Looks like the honeymoon is almost over. The latest CBS News poll shows that President Obama’s approval rating has steadily slipped since the beginning of the year, with his disapproval rating going up five points since July. On health care, the verdict on his performance is more negative than positive, almost the exact inverse of what it used to be. While we should not read too much into one particular poll, it is difficult to deny that Obama has started to do less and less well with the electorate that had such high hopes and intense faith in him at the onset of 2009. Unsurprisingly, his political rivals are elated with the news, declaring that he is reaping what he sowed – namely, the seeds of a radical socialist agenda.

Kevin McCullough from FOX News blames the left and its “plan to radicalize, nationalize, and federalize America”. Peter Roff, writing for U.S. News and World Report, speculates that “by pushing a hard left agenda that includes a cap and trade energy tax, an increased role for government in the healthcare sector, higher taxes and more spending, Obama and the Democrats are losing the middle.” David Brooks used the NYT to criticize Obama for supporting “one policy after another that increases spending and centralizes power in Washington”. Meanwhile, Michael Goldfarb with The Weekly Standard pinpoints cap-and-trade as the bridge too far. From the far right to moderates like Brooks, then, it would appear that (a) Obama is in deep trouble and (b) the only way to save his sinking ship is to abandon the liberal leadership in Congress (the unpopular Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid) and move more towards the middle. After all, he has to keep the moderates in his own party on his side, and that means appeasing Blue Dogs at every opportunity, right?

Wrong. On all counts.

Not only is Obama not in deep trouble, Democrats aren’t either. Most people still approve over how Obama has handled the economy and Afghanistan; health care dominates the political news right now and this August poll unsurprisingly is more a report card on that debate rather than on Obama’s overall job performance – which, keep in mind, is not even the first year of his first term. On top of all that, Republicans have yet to launch a successful counterattack, much less produced a leader who could, somewhere down the road, mount a real challenge for the White House. If anything, those who were on the GOP short list for leading the anti-Obama have been busy making sure their names are crossed off. And its not just winning personalities that are in short supply; it’s winning policies. How many people can articulate the Republican proposal for reforming health care? How would they manage Afghanistan and Iraq? What would a Republican budget look like? Yes, the right has managed to make some political hay on health care, but only because Obama went into the argument half-hearted and already willing to water down what he was prepared to accept. If Obama and Democrats had set the narrative and gone after health care all guns blazing, less keen to back down and compromise, they could have stood a better chance against the conservative backlash. Instead of coming hard, they allowed the other side to do it, with the resulting “death panels” and “government takeover in the wings” nonsense being thrown along with the kitchen sink.  Yet at the end of the day it is still just conservatives playing politics to spin an important issue. They have not by their own efforts generated interest in an issue or a plan they have to fix it.

Still, none of this changes the fact that Obama’s numbers are dropping and no one really believes the Republicans will be out of power forever. So was there really some wisdom to those advising Obama to move to the center? Unfortunately, there is nothing to be found in tendentious editorials and blog posts other than political outsiders wishing they were on the inside. Conservatives complain that Obama has centralized power, but in reality most of the major banks and corporations we bailed out with federal money remain independent – with CEOs giving themselves bonuses paid for by the taxpayer. Obama has also distanced himself from the “public option”, making a government-run health care program unlikely. Then there’s the charge that Obama is opposed to “personal choice”. Again, when it comes to health care, Obama does not support a universal health care system in which everyone would receive the same care, without regard to income or any other factor. He is fully in favor of health care companies choosing to insure healthy, wealthy people over poor people with pre-existing conditions. Finally, what about the out-of-control spending? Obama sticks by his stimulus bill (which was woefully insufficient according to many liberals and economists and, in the case of Paul Krugman, liberal economists) but when it comes to health care he supports “deficit-neutral” reform and goes on at length at every opportunity about the need to control the deficit. On most issues, Obama has gone the milquetoast, moderate route – and in many others, he has not deviated from Bush at all. Extraordinary rendition, the employment of immoral mercenaries, the obfuscation of detainee abuse, needless loss of life in Afghanistan and Pakistan… Far from being radical, Obama has done quite a bit to satisfy those who predicted the new boss would be the same as the old boss.

