Last night I was headed from Hyannis, Massachusetts back to the island of Nantucket on the Steamship Authority’s ferry boat, and decided to check my email and see what was happening on my favorite blogs.  I logged onto the boat’s WiFi service, typed in the URL for Docudharma, and then, to my horror, I was…

BLOCKED!!!

Yes, that’s right, the friendly wingnutters who control the WiFi, the same dimwits who have permanently tuned the boat’s televisions to Faux News, have blocked access to Docudharma. It was a bit of a shock, to say the least. Why would they do that, you ask?

Because of its adult-oriented content, said the red banner that popped up instead of one of buddydharma’s diaries. Yes, you are now browsing on a porno site! (OK everybody, lets get those hands where we can see them! This isn’t atube.xxx, despite what people think! Not that there’s anything wrong with sites like that, but still. Save that for another time, perhaps?)

It seems so strange. I am not focused heavily on that kind of content at all. I barely post about it compared to the other content available on this website, when you take an in-depth look. Still, it is what it is, and there’s not much I can do to stop these kinds of blocks.

Funny, they didn’t block that orange flavored place…

So now I’ve got even more reason to come back here every day. Who knew that I could get satisfaction AND ponies all at once?

Once again filling in for RiaD’s T.I.T.A.S.S.  (Thurdays I Think About Stupid Stuff—- for the libidinous n00bs)

RiaD is obviously still not 100%, having only posted 4 Essays and made 233 comments since her return Mar. 30th.  Rest and Eat dear Ria.  

So,anyway, I had been planning to take a bunch of cheap shots at this:

http://www.megryanblog.info/

but my friend, we’ll call him Bill, received another shipment of vinyl.  In it was an album by The Monks.

So Meg and her fan will have to wait.

Introducing The Monks

Gary Burger: Lead guitar, lead vocalist

Larry Clark: Organ, vocalist

Dave Day: Banjo (initially rhythm guitar), vocalist (died January 10, 2008)

Eddie Shaw: Bass guitar, vocalist

Roger Johnston: Drums, vocalist (died November 8, 2004)

All the members were American GIs stationed in Germany in the mid-sixties. They began playing together in 1964, calling themselves the 5 Torquays. The Torquays differed little from countless other bands of the time: They covered Chuck Berry songs and played music inspired by the British beat groups. But the band experimented together musically – Gary Burger said:

“It probably took us a year to get the sound right. We experimented all the time. A lot of the experiments were total failures and some of the songs we worked on were terrible. But the ones we kept felt like they had something special to them. And they became more defined over time.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T…

Maybe can’t quote from the official site.

http://www.the-monks.com/index…

This will not be pleasing to everyone.

The Monk Chant

and

How To Do Now

Shaw told me in a 2003 interview. “Our crowd was a harder crowd, so to speak. We’d play that song very sarcastically, and the whole audience would sing, ‘I want to fuck your hand.'”

http://www.citypages.com/datab…

Cuckoo

I Can’t Get Over You

Complication

In 2006

Black Monk Time

As usual, there is some great stuff on this blog today.  Go read it.

And puhleez do not risk bumping something off the rec. list by clicking on that button here.

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

[I know buhdy already wrote on this — see cite for him below — but I figured an extra commentary wouldn’t hurt, providing also a bit more information on the legalities involved. — V.]

In a very interesting follow-up to the unfolding story on the 2003 John Yoo memorandum that justified the use of torture, ABC news is reporting how the CIA came to the White House after the spring 2002 capture of al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan and asked for permission to use more “aggressive” interrogation techniques. Citing anonymous sources, ABC says that beginning with the Zubaydah case, “the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency.” These discussions evidently included the use of waterboarding, as the CIA has admitted using this torture technique on Zubaydah.

The “Principals” — high-level Bush administration officials — present included National Security Adviser Condolezza Rice, who chaired the meetings, “Vice President Cheney… Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.”

