of its budget from voting-machine companies and other vendors. The current president of the association says of the machine purveyors: "Personally, I've known a lot of these people for a long time, and we've become a family."
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Broder isn't as subtle as he thinks. Read the article, read the not so subtle pushing of Mitt Romney as his favorite GOP candidate, and wonder to yourself why David Broder hasn't retired yet.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Bill Clinton got a blowjob and David Broder screeched that this wasn't Clinton's town, and he was sullying the fine cesspool of D.C. for the ordinary crooks. So it is intriguing today to listen to David Broder "denounce" administration criminality.
You have to feel a twinge of sympathy now for the Bush appointees who suddenly find unsympathetic Democratic chairmen such as Henry Waxman, John Conyers, Patrick Leahy and Carl Levin investigating their cases. Even if those appointees are scrupulously careful about their actions now, who knows what subpoenaed memos and e-mails in their files will reveal about the past?
It's kind of like when you hold up a Mcdonalds and demand a Supersized quarter pounder meal with the cash, but then you look in the bag and the fries were just regular sized. You feel kind of ripped off.
Shame on the American people for voting for democrats who want to "investigate" "crimes" by "republicans".
I feel so much pity (for the Washington Post). Apparently, they are too ashamed to tell Broder about the exciting retirement package that awaits him.
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