So if Obama really isn’t too far out there, alienating people, why are these right-wing pundits saying he is? Because, regardless of what the facts are, they want Obama to be a socialist revolutionary. They want him to fail and, more than that, they want the history books to say that Obama tried to move the United States to the left and that the United States resisted – establishing a myth that left-wing politics cannot succeed in this country. The same thing happened when Clinton tried to reform health care and back then it worked. It’ll probably work again. Obama should have realized from the outset that the right would not be interested in a substantive discourse. Hopefully, as his Administration continues, he realizes that playing to the middle is still playing it wrong to his enemies, and he would far better to try and do some things advocated by those on the left.

According to several sources, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is apparently on the verge of naming a special prosecutor to look into reports that CIA interrogators and private contractors who worked for the CIA went further than what they were permitted to do in extracting information from terrorism suspects. If such an investigation does take place, however, it would be restricted to low-level agents, and would not incorporate the legality of activities carried out by the actual decision-makers behind the interrogation program. But even a limited probe will face potent obstacles, not including the vituperative tirades of torture proponents like Dick Cheney. First of all, it will have to be proven beyond dispute that intentional pain or suffering was caused to detainees, a subjective argument even when not dealing with the equivocation of career lawyers. Secondly, as was seen during the recent back-and-forth between Nancy Pelosi and the intelligence community, much of what went on behind closed doors remains classified, the curtain of national security obscuring the specifics of crimes committed in our name. It will be difficult to demonstrate that something illegal took place without evidence or witnesses. Lastly, even in matters where something can be verified, those accused may get away with saying they were never properly informed as to what was and what was not authorized. It is, after all, unlikely that interrogators were meticulously using measuring cups during waterboarding sessions or that mercenaries invited to aid in torture were being required to take exacting examinations to insure they conducted themselves with sensitivity and respect for the rules.

Holder seems ready to launch an uphill battle that will take out a handful of pawns at best, leaving the major players on the board. Still, many on the left are prepared to accept it as better than nothing at all. Even if it is not a thorough response to the torture carried out under the Bush administration, a feeble inquiry at least acknowledges something illegal took place. The architects will not be punished, but some flunkies will, which sends the message that there will be consequences when the law is broken. Perhaps in the future, these apologists hope, governments will be reticent to repeat the same mistakes lest they too are forced to come under scrutiny for their actions. Besides, under a Republican administration, no bones would have been thrown at all, and the guilty parties who will be exposed under inspection would have been lauded as patriotic heroes. The cynics claim we should be happy that we have an executive which is willing to do anything at all when it would be easier for Obama and Holder to take no action, while the optimists believe that this might be the first domino to fall, paving the way for more broad, in-depth investigations somewhere down the road.

The idea that this could be the start of something bigger should be discounted by the fact that Holder has actually taken a step back from what he was considering last month. Back then, it was being reported that Holder was open to allowing the special prosecutor to examine the effect Justice Department officials had in orchestrating the torture program, but that he was primarily looking at only going after “rogue” interrogators. What we saw in July was, essentially, a tentative statement in which to gauge reaction both within Washington and in the country as to how far he would be allowed to go. Seeing as how the narrower probe is in the wings, that should show how Holder’s trial balloon was received. He got the green light to pursue a whitewash and that is all we should expect.

As for the cynics, it is true that the probe will cause difficulties for Obama, but we should not applaud him for simply taking on a burden he could have avoided. The fact is that this inadequate investigation is indeed worse than nothing at all, because it officially supports the belief that “if the President does it, it is not illegal.” If the President wants to do something that breaks the law and be immune from persecution for it, all he or she has to do is find a DoJ bureaucrat who is willing to write a memo authorizing it. The worst punishment that could follow as a result would be that delivered onto the heads of those in the trenches, and only those who could not break the law in a moderate fashion. What Obama and Holder seemed prepared to do would not only ignore the fact that Bush officials broke the law, but it would pervert the law as well – setting a firm precedent that contradicts something both men have espoused, which is that no one is above the law. If Holder’s investigation goes ahead as it has been described in the press, then the high-level individuals behind the torture regime – from John Yoo and his memos, to those who instructed him to write them, including Bush and Cheney – will indeed be above the law, and established there thanks to an administration that pledged to reform a corrupt culture they have now strengthened.