While Ashcroft is said to have signed off on the legality of the interrogations, he got squeamish about how it was being approved. Perhaps he was afraid of future legal and political consequences. Perhaps he remembered how the secrets of the Wannsee Conference were ultimately leaked. Per the ABC story (also reported over at Reuters):

Lawyers in the Justice Department had written a classified memo, which was extensively reviewed, that gave formal legal authority to government interrogators to use the “enhanced” questioning tactics on suspected terrorist prisoners. The August 2002 memo, signed by then head of the Office of Legal Counsel Jay Bybee, was referred to as the so-called “Golden Shield” for CIA agents, who worried they would be held liable if the harsh interrogations became public…..

But even after the “Golden Shield” was in place, briefings and meetings in the White House to discuss individual interrogations continued, sources said. Tenet, seeking to protect his agents, regularly sought confirmation from the NSC principals that specific interrogation plans were legal….

Highly placed sources said CIA directors Tenet and later Porter Goss along with agency lawyers briefed senior advisers, including Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Powell, about detainees in CIA custody overseas….

Then-Attorney General Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said.

According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.”

Despite Ashcroft’s qualms — mainly concerned with his political neck, not the safety of prisoners — the Principals “approved interrogations… pushing the limits of international law and even the Justice Department’s own legal approval.” Condi Rice was said to be particularly forceful in giving the CIA power to torture (with Powell echoing Ashcroft’s wimpy protests).

As the blogger buhdydharma in an article today, the new revelations “clearly point to a high level, willful conspiracy to commit torture.” Beyond the question of conspiracy, serious violations of a number of laws that prohibit torture and inhumane treatment have also been broken. Courtesy of Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights First own examination of criminal laws governing laws on torture, let’s review what Ashcroft, Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Tenet, and possibly others, may find themselves vulnerable with aggressive prosecution (for footnotes, please refer to original via link):

The recent amendments to the War Crimes Act establish as war crimes “grave breaches” of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions,10 including “torture” and “cruel or inhuman treatment.”11 “Torture” is characterized, in pertinent part, as “an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.”12 The separate war crime of “cruel or inhuman treatment,” is defined as “an act intended to inflict severe or serious physical or mental pain or suffering.”13

For the crime of torture under the WCA14 and the Torture Act,15 severe mental pain or suffering is defined as “the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from” several specified actions, including “the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering” and “the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mindaltering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality.”16

For the WCA crime of “cruel or inhuman treatment,” serious mental pain or suffering is defined as “the serious and non-transitory mental harm (which need not be prolonged) caused by or resulting from” the same specified actions.17

The Detainee Treatment Act requires that “no person in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment (CIDT).”18 The DTA defines CIDT as conduct prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Since the “CIA’s reported “enhanced” interrogation techniques cause the types of physical and mental anguish that are criminalized under the WCA and other laws,” it’s clear that top administration officials have committed war crimes.

But what are the governmental officials, including elected members of the legislature, going to do about it? Certainly we can expect nothing from Mukasey’s Justice Department, which has all but signed off even on waterboarding, and refuses to rule out evidence obtained by same. Rep. Conyers has asked John Woo to appear at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee next month. Meanwhile, the story barely reaches the significance of the front pages in the U.S. press.

This is not surprising, as the Executive Branch of the U.S. government has gotten away with the criminal execution of an illegal, pre-emptive war in Iraq, even when the evidence for this was placed in the public domain for all to see (going back at least to the publication of the Downing Street memos). Reportedly, the congressional offices of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats receive emails and faxes demanding action, up to and including the initiation of impeachment hearings in the House. All to no avail.

The poet William Blake wrote over two hundred years ago:

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

We know that this is more than enough to put the criminal leadership of the Bush administration away in prison for many years. Therefore, enough!!

Give us our bill of indictment. Give us our impartial jury to examine the evidence. Give us justice. Failing this, I shudder to think what monstrous conclusion is being prepared for us in the bowels of history.

Also posted at Invictus

Let’s get one thing straight, now.  There are no liberal Republican Senators.  But the GOP’s got a secret-play in its handbook: the media carte-blanche from being an “independent”-minded poseur.  And 2006 showed us it works for Republicans..

There were only two liberal Republicans in 2002: Jim Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee.  Jeffords left the GOP and is now out of the Senate.  Chafee was defeated by an even better Senator, Sheldon Whitehouse, in 2006.  

