Dealing with Inconvenient Myths about Health Care

In his weekly address, President Barack Obama said while he is glad to see “a vigorous debate about health insurance reform” he is expressed frustration about it being “dominated by willful misrepresentations and outright distortions, spread by the very folks who would benefit the most by keeping things exactly as they are.”

He cited “some of the more outrageous myths circulating on the internet, on cable TV, and repeated at some town halls across this country” such as generous health coverage for undocumented workers, mandated payment for abortions, and the implementation of so-called death panels. None of which are actually in the bill.

This is not the first time the president felt the need to counter some of these myths. In his August 8th weekly address, Obama said criticized the spreading of “outlandish rumors that reform will promote euthanasia, cut Medicaid, or bring about a government takeover of health care. That’s simply not true.”

At an August 11th New Hampshire town hall gathering on health care the president also said, “The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for “death panels” that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we’ve decided that we don’t — it’s too expensive to let her live anymore.”

If the president of the United States has to push back on these falsehoods so many times to get his message out one wonders if he might benefit from a different approach. I realize President Obama sees himself as a reconciler of sorts and a healer, a latter day Abraham Lincoln if you will.

“There are always those who oppose it, and those who use fear to block change,” he noted in his weekly address. “But what has always distinguished America is that when all the arguments have been heard, and all the concerns have been voiced, and the time comes to do what must be done, we rise above our differences, grasp each others’ hands, and march forward as one nation and one people, some of us Democrats, some of us Republicans, all of us Americans.”

But since the opposition is not looking for harmony, isn’t interested in civility, and won’t be satisfied with merely being listened to, perhaps he needs to deal with folks in the same way Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank confronted a LaRouche supporter named Rachel Brown at one of his own town halls this week. Brown specifically said was like Adolf Hilter’s T4 policy in Nazi Germany where people who were deemed incurably ill because of a chronic aliment or a disability or mentally disturbed or otherwise considered undesirable to national socialists was somehow the same thing as a provision in one of the health care bills, H.R. 3200, regarding end of life care, i.e. the infamous dealth panels.

This myth has been thoroughly debunked by the press and other experts.  Read the WaPo’s editorial on this issue for more detail on this distortion.

Rep. Frank’s said to Brown, who managed to compare Obama to Hitler at a recent town hall meeting, “It is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated.” He also added “Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table, I have no interest in doing it.”

And at one point, Rep. Frank even rhetorically asked the LaRouche supporter “what planet do you live on?” As you may or may not know, the LaRouche group is a bunch of fringe lefties with socialist leanings with a peculiar penchant for conspiratorial thinking.

Watch the video:

Now I understand President Obama is under a different kind of pressure than Representative Frank has to contend with. Obama is a first year president trying not to fail and constantly mindful of his 2012 reelection bid. Frank, on the other hand, has a very secure Congressional seat, which he has held since 1981.

Whereas the president is still wrestling with how to be a principled uniter as he desperately tries to avoid alienating potential voters lest he himself be accused of being grossly intolerant and elitist, Frank often speaks his mind with little concern about who feigns offense. I understand that.

But at some point, the president has to be a lot more forceful in his condemnation of these baseless attacks otherwise they will continue to gain traction as the negotiations over the various bill become more involved. And the more that happens the easeir it will be for Republicans and conservative Democrats in the House and the Senate to push back against the president.

The Irony of Sen. Jeff Sessions

Supreme Court confirmation hearings have been advertised as a study in contrasts between what our nation’s two parties envision the role of the courts in our society and highlight competing ideas on grand Constitutional questions. Of course, in more recent decades they have fertile ground to perpetuate our ongoing culture wars in some form or another. Unlike years past, Judge Sonia Sotomayor nomination has not inspired fury of either side in the abortion debate, which I don’t lament at all, with greater questions of racial and gender gaining more attention.

But today’s hearing had its fair share of pettiness and narrow minded questioning.