Obama apologists should wake up to the fact that saying, “But it’s better than what would have happened under the GOP!” is nothing more than tribal identification and that being superior to the present Republican Party is not a worthy standard. The Democratic Party depends on mass appeal and it will, if left to its own devices, move farther and farther into the center, that murky gray area where the status quo cannot be deviated from in any great degree. Taking a stand means losing votes, so the only way a line will ever be drawn in the sand is if Democrats like Obama are pushed to do so by their supporters. When Democrats cheer for anyone with (D) by their name just because they have (D) by their name, being content with mediocrity, they’re allowing an opportunity to agitate for something better to pass them by.

The United States doesn’t hire mercenaries. We hire “private military contractors” to do our dirty work. Perhaps the most nefarious of these companies is Blackwater USA, which now goes by Xe — a meaningless name that sounds like  it could just as well be a cable channel dedicated to cartoons. More poisonous and distasteful than what might be mentally associated with “black water” are what Blackwater has been charged with doing Iraq — including the massacre of over a dozen innocent Iraqis — all in the name of its employer, the U.S. government. A lot of what we know about Blackwater’s misdeeds we know thanks to Jeremy Scahill, an investigative journalist for The Nation. In his latest bombshell, Scahill reports on charges made against Blackwater in sworn dispositions by an ex-employee and an erstwhile Marine who worked as a security agent for the firm. The accusations range from using child prostitutes to destroying evidence to murdering, both directly and indirectly, informants who attempted to aid the government in investigating Blackwater. The charges reach as high as Blackwater founder Erik Prince, a zealous far-right Christian with ties to Christian Freedom International, an organization whose aim is “help those who are persecuted for their faith in Jesus Christ.” Prince is accused with seeing the U.S. mission in Iraq not so much as one of liberation as a modern-day Crusade, with the goal of killing Muslims and obliterating the Islamic faith.

Blackwater has responded by decrying “offensive” claims made by anonymous individuals that are unsubstantiated. However, it must be pointed out that these allegations were not leaked to the press “off the record”, with no hard consequences if they just made things up; they come from sworn statements which were made under the penalty of perjury. Considering that they are indicting Blackwater with murdering informants, it hardly comes as a surprise that they would choose to conceal their identities to protect themselves. When a Mafia witness makes the understandable choice to hide his or her name and face in order to safeguard his or her well-being as well as his or her loved ones, we do not question it. We should therefore be willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to those who would shield themselves from legal killers just as we would for those securing themselves from illegal ones. Besides that, what exactly are these claimants getting out of the false testimony, if that is what it is? They’re not being invited on the networks by sticking to the shadows. If they’re disgruntled employees, wouldn’t it make more sense to invent something they could win a lawsuit over, rather than just tarnishing a company name that is already associated with heinous war profiteering?

As to the lack of hard evidence, one would expect that the government or the mainstream media would jump on these claims (as well as the numerous misdeeds uncovered by Scahill) and dig deeper with the ample resources (and in the case of the government, legal powers) to settle just how much is fiction and how much is fact. As it  happens, the accusation of weapon smuggling made in the affidavits does have some weight to it, as there was an ABC story in 2008 about Blackwater sneaking assault weapons and silencers into Iraq (deemed “offensive weapons” by the State Department and thus inappropriate for Blackwater’s work) in sacks of dog food. But such an exposé is rare, and the onerous task of sifting through Blackwater’s mountain of misdeeds has largely fallen on Scahill’s shoulders. Who did a piece on Blackwater expanding from unaccountable mercenary corps to unaccountable intelligence agency, offering itself as private CIA to Fortune 500 companies? Scahill. Who wrote about Blackwater’s efforts to to silence its victims in Iraq, as well as their families and the lawyers struggling for  justice? Scahill. It’s not enough for Keith Olbermann to have Scahill on his show to discuss these things. MSNBC and the other outlets should be following Scahill’s lead and do their jobs.