I refuse to bow to partisan idiocy at worst and abandon plausible ground at best: Arguably, Lincoln Chafee was a good or decent Senator.  That’s bare decency and it’s fair.  Not least compared to some Democrats (who joined him in the Gang of 14).  Unlike “Moderatists” named McCain, Snowe, Collins, Smith, ad nauseum, Chafee was clearly against the Iraq war, and favors gay marraige.  

And this free-thinking spirit cost him.

John Nichols of The Nation penned a 2004 article on the seething conservative hatred for any liberal-leaning Republican,called “Hunting for RINOs“, in which he wrote:

It is possible to point to just one senator, Rhode Island’s Lincoln Chafee, and two members of the House, New York’s Amo Houghton and Iowa’s Jim Leach. Those three Republicans have regularly been rated as more liberal in National Journal measures of Congressional voting patterns than many prominent Democrats with whom they serve. A somewhat larger circle clings to the moderate GOP mantras of a Gerald Ford or a Richard Lugar, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But they are fading fast as a force in Congress.

These decisively pit him against other Republicans, and explain why they abandoned his re-election chances (Chafee  subsequently left the party, citing increasing intolerance for unorthodoxy).  Then there was his liberal stances on death penalty, minimum wage, health care. Pro-environment and pro-choice.

“But they are fading fast as a force in Congress”.

American politics moves in cycles of roughly thirty-five to forty years. A New Deal re-alignment in 1932 which made the Washington Consensus of the 50s and 60s decidedly liberal, enough so for LBJ’s social spending in spite of the hawishness of Korea, the Cold War, Bay of Pigs, Space Race and Vietnam.  In 1968, Nixon used societal unrest and generational friction to instigate a Conservative Realignment. which laid the groundwork for Raygun and Bush the Elder, Clinton’s New Democrat coalition and the DLC, and Dubya-Cheney.

We are set for a new Realignment, a progressive one.  Like previous realignments, responsive to demographic shifts, population booms, war and economic changes, et cetera.  Though I would love for the GOP to drive itself off the cliff of immigrant hysteria, religious bigotry, et al, both parties are changing.  If McCain captures the White House the GOP will have a markedly easier time, but either way the GOP is a declining party, without the “ideas” which fueled them twenty years ago.  McCain would win against assumed pickups (to what number is unknown) in the House and even Senate and an increasingly liberal electorate.

It’s the kind of environment where “moderates” like Snowe, Collins and Gordon Smith can survive or pass the torch to younger moderate-poseurs, though the party has been moving increasingly hardline on every conservative issue only last election cycle (as well as the current one).  Thanks to a complacent, lazy and all-too-easily impressed media, political illteracy and incumbent advantage.  If they succeed now, the future generation of Republicans will have an early start at posing as reasonable, tolerant and “reality-based” on any host of issues, when in actuality they will only side with progressives for political expediency.

Collins is the most liberal-appearing Senator up for re-election this cycle, and that is why she is the most popular.  Her entrenched advantage is not so resolute, however.   Smith is perhaps the second most liberal, and, speaking of expediency, made some convincing grandstanding against the Iraq war one month after the 2006 mid-terms.

And yet, Collins voted with Bush 82% of the time.  She’s liberal?  

We can afford to let her keep her seat on progressive turf when we’re facing a health epidemic, an endless war and climate change? What can the forward-thinking voters in Maine get from Collins they can’t get from Tom Allen, who’s sponsered legislation in the House to provide for health and mental screening for our servicemen and women?

And for all Smith’s grandstanding, what have we seem since that speech that convinces us we wouldn’t have an easier time with Democratic candidate for Oregon Senate Steve Novick (or Jeff Merkley)?  

In 2006, the GOP found its loophole.  Republican enabler Joe Lieberman got ousted from the Democratic party, but held onto his Senate seat, convincing a majority of voters that he was reasonable and liberal because he voted with Democrats “90% of the time”.  Olympia Snowe was re-elected in Maine, and polling found she had a favorability rating in her state of 79%, the highest of any sitting Senator, because she is the most liberal Republican. (If worlds apart from progressives like Feingold, Whitehouse and Leahy.  

For the GOP, a subtle line was drawn between Rush Limbaugh’s “RINOs” who somehow still get plenty of conservative voters–and of course the money–when the time comes, and decent people like Lincoln Chafee caught in the real middle.