Recognizing the dishonest acrimonious shout fest that has ensued in the last few weeks, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy cautioned his Republican collegues against yeilding to “outside pressure groups that sought to create a caricature of Judge Sotomayor while belittling her record and achievements, her intelligence.” In his opening statement yesterday, Sen. Leahy suggested that history will not look kindly upon Senators who will try to embarass Judge Sotomayor as that chamber once did during Justice Thurgood Marshall’s confirmation hearings, the first African American on the high court, by asking “questions designed to embarrass him, questions such as are you prejudice against the white people in the South.”

Sen. Leahy cited another low point of when Justice Louis Brandies had to beat back anti-Semitic charges of him being a radical jurist. “I hope that’s a time of our past” said the Senator from Vermont.

Apparently not. Republican Senator Jeff Sessions in particular led the charge in criticizing Judge Sonia Sotomayor by questioning her impartiality even in the face of all the statiscal evidence of her rulings underscoring that she is not some left wing judge that implusively sides with victims in discrimination cases or with plantiffs suing the employers or promoting some other lefty cause. Predictably, during is questioning period he spent an inordinate amount of time on the wise Latina remark as a reliable indication that she will somehow be biased against those who are not people of color or women, i.e., white men.

Sen. Sessions understood Judge Sotomayor’s admission that like any judge her life experiences shape her judicial thinking and that impariality is an aspirational goal rarely if ever achieved, as reason to suspect that she has a hidden agenda. “So how can you reconcile your speeches which repeatedly assert that impartiality is a near aspiration which may not be possible in all or even most cases with your oath that you’ve taken twice which requires impartiality?” asked Sen. Sessions. One has to wonder who are these genuinely imparitial people that Sessions seems to believe exist.

For her part Judge Sotomayor said, “That’s why we have appellate judges that are more than one judge because each of us, from our life experiences, will more easily see different perspectives argued by parties.” As a lay person, this strikes me as a fairly obvious observation.

At one point, the Senator from Alabama inexplicably thought it was necessary to state that a fellow Puerto Rican Judge Jose Cabranes disagreed with Judge Sotomayor’s finding in the Ricci decision. The Ricci case involved a group of white firefighters and one Hispanic who sued for racial discrimination when the city of New Haven, CT when it decided to throw out a promotional examine after not enough African Americans scored high enough to be considered for a promotion. Judge Sotomayor sided with New Haven in finding that the test had a disparate impact on African Americans under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Her decision was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court a few weeks ago by a vote of 5-4.

“Had you voted with Judge Cabranes, himself of Puerto Rican ancestry, had you voted with him, you could’ve changed that case,” Sessions said. With that remark, Senator Sessions ironically he appeared to be promoting the same kind of group loyalty that he thought that Judge Sotomayor could not avoid.

Interestingly enough, Sen. Sessions used Judge Sotomayor’s association with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund to try to portray her as an activist judge even though Judge Cabranes, a Republican appointee, is a founder of the famed civil rights group.

In sum, we learned more about the prejudices of a particular Republican Senator than we did of the nominee.

Not Quite Post-Racial

From the New York Times:

Few groups conducted public polls on the issue as it faded in recent years, and the results from those that did reveal a consistent ambivalence, said Michael Dimock, a pollster with the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

When asked a question about “affirmative action or preferential treatment for minorities,” the public has consistently opposed the idea by a margin of two to one. But when asked about “affirmative action programs designed to help women and minorities,” an even bigger majority has supported them.

….. the election of Mr. Obama does not appear to have changed either result.

So I guess we are not quite the post racial society that so many people thought we were after the November election.

I bet once conservatives find their voice in opposing Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court its likely that they will attempt to portray her as a quotas obsessed affirmative action baby not worthy of seat on the high court even as they admit that “at least on paper, she has professional qualifications” to serve.

Judging Words and Personal Experience

Yesterday White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s remarks in a 2001 speech – that the right has dishonestly pounced on – a “poor choice words. ” Of course, its a predictable turn of events considering how much of the media does not do well with context and nuance. Plus, the White House probably wants her speech to be less of and less of an issue heading into the confirmation hearings. At any event, CNN.com has a great piece by Sherrilyn A. Ifill, a civil rights lawyer and law professor, explaining how the experiences of judges affect their approach to judicial decision-making.