And what about the government? An ingenuous observer would very well want to know why the Obama administration, which has expressed shock and horror at the mistakes made in Iraq, has not not delved into this particular can of worms. You might as well ask when the prosecutions for torture are going to start. It would be bad enough if the Obama White House was sticking its head in the sand over what Blackwater did in the past, but in reality, it has been only too happy to continue a relationship with the company. In February of this year, when the economic crisis was still very acute, Obama paid out roughly $70 million for Blackwater for services in Iraq, splashing the cash even when the State Department was putting distance between it and Blackwater and the Iraqi government was demanding it be banned from the country. It is one thing to go on a public relations tour, reaching out to the Muslim world, and another thing to take meaningful action to show we are hearing the protests expressed by a direct victim of our reckless foreign policy. The continued utilization of mercenaries by the U.S. in the Middle East can be grouped along with the torture at Bagram Air Base, the drones in Pakistan and the refusal to release photos of detainee abuses as opportunities where Obama could have broke with Bush but decided not to.

The lesson that Blackwater offers to all nations, not just ours, is that mercenaries should not be used in the 21st century. They operate according to their own practices and procedures, with interests that are private rather than public. They operate outside the standards demanded of those who wear official uniforms, practicing their lethal craft in a gray area where virtually everything is allowed. Really, the case of Blackwater is one of the most damning indictments of neoliberalism available, as it shows just how ugly things can get when you hive off the most important responsibilities given to our leaders to non-state entities that place contracts and profits above the welfare of the many. There are just some things that should not be entrusted to the private sector. Fortunately, for all the privatization the United States has experienced, we can still influence the government through our activism and our votes. Unfortunately, just because we side with the candidate that promised change does not mean that we will necessarily get it.

Here are the original source links in PDF format.

http://www.burkeoneil.com/view_file…/file/pleadings Exhibit G
http://www.burkeoneil.com/view_file…/file/pleadings Exhibit H

If any group is more disparaged than our leaders, it’s the journalists who follow them. If you frequent political blogs or online news sites, it is pretty much a given you will see complaints about the failures of the mainstream media, either in the piece posted or the litany of comments that follow it. Invariably, the gripes are the same: (1) the reporting is sloppy,  failing to present all the facts; (2) that ephemeral stories of dubious value take up headlines at the expense of more worthwhile, more important ones; and (3) that there is some kind of bias, usually of a left-wing variety but sometimes right-wing, depending on who you ask.

When it comes to the first point, part of it has to do with what is known as concision — the fact that a 600-word newspaper column or a 10-minute cable interview can only cover so much ground, and it’s easier to cover “safe” ground with orthodox ideas rather than explore unconventional positions that require thorough and hard-hitting analysis. But another part of it is that the media has come more and more to rely on the public to do its job for it. In the past, the press would present a factual summary to its viewers or readers, and those same  viewers and readers would generate a reaction based on that information. If a public figure was exposed as corrupt or died under tragic circumstances, for example, the people would hear the story and then express their outrage or desolation. Now, however, the press makes the public reaction part of its summary — so the lugubriousness after Princess Diana’s death or the furor over the AIG bonuses eclipses the original story, making it an emotional saga with momentum fueled by a demonstrative (and sometimes very small) percentage of the population.