This made the difference between the Dems having 49 seats and 51 seats, plus Bernie Sanders. Not to mention that both 2006’s Democratic candidates in Connecticut and Maine were anti-war and progressive.

We’re seeing early momentum in some Western states, in Senate races in New Mexico, Colorado and Virginia and New Hampshire.  We’re not seeing that momentum in Oregon yet.  In Maine, Collins is advantaged in the polling.  Polling shows McCain getting Oregon’s 7 electoral votes matched up against Hillary.

We need to take away their advantage.

Voters were duped into believing they could trust Lieberman and Snowe on the war.  Instead we get Kyl-Lieberman in a later-rebuked effort to escalate tensions with Iran into flat-out war.  Had they known, voters would not have responded approvingly.  You have to remember, although we tend to be well-educated, politically active and financially viable, we’re still a minority. And most voters don’t have a lot of time or clear information coming their way on these individuals.

And so, what for us?

We have got to take the fight to every Senate seat, whether the candidate is a bigot like James Inhofe that some would have us believe is too hard to touch in a “red state”, or whether they’re a Bush-enabling faker like Gordon Smith or Susan Collins in a blue state.  

We have to expose them for the snake-oil salesmen they are.  For McCain’s “maverick” iconography, he sure seems to be a McSame candidate with a lot of Abramoff money.  (Maybe it was the teary-eyed bear-hug with Bush, we know that Dubya’s wet one on Lieberman was no medicine for that looney tune, either).  For Smith’s calling of Bush-Cheney’s war “possibly criminal” he was conveniently helpful to Cheney in the 2002 salmon kill-off in the Klamath River, which was later used by Cheney to drum up the white nativist vote in Oregon.  For all Collins “RINO”ism, she gets a passing grade in the Bush family school of government.

Voters respond to integrity above all else, and Republicans like McCain and other “moderates” only have survived because they’ve duped people into buying their bullshit.

Take away their free-pass, and the game is over.

And the rest is history.

1. The Los Angeles Times reports the Bush administration hopes to admit more Iraq refugees. “State Department officials, who have been harshly criticized for moving too slowly in allowing Iraqi refugees into the U.S., issued new immigration figures Wednesday and suggested they may reach a goal of admitting 12,000 refugees this fiscal year. Government figures show that 2,627 Iraqis have been cleared to enter the country since Oct. 1… The administration did not meet its 2007 goal… Between 2003 and 2006, about 5,000 of the estimated 2 million Iraqis who fled their country came to the United States”.

   Compare the 5,000 (to 6,000) we’ve allowed to move to the U.S. with the 40,000 Sweden let move to their country. But now, the Washington Post reports Iraqi refugees find Sweden’s doors closing.

   Sweden, which has one of the world’s most welcoming refugee policies, has become the new home of 40,000 Iraqis since the war began in 2003. Last year alone, more than 18,000 Iraqi refugees came to Sweden. According to the State Department, the United States has taken in roughly 6,000 Iraqis in programs for refugees and translators…

   The national government budgets $30,000 to help settle each person granted asylum. It pays for Swedish language classes, helps with housing and job training and pays a monthly allowance for living expenses…

   According to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, 4.5 million Iraqis have been forced out of their homes. Half of them are still in Iraq, and 2 million have fled to neighboring countries, particularly Syria and Jordan, where most live in poor and crowded conditions. For the Middle East, “it’s the greatest refugee catastrophe since 1948,” the year Israel was born, said Tobias Billstrom, Sweden’s minister for migration.

   The world has a “moral obligation” to help these people, Billstrom said. If the United States accepted as many people per capita as Sweden, a nation of 9 million, he said, it would have taken in 500,000 refugees.

   The U.S. no longer has the moral high ground, if it ever did.

More issues of morality can be found below the fold as Four at Four continues…

2. On another moral issue, The New York Times reports Olympic president gives rare rebuke to China. “The president of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, offered a rare rebuke to the Chinese government on Thursday, calling on authorities to respect its ‘moral engagement’ to improve human rights and to provide the media with greater access to the country ahead of the Beijing games… The Chinese government immediately rejected Mr. Rogge’s remarks, saying they amounted to an unwelcome meddling in the country’s domestic affairs… Olympic committee members have been taken aback by the scope and ferocity of the protests, which are marring what has traditionally been a festive event involving 20,000 torch bearers.” No one could have predicted people would be upset about China’s human rights record. Just wait for the outrage in 2016 if Chicago hosts the Olympics, especially if the U.S. is still occupying Iraq and at war with Iran.