Money quote:

Justice Thomas is the perfect example of how hard it can be for a judge to lay aside the personal experiences that shape his worldview. His views about the affirmative action cases that come before him are shaped quite clearly by what he regards as the self-sufficient dignity of his hard-working grandfather and the humiliation he says he felt when others believed his scholarly accomplishments were the result of affirmative action.

White judges are also shaped by their background and experiences. They needn’t ever speak of it, simply because their whiteness and gender insulates them from the presumption of partiality and bias that is regularly attached to women judges and judges of color when it comes to matters of race and gender.

Only a judge who is conscious and fully engaged with the reality of how her experiences may bear on her approach to the facts of a case, or sense of social justice, or vision of constitutional interpretation, should be entrusted to sit on the most influential and powerful court in our nation.

Too often we have allowed ourselves to be placated and charmed by fantasies about umpire judges calling “balls and strikes,” without ever asking which league the game is being played in or whether the umpire was standing in the best position to see the play. We forget that when deciding whether a batter checked his swing, the homeplate umpire will routinely ask for the alternative perspective from the first or third base umpire before calling a “swing and a miss” a strike.

The Strident Opposition

Just as liberal activist groups tried to exert pressure on Democratic Senators in 2005 and 2006 to aggressively block President Bush’s Supreme Court nominees, conservative groups this time around are applying the same kind of pressure on Republican Senators to touch up President Obama’s nominee to replace Justice David Souter. Charlie Savage reported the NYT this weekend that the paper has obtained ten memorandums revealing how conservatives are eager to exploit typical culture war issues “abortion, same-sex marriage, the separation of church” in addition to the propriety of citing foreign law in interpreting the Constitution.

Right wing activists are well aware that the deck is stacked against them, but that has not prevented them from attracting donors to support a media campaign for television, radio, and internet ad buys.  Senate Republicans, on the other hand, are trying to manage expectations for mounting stiff opposition to the nominee while still refusing to give up the filibuster option. According to the NYT, one conservative opposition memo on 9th Circuit Judge Kim Wardlaw also noted her rulings on the death penalty, and separation between church and state and free speech issues.

The Judicial Confirmation Network is leading the effort to try to define  such contenders as  newly confirmed U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor, and Seventh Circuit Court Judge Diane Wood, as “way left and outside the American mainstream.” For Sonia Sotomayor, the Judicial Confirmation Network asserts falsely that she has been reversed 100 percent of the time and refers to her ruling in the New Haven firefighter affirmative action case as evidence that she’s for racial quotas. Bloggers at the National Review picked up on a set of controversial remarks by Sotomayor where in a 2002 speech she said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

JCN is currently running web ads against Kagan by attacking her for “attempting to keep the military off campus” as Dean of Harvard Law School to support a ban against military recruiters on the because of its enforcement of the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Policy.”  Other JCN web ads portray Diane Wood as a foe of religious freedom and a looney prochoice advocate with federal judgeship.

Chatter about Bank Nationalization

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger joined a growing minority of Republicans in support of the prospect of more aggressive federal intervention of the nation’s the banking system, an idea that has inspired stern opposition from members of his own party and deep anxiety among Wall Street investors and many taxpayers.

The Austrian born Hollywood actor turned politician, who immigrated to the U.S. in part due to his “hatred of socialism, of the whole socialist system”, denied any  change in his views concerning the merits of a centrally planned economy and simply asserted that there was real difference between the kind of intervention currently debated in U.S. and what actually exists in Europe.

“Well, I — first of all, I think that we have a really good system here in America. You don’t have to talk about nationalization. All it basically says is that if a bank doesn’t have the money to — to give their customers, so if it, you know, defaults in some way,” said Gov. Schwarzenegger in an interview on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”

” So the federal government always had that right to take over. So it’s not nationalizing anything. I don’t see it as such. There’s a difference of the way it is in Europe, where the — where the federal government owns some of those banks, whereas here only if there is a problem financially that the federal government comes in and takes over and helps out, ” added the California governor.