Point two is a matter of opinion and thus harder to objectively measure. It’s commonly accepted that “If it bleeds, it leads” and “If it thinks, it stinks” are rules when it comes to the news, which is why so much time is given to celebrity gossip, working class criminal and missing white girls. Only recently, Michael Jackson’s death easily eclipsed what had been, up to that point, a virtually worldwide focus on the brutal repression of dissent in Iran. Yet while many would agree that the struggles of the reformist movement in Iran is a valuable story, a lot of the stories presented as being swept under the rug or confined to the fringes are deservedly so. The theory that 9/11 was an inside job perpetuated by the government to erode civil liberties, while sensational, has proven to be as lacking in the facts department as one would expect such a far-fetched scenario to be. It doesn’t get airtime on the major networks  because such networks usually do not want to suffer credibility loss by seriously reporting on such a ludicrous and fallacious conspiracy theories.

Finally we come to the disappearance of  media neutrality. What neutrality? The media always has been, is now and always will be mercenary in nature. Just as politicians depend on popular support, so does the independent press rely on subscriptions and ratings to stay afloat. If the audience is largely in favor of something, the press will tend to report favorably on it. If the audience is critical of something, the media will lambaste it. Unfortunately, a nasty side effect is that if  you take a side, another side  is going to be sore about it. Hence, as the public became more liberal over the last five decades or so, the newspapers and the networks followed along and took on a more progressive slant. This gave rise to the “left-wing media bias” charge, still echoed in right-wing circles, which finally coalesced into a news network that was blatantly right-wing in its reporting — FOX News. It latched onto the undercurrent of alienation felt by conservatives and secured ratings dominance by puporting to be “fair and balanced” while in reality its anchors regurgitated Republican talking points and smeared the American left. When the Republicans were repudiated last year, MSNBC decided to follow the FOX model and cash in on the ascendant left-of-center majority, doing the exact same thing but reversed. Instead of a vacillating inclination based on the public mood, elements of the press have adopted ideological positions to claim a specific, loyal base to pander to.

Factoring all of the above into consideration, it is little surprise then that Lou Dobbs has doggedly stuck to asking questions about Obama’s birth certificate, despite mounting criticism from both the left and right that it is a dead issue that only remains relevant to far right nutjobs who are not so much concerned about the sanctity of the Constitution as they are agitated about having an African-American in the White House. Everyone from Bill O’Reilly to Jon Stewart, from Ann Coulter to Rachel Maddow have (rightfully) accused Dobbs of, at best, dishonest and cynical journalism and, at worst, fueling the racist anger that exists in this country that dares to say “I want my country back!” but does not dare to say who exactly it is that they believed stole it.

Dobbs and now Chuck Norris avoid putting themselves too far out there, playing innocent inquisitors who just want some concrete evidence to put the doubt to rest. They don’t actually propose that there was some elaborate, Lex Luthor-style plot to install Obama as a front for communist reptilian Jews from outer space. Their reason for stirring the pot is that they simply seek the truth, they say. But from where springs their skepticism? Why can they not believe what the White House, the state of Hawaii, independent experts and newspapers from the date of Obama’s birth all confirm? Norris’ questioning is fine and good, as there is no reason for a private citizen not to ask stupid questions, but in Dobbs’ case, he does have a responsibility as a journalist to use his powers in a meaningful, useful way to educate his viewers about issues and events that matter.

Dobbs should know better, but in his defense, he is trying to play the media game as described above. (1) He has latched on a small but demonstrative group of people and made their racist conspiracy into a quest for truth, making their agenda part of his story, rather than presenting the facts (as others have done, including CNN themselves, and dispelling the movement’s cogency. (2)  He has tried to sell it as a “story that matters”, which has been pushed to the side not because it has no worth but because it bothers liberals, tying it into (3)  his attacks the “left-wing media” for the vituperative pieces done on him.

And yet Dobbs continues to suffer bad ratings. The reason is because he played without nuance, without finesse; he chose a story that could conclusively be discredited, which does not involve value judgements being made. It is one thing to ambush liberal intellectuals like O’Reilly does or to flail about in self-righteous indignation like Olbermann does, but when you try to further something that is both false and even too much for those creative minds unconcerned with facts, you are going  for a bridge too far. Dobbs should have known his limits — driven by his own ego, he thought he could give a dead horse new life just by putting it on his show. Given Dobbs’ apparent status as a intimidating figure behind the scenes at CNN (and endorsed by CNN’s reluctance to move against him), it’s reasonable to assume that he thought he could act like a punditry version of King Midas.