3. In another moral issue, this is how some employers support the troops. The Christian Science Monitor reports While reservists serve, their jobs don’t always wait.

   As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grind on, tensions are mounting between the military’s civilian volunteers, trying to step back into their professions, and employers, straining at times to cope with a growing cadre of workers who are away at war for months then expect to regain their former jobs. A 1994 law – the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) – gives workers that right, along with promotions or other benefits they would have earned had they not been deployed. But with more than 600,000 reservists and guardsmen mobilized since 9/11, thousands have found their jobs gone or positions diminished when they returned…

   USERRA had been a lightly used law until 9/11 “changed our priorities completely,” says John Muckelbauer, regional director of compliance for 10 Midwestern states for the Labor Department’s Veterans’ Employment and Training Service, which investigates complaints. “It pushed USERRA right up to the top and it’s been up there ever since.” …

   Members of the reserve forces filed some 16,000 formal and informal complaints with the government from 2004 through 2006, says the Government Accountability Office (GAO), using the most recent data available. But that may underestimate the number who actually encounter rehiring problems, experts say.

   Some aggrieved workers sue their employers on their own. Most apparently take no action at all. A GAO analysis of Defense Department surveys in 2004 and 2006 showed that some 70 percent of reservists who said they had problems getting rehired or promotions or raises did not seek redress.

   One reason may be that the system is bureaucratic and can take months to decide a case.

4. Finally, a story about the destruction caused by the greed of Burma’s military junta. The Guardian reports on Burma’s disappearing teak forests.

   Burma is one of the least environmentally protected countries in south-east Asia, and deforestation is acute as a consequence of timber exploitation and poor agricultural methods. Life should be simple for local man U Tin Naing: in the town of Hsipaw, where he lives, he grows enough food to feed his family and keeps his house in good repair with timber from the abundant teak forests. But this was before the Burmese military government and a race for profits conspired to sell off most of the wood, leaving the land bare and unproductive…

   Burma still has teak, but in all but the most inaccessible regions much has been sold. Logging has provided valuable funds for the military forces, serving to support their regime while at the same time exploiting the foundations of the land.

   Harvested sensibly there would be ample to share, but this is not happening. Deforestation and all its associated ills are beginning to have their effect on the land; nutrient depletion and subsidence are phenomena that we are not used to encountering on such a scale.

   There are international embargos against the sale of Burmese teak, but once it crosses the borders it is reclassified as non-Burmese. The sanctions do little, and although smuggling a tree sounds no easy feat, our neighbouring countries do little to enforce the embargos. There are rivers across the border to Thailand and China, and one boat can carry 34 tonnes.

We need universal health care in this nation.  Nyceve has written about it extensively.  (Read the NYCEVE diaries here.)  Many kossaks, like myself, have long supported single payer.  Last year, John Edwards came out with a universal health care plan that was a road to single payer.  

Elizabeth Edwards spoke about universal health care on Olberman last night:

Elizabeth Edwards is right.

On Olberman last night:

I keep getting asked the difference between these two candidates and their policies and on health care, I prefer Senator Clinton’s to Senator Obama’s.

The difference-more important to me is the difference between Senator McCain’s proposed plan, I said plan, with the ideas of either of the Democratic candidates, and you’re talking about narrower differences between the Democrats and then this gulf that I was describing earlier, a solar system of difference between what Senator McCain is suggesting for health care and what these candidates are suggesting.

More, after the fold, including video on Elizabeth on Olberman and ABC, among other places.  

But very essential ingredient is whether or, in my view, it’s whether or not it is a universal plan, whether it covers everybody.  In order to cover everybody, it means everybody has to buy health insurance.

Senator Clinton has suggested that she would help people buy health insurance.  In fact, Senator Obama has suggested he would help people buy health insurance if they couldn’t afford it.  But he’s not going to require people to buy it.  In my view, that means that we don’t get the advantage of some cost savings, you know, you’re still-hospitals are still, because they need to stay in the black, they’re still going to need to charge people $25 for an aspirin or $50 for a bottle of water.  Those kinds of things have happened.