The notion of temporary intervention has also found support among GOP free market champions like former Chairman of Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan. “It may be necessary to temporarily nationalize some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring,” Greenspan told the Financial Times.

Citing the the proliferation of toxic assests rooted in the mortgage sector, South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham echoed the former chairman’s recommendation last Sunday. “To me, banking and housing are the root cause of this problem. I’m very much afraid any program to salvage the banks is going to require the government,” said on This Week.  “I would not take off the idea of nationalizing the banks.”

Even though there seems to be some sort of daylight between Gov. Schwarzenegger and some of his Republican brethren over the use of the word “nationalization” in substance they seem to be in agreement about the nature of the intervention, which would entail the federal government temporarily owning a majority of the the stake in at least a select number of banks to provide them enough capital to lend, invest and prevent more economic contraction. Other options include securing or outright buying a considerable amount of toxic assets tied to a dismally underperforming mortgage sector and coursing through the major arteries of our ailing credit system and leading to even greater bank undercapitalization.

First of Many Disagreements to Come

In picking Reverend Rick Warren deliver the invocation at the inaugural, President-elect Barack Obama earned the ire of the liberal left. It’s a reaction that surely team Obama must have foreseen, but one that may be difficult to quell, at least in the short term.

Joe Solmonese, President of Human Rights Campaign, a pro-gay rights group, called the  invitation “a genuine blow to LGBT Americans.”

At The Nation magazine Sarah Posner writes, “… the choice of Warren is not only a slap in the face to progressive ministers toiling on the front lines of advocacy and service but a bow to the continuing influence of the religious right in American politics.”

Greg Levine of Firedog Lake worries that the President-elect is being too accomodationist to a figure who deserves no olive branch, “… if Barack Obama wants to invite different voices to a discussion, fine, but that is very different from having a known homophobe give a speech at what is likely to be one of the highest profile events in recent US history. That’s not a dialogue—that’s a signal.”

Rev. Warren has been an outspoken and vigorous supporter of banning gay marriage, compared abortion to the Holocaust, thinks evolution is a fiction, and is an ardent foe of anti-stem cell research. To many on the left, he is a culture warrior in the mold of James Dobson or Pat Robertson despite the best-selling author’s support for such causes as global poverty reduction, containing the spread of AIDS and HIV, and combating climate change. All of which are areas where Obama will more than likely want to enlist Warren’s support.

But liberals, many of whom are willing to work with evangelicals on those same issues, do not want any progress of those nobel causes  to come at the expense of the right to marry, sexually reproductive rights, or scientific freedom. While inviting Rev. Warren to deliver the invocation will not automatically usher in the dark ages, it does suggest something that Obama is a little too conciliatory toward the very same people who will try to tear him apart in a few months. Some even worry that its an indication of the very conservative instincts that many fear Obama has thus far managed to conceal.

Other political observers see a stroke of opportunistic genius involved. MSNBC First Read said, “As for the pure politics of this, when you look at the exit polls and see the large numbers of white evangelicals in swing states like North Carolina, Florida and Missouri, as well as emerging battlegrounds like Georgia and Texas, you’ll understand what Obama’s up to. ” As plausible as that may sound to some, I think that’s a tad too cynical.

For his part, Obama said on Thursday at his press conference:

Nevertheless, I had an opportunity to speak, and that dialogue, I think, is a part of what my campaign’s been all about, that we’re never going to agree on every single issue. What we have to do is create an atmosphere where we can disagree without being disagreeable, and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans. So Rick Warren has been invited to speak, Dr. Joseph Lowery — who has deeply contrasting views to Rick Warren about a whole host of issues — is also speaking.