Dobbs should be fired, but he probably won’t be. He has abused his position, but this goes on all the time — whenever objective journalists launch into self-important tirades, whenever a deep and complex story is glossed over in simple, shallow terms. Dobbs has just gone the extra mile and presented fiction as fact, junk journalism as an unsparing exposé. To enforce standards at this late date might actually make the public demand even more from the Fourth Estate… and that is something it just can’t have.

The “Coalition of the Willing” is no more. Friday’s withdrawal of Australian troops from Iraq means that the United States is going it alone in its occupation of that country — militarily, at least. Granted, other countries continue to lend aid in the form of training the inchoate Iraqi forces and rebuilding and expanding infrastructure damaged or destroyed during  the war. But now it can be said definitely that military responsibilities fall upon the U.S. and the U.S. alone, with any non-Iraqi blood to be shed in the ongoing occupation certainly to be that of American soldiers. Yet, despite this grim prospect, little fanfare has accompanied the demise of the grand alliance mustered by George W. Bush’s administration in its attempt to portray the 2003 invasion as more than unilateral aggression on our part.

This is probably because few actually believed in earnest that a coalition of equals and not the United States was behind the war. The coalition was always window dressing, meant to disguise the fact that the lion’s share of those being placed in harm’s way were Americans and Britons. South Korea sent some medics and engineers, Denmark offered a submarine and even little Iceland (which has no standing army) contributed a media representative. From Eastern Europe to the Pacific Islands (the Republic of Palau!) governments were bribed with promises of getting in on some delicious resources (specifically that black gold, that Texas tea) if they at least pretended like they too deeply believed that there were WMDs in Iraq and that there was compelling reason to overthrow Saddam  Hussein and liberate the oppressed masses of Iraq. Some countries were better at pretending than others, though.

After John Kerry’s faux pas in 2004, how can anyone forget Poland? The one problem about the Poles, though, was their honesty. When asked what their chief mission was in Iraq, the Polish Foreign Minister explicitly told journalists that the objective was to secure oilfields. Isn’t that refreshing? No abstractions like “freedom” or “democracy”; just a plain statement of sacrificing human life in exchange for the most valuable commodity on Earth.

But the people of Poland were not exhilarated by their government’s candor. In point of fact, the vast majority of them were against Poland’s involvement in not just Iraq but also Afghanistan, for which there was a much stronger case. They recognized that, as history had shown, an imperialist expedition in the Middle East was both morally wrong and would result in making the population a target of international terrorism. The Poles,  like so many others in countries that supported the Iraq War, saw both the specter of death as well as damnation. In contrast to the American public, which responded to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 with lots of flag-waving and chest-thumping, people in other countries saw terrorism not as random violence carried out by irrational madmen but as the chickens coming home to roost. They seriously asked themselves, “Why do these people hate us? Do they have just cause to? Their actions are unconscionable, but where could their motivations have come from?” These complex, introspective questions are quite different from declarative, bombastic statements  such as “These colors don’t run!” and “Let’s roll!”.

On March 11, 2004, the Spanish city of Madrid was  the scene of gruesome train bombings that left almost 200 people dead. Did the conservative Spanish government of Prime Minister José María Aznar, which had supported the Iraq invasion, blame Islamic extremists to try and get Spaniards to rally around in the flag, in what also happened to be an election year? No. Instead they actively covered up the connection to Muslim terrorists and accused Basque separatists. It did eventually come out that the bombings were indeed the fault of Islamic terrorists, prompting the Spanish to assess the consequences of having hand-held Bush in his march to war. Rather than fallaciously thinking that starting wars and occupying countries would make their country less vulnerable to external threats, the Spanish people realized that a reckless, belligerent foreign policy had made them less safe… just as it had for the United States before 9/11.