As long as there are uninsured people, they’re going to need to cost it (ph), they will not be able to get the costs down for everybody.  There are other reasons that are complicated I think, but related to the market and the health care pools that I think make it really important that we have this mandate, but I’m convinced that a health care policy without the mandate is only half a policy.

‘Countdown with Keith Olbermann’ for Wednesday, April 9

John Edwards came out with his Universal Health Care Plan in early February, 2007, and made universal health care an issue:

“More than any of the presidential candidates, John Edwards has come up with a specific and plausible plan that provides for health care coverage for all Americans.”

Nicholas Kristof

The New York Times

“John Edwards came out with the most comprehensive plan for healthcare.”

— Andy Stern, President, Service Employees International Union

“John Edwards has made a serious and thoughtful proposal to address the growing health care crisis. His innovative plan offers practical steps to lower the high cost of health care, improve the quality of care and provide coverage for all Americans.”

— Sen. Edward M. Kennedy

More Details Here about the Edwards Plan

For months afterward, neither Obama nor Clinton had a plan. It was clear that universal health care would not have been an issue, but for Edwards pushing it.  

Then Obama came out with a plan.  It was mediocre, descrbed by Ezra Klein, as showing “A Lack of Audacity

Number one, he didn’t make sure everybody is in. There is perhaps no more surprising fact about Obama’s plan than that it is not universal. It is certainly sold as if it is. In his speech unveiling the proposal, Obama bragged that, “[m]y plan begins by covering every American.” But it doesn’t. To say otherwise is rhetorical overreach, the appropriation of a popular and broadly-supported goal without an attendant mechanism for achieving it.

“Ezra Klein, A Lack of Audacity

“Sen. Obama has a very creative plan it just doesn’t cover everyone.”

ABC, quoting John Edwards

“Barack Obama’s plan leaves out 15 million people. The truth is that some people will choose not to buy insurance even though it’s affordable, knowing that the rest of us will pay for their emergency room visits.”

http://www.johnedwards.com/news/headlines/20071128-health-care-mandate/

A few months later, Clinton finally came out with a plan.  It essentially copied the Edwards plan in its main provisions.  

Since I think the Edwards plan is a good plan and can lead to single payer, and since the Clinton plan essentially copies the Edwards plan, I prefer the Clinton plan to the Obama plan.  If Obama is elected, I hope he implements the Clinton (Edwards) plan.  If Clinton is elected, I hope she implements the Clinton (Edwards) plan.  I want universal health care.  ASAP.  This nation needs it.    

Elizabeth Edwards recently has criticized the McCain “health care plan.”

Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former Democratic presidential contender John Edwards, said she and John McCain have one thing in common: “Neither one of us would be covered by his health policy.”

snip

Elizabeth Edwards told some 500 health journalists the other day that John McCain’s health care plan was like “painting lipstick on a pig,” an expression from her neck of the woods that in this case means lofty-sounding words that pretty up some ideas that could hurt ordinary people who don’t understand what’s going on; that is, unless journalists tell them. The language of his plan sounds good, she argued, making it “hard to understand what’s wrong with it. “Someone has to translate for the public.” Edwards challenged reporters to do just that.

snip

Elizabeth showed that John McCain could be denied coverage under John McCain’s healthcare plan.

Under the McCain proposal, health insurers “wouldn’t have to cover pre-existing conditions like melanoma and breast cancer,” Elizabeth Edwards said at the annual meeting of the Association of Health Care Journalists in Arlington, Va.

Links to Quotes in Elizabeth Edwards Takes on McCain Again

Elzabeth Edwards also favors the Clinton Plan over the Obama plan.  Why? Because the Clinton/Edwards plan it is universal and the Obama plan is not:

“Sen. Clinton’s plan is a great plan” that closely resembles John Edwards’ proposal, she said. Clinton’s plan mandates that every American be insured. Elizabeth Edwards said only universal healthcare would resolve one of the problems plaguing the healthcare system — its soaring cost.