In Iraq, violence remains a major problem. And while it’s tragic that American soldiers are still in harm’s way and that more will be lost between now and 2011 (or whenever it is we fully pull out from the quagmire), special sympathy should be reserved for the Iraqi people — who were never invited to join a coalition and thus cannot exit from the occupation like Poland and Spain did and the United States eventually will. They are the occupied, the residents of the battlefield, and generations as of yet unborn will be paying the highest consequences of our disastrous foreign policy.

In some sad news, Senator Chris Dodd has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Fortunately, the cancer was caught early, the prognosis is good and Dodd seems to have a sanguine attitude about it, joking with journalists. While there are  many reasons to be rightly critical of Dodd (who is facing a tough re-election campaign in Connecticut next year), I do feel sympathy for him and his family in light of this announcement. However, while I can understand the reticince to involve politics in what is a personal matter, I have to disagree with Dodd’s decision to avoid revealing the diagnosis earlier and using it as part of the ongoing health care reform debate — which Dodd is championing in the Senate in the place of the absent Ted Kennedy.

At his press conference, Dodd said he kept silent on his cancer because he did not want to be “on exhibit” while health care was being discussed in the Senate. But there is nothing personal about one simple fact — Dodd’s cancer was detected early as a result of his government-provided health plan. Dodd goes once a year to get a clean bill of health thanks to his job as a Congressman, and was therefore able to have his cancer identified before he was far more afflicted. Compare that to the vast majority of Americans, who are reluctant to go to the doctor even when they know something is wrong with them. Put off by the costs, people delay medical care, allowing the problem to exacerbate and then end up paying even more when they’re forced to undergo expensive treatments they might not have had to deal with if there had been early detection. But it seems unlikely that Dodd will use his own experience to fight for a strong public option, so that people who do not belong to the Congress can enjoy this good fortune. Not entirely surprising, given his strong ties to health care industry lobbyists. Honestly, having Dodd lead the fight for meaningful health care reform is like having a calm and rational discussion about race while consuming alcohol.

Putting Obama’s seemingly successful beer summit aside, the health care debate remains as divisive as ever. On the right, we’ve heard the traditional protests — it’ll cost too much, it’ll put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor, socialism is the road to serfdom. In truth, keeping the status quo is by far the most expensive option; everyone, from  working families to the federal government, are feeling the pinch brought on by increases in the costs of prescription drugs, uneconomical outpatient care, exorbitant and inessential medical procedures, and ever-rising insurance premiums. As for the slow-moving wheels of bureaucracy, I cannot fathom anything worse than the health care companies we have now — that insure the healthy, avoid paying coverage when they can and have their primary interest as the bottom line rather than the welfare of the people they serve. And when it comes to the socialism argument… Well, most of the world must be socialist then since the United States is the only wealthy, industrialized nation not to have universal health care. Either all these countries have been infiltrated by Trotskyite entryists or perhaps there’s simply common sense in people getting care based on their need rather than their income.

The reality is that most Americans accept that some kind of reform is necessary; so conservatives have adopted the tact of attacking the change rather than defending the way things are. The result is some of the most fatuous, risible claims made since the Birthers. These include the charge that government-run health care will promote euthanasia. Basically, government agents will harass Nana and Popop, pressuring them to jump on the ice flow since they’re leeching funds that could be going to welfare queens and illegal immigrants. (The reality is that there would be an optional benefit under Medicare allowing senior citizens the choice of consulting with medical professionals about making end-of-life decisions, such as drafting a living will. The AARP supports the plan, and as someone who will someday grow old and die myself, I too would like the opportunity to discuss with my doctor how I want to go out, rather than having my wishes ignored and neglected. For the record: mummified and placed next to Stalin, please.)

Watching CNN has also exposed me to an endless stream of commercials cooked up by right-wing organizations lining up to discredit the health care systems in Canada and the UK. Normally, it’s usually some disembodied voice or a doctor telling the viewer how terrible things are; I had never heard an actual patient talking about how great it is to pay for health care. That is, unti I saw a commercial by Patients United Now, in which a Canadian woman named Shona Holmes recounts how she was told by those three-huggin’ pansies up north that she had to wait six whole months to get treatment for her brain tumor! Endangered by this “deadly delay”, Holmes booked it to the Mayo Clinic to get some of that wonderful free market health care! Another victory for capitalism, and you can almost envision a marble bust of Friedrich Hayek shedding a solitary tear as a upbeat Austrian waltz plays in the background.

Alas, Holmes’ story was based on more fiction than fact. Apparently, the “brain tumor” was a benign cyst on her pituitary gland that could potentially cause vision loss — but rarely ever death. (You can find information about what Holmes had, a Rathke’s Cleft Cyst, by doing a simple Google search.) Understandably, a lot of Canadians are upset that Holmes is bad-mouthing their health care system because — believe it or not — universal health care is incredibly popular in Canada and the UK. If you look at the recent mainstream parties on the far right in those countries — Preston Manning’s Reform Party and Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party — there was still support for the people having accessible, affordable health care. In Thatcher’s case, there may have been the introduction of a disastrous internal market that was later repealed — but the National Health Service was never privatized. Quite honestly, one would think that if UHC was so awful, responsible for so many avoidable deaths and complications, then the people living under it would come around and demand that health care be hived off to the private sector. And  yet, when I  speak with Britons, Canadians, Australians — all of them regale the United States for treating health care like a profitable enterprise rather than a human right. Not something you’d expect if their loved ones were dropping like flies trying in waiting rooms or rushing to our border.

The end result is that Republicans are running against a farce rather than what is really on the table — which is unfortunate, because what it looks we’re getting has plenty of very real problems. Key among them is the fact that no one seems prepared to accept a strong public option that could replace private insurance. Instead of making sure everybody is covered under a government plan, what we will have is a two-tier health care system in which the wealthiest and healthiest among us will purchase high quality private insurance, while those with pre-existing conditions and substantially less income utilize an inferior, public plan. In essence, a Democratic White House and a Democratic Congress are on course to advance the stratification we on the left have always railed against — the “two nations”, in which the elites receive preferential treatment and the rank and file are left to fend for themselves. Conservatives then will not have to rely on fantastic allegations and persistent naysaying; they will have concrete examples to point to in order to discredit an enhanced government role in health care. Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats alike will shake their heads, wag their fingers and say, “I told you so.”

So, with this scenario looming on the horizon, why is Obama and other leading Democrats forsaking the public option and opting instead to concede to their external and internal opponents? The answer is that, instead of making sure health care reform is done right, they simply want it done now. Obama wants to be able to fight his next election pointing at what he did, even if what he did was not the best he could do; and Congresspeople don’t want to have to face tough questions during their own campaigns from both the left and right on what is justifiably a personal issue for so many Americans. Like it or not, 2009 has become the year for health care reform, and it is based entirely on political reasons rather than meaningful ones. If you don’t believe that, then why have we already seen reforms that wouldn’t kick in for two or three years? They could theoretically be using this time to get all their ducks in a row, to formulate a strong plan and a powerful message to go along with it, sell that plan and that message to the American public and then have a far easier time of it than they are now. But sadly, they are beholden to their careers and their corporate interests. They know who is lining their pockets; so do most of us, and more than a few of so-called progressives cynically say that UHC in America is too much of a pipe dream, that it “can’t” be done, and therefore those on the left should bite the bullet and wave the Democrat flag and cheer on those with a D by their name — if only so those on the right lose. But, in the long-term, who wins?

I recently heard a prominent liberal talk show host ask a conservative guest why Republicans don’t want to be “on the right side of history” this time around, as if opposing the Democratic health care plans is up there with blocking civil rights legislation or deregulating Wall Street. Granted, the Republican response on health care is far from the correct one, but we on the left must avoid the mindless partisan fellowship that helped usher those on the right out of power. We cannot be allowed to be marched like lemmings behind something we know in our hearts is wrong, that will not work; we cannot accept that something is better than nothing. To sell something we know to be a lemon as something better, we are engaging in the same dishonest, desperate behavior that we denounce on the right.