“Until we get rid of the need for hospitals and other providers to cover the costs of people who are not covered . . . the overall cost is not going to go down,” she said. “The only real cost savings comes when you have universality.”

LA Times

“In order to ensure that we have universal coverage, we need to say everybody has to join,” Edwards told ABC’s Robin Roberts. “So, for that reason, the mandates that Sen. Clinton is talking about, I think are going to be more successful in achieving the goal,” she added.

Both health care plans have the same goals, said Edwards, but “I just have more confidence in Sen. Clinton’s policies than Sen. Obama’s on this particular issue.”

cnn.com

John and Elizabeth Edwards are right about universal health care and about mandates.  John Edwards:

“We need true universal health care reform that covers every single man, woman, and child in America. It is wrong to leave anyone without the care they need. A universal system will work better for all of us – delivering better care at lower cost.”

Edwards Statement On Health Care Mandate

John and Elizabeth Edwards ask, “Who will you leave out?”

Now, finally, for those few, but noisy, folks who may accuse me of supporting Clinton or attacking Obama, I have this to say.  I have not endorsed either Clinton or Obama.  Nor has John Edwards or Elizabeth Edwards endorsed either of them.  Elizabeth rightly prefers Clinton’s plan on the health care issue.  That is one of many isssues.  It is very important, but it is not the only issue.  I believe it is quite acceptable to criticize Obama’s, but contribute to his campaign, vote for him and support him.

Not all policy positions Barack Obama has taken are correct in my view.  Not all become gospel becuase he adopts them.  He can be wrong and is wrong on this, as well as other, issues.  So is Senator Clinton wrong on some issues.  So was John Edwards.  Elizabeth disagrees with John Edwards on gay marriage.  A democratic society is based on the priciple that no one person has a monopoly on truth.

Those who seek to impose an Obaman orthodoxy on progressives will only push away the very support they need if he is nominated.  It’s wrong and it is self defeating.  And I believe Barack Obama, verbally at least, would oppose it.  Free thought requires the clashing of views.

If Obama is elected President, I will support him where he is right, but oppose him where I believe he is wrong.  If he leaves a large force of residual troops in Iraq after 2010, I will oppose him and demonstrate in the streets.  If he ends the occupation of Iraq, I will praise him to the heavens.

On universal health care, I’ll support variants of the Edwards Plan or the Conyers plan.  We need universal health care.  Obama’s plan is better than McvCain by far, but we need more.  Obama, himself, apparently once supported single payer.  Maybe he will again.  On can hope.

Many progressives support Obama, but they retain their beliefs:

However, the fact that Barack Obama openly defines himself as a centrist invites the formation of this progressive force within his coalition. Anything less could allow his eventual drift towards the right as the general election approaches.

We should not only keep the pressure on, but we also should connect the issues that Barack Obama has made central to his campaign into an overarching progressive vision.

Progressives for Obama Seek to Pull Obama Leftward

If support for Obama requires me to betray my most fundamental beliefs, then I cannot go there.  If, however, there is room in the Obama coalition for progressive populists, and dissent on issues is acceptable, then he could lead a true movement for change.

I will leave with Elizabeth’s words:

“You need that universality in order to get the cost savings. … I just have more confidence in Sen. Clinton’s policy than Sen. Obama’s on this particular issue,” she said.

Abcnews.com

EDWARDS:  No, I was answering a direct question, and I don’t have much political capital to spend, Keith, and I want to spend it on the ideas I care about, and so, if I support one candidate’s ideas over another, then I’ll express that.  The important-I keep getting asked the difference between these two candidates and their policies and on health care, I prefer Senator Clinton’s to Senator Obama’s.

The difference-more important to me is the difference between Senator McCain’s proposed plan, I said plan, with the ideas of either of the Democratic candidates, and you’re talking about narrower differences between the Democrats and then this gulf that I was describing earlier, a solar system of difference between what Senator McCain is suggesting for health care and what these candidates are suggesting.

‘Countdown with Keith Olbermann’ for Wednesday, April 9

Health care, she added, “is a pretty important issue, and I don’t want to put down the sword until we get the job done.”

New York Times

Thank you, Elizabeth Edwards, for not putting down that sword and for continuing to tell the truth to the powerful and the popular.