During the course of the entire inaugural festivities, there are going to be a wide range of viewpoints that are presented. And that’s how it should be, because that’s what America’s about. That’s part of the magic of this country, is that we are diverse and noisy and opinionated. And so, you know, that’s the spirit in which, you know, we have put together what I think will be a terrific inauguration. And that’s, hopefully, going to be a spirit that carries over into my administration.

Disagreeing without being disagreeable might not cut it with after the fallout over Prop 8, a measure banning same-sex marriagea, in California. Too many feelings are still raw about that lost, and not enough has been done to mend divisions between communities. Plus, given how there are thousands of activists about to descend on DC on January 20th, we could see spontaneous protests take place just as we saw in around the country in the aftermath of the passage of Prop 8. Thus, creating an undesirable subplot to what would otherwise be a much more grander narrative about the dawn of an era.

Most people who voted for Obama assumed that they would not agree with him on every single issue, but they do hope to be on the same wavelength on certain big issues that have a certain visceral dimension to them. And when that is not the case, the President-elect should expect a barrage of intense and persistent criticism, which I am sure he will be able to handle. He’s a big boy.

So simply attributing criticism as mere difference of opinion, especially when its describe as noisy and such, probably will strike many his supporters as dismissive. As David Corn noted on CQ, “…Warren’s opposition to gay rights is more than a mere policy dispute. It is an act of bigotry. Sure, Warren does not believe he is being discriminatory. But that’s what it is.”

By the same token, liberals have to understand that the culture wars don’t mean as much to Obama as they do to his Democratic predecessors. He thinks those issues frames are designed to keep Democrats in the losing column, electorally speaking. So, he will not hesitate to aggressively court evangelicals on issues where they and liberals share common ground.  Doing so, will probably involve at least some symbolic gestures before effectively prying lose the white knuckled grip Republican’s have had on that segment of the voting population as he fulfills his quest to redraw the political map and maintain widespread support for his agenda.

In the final analysis, however, I am not sure if having Rev. Warren at the inauguration is worth the political headache of angering the liberal base. I realize that the favorability ratings are high and that Obama feels as if he could take at hit now, but I would be reluctant to spend hard won political capital among supporters on something that would pose the most activist and partisan segment of my base against me on the last day of the honeymoon.

Humming Coming at Ya

From Haaretz:

Shoes hold a special place in the Arab lexicon of insults as a show of contempt – effectively saying, you’re lower than the dirt on my shoes. Even sitting with the sole of a shoe pointed at another person is seen as disrespectful.

The hurling of shoes at Bush on his last visit to Iraq as president made an ironic bookend to one of the first images after the 2003 U.S. invasion, when Iraqi opponents of deposed leader Saddam Hussein toppled one of his statues in Baghdad and hit it with their shoes.

Al-Zaidi attained instant hero status around the Arab world. At one Baghdad elementary school, a geography teacher asked her students if they had seen the footage of the shoe-throwing, then told them, All Iraqis should be proud of this Iraqi brave man, Muntadhar. History will remember him forever.

In Baghdad’s Shiite slum of Sadr City, thousands of supporters of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr burned American flags to protest against Bush and called for the release of al-Zaidi, a 28-year-old Shiite who works for the private Iraqi TV station Al-Baghdadia

[Snip]

“I’ve watched the video over a dozen times on You Tube and was excited very time I see him [al-Zaidi] standing up and calling Bush a dog,” said Tamer Ismail, 23-year-old art student in Cairo. “But I felt so bitter when he missed.”

Among other things, al Zaidi will be charged with “insulting the Iraqi state” even as he is celebrated as a hero in Iraq and throughout the region. But another irony here involves the fact that such laws continues to exits in what Bush insists on calling a democratic and free Iraq.

On a slightly related note, a friend of mine noted in an email recently that al Zaidi “has excellent aim.  I can’t imagine that this was a spontaneous because he was throwing the shoe from 15 feet away with many heads obstructing his view, and got so close to Bush’s head both times.  He must have practiced with various size shoes for years on end for this one moment with various distractions in the background. “

Its all worth another look.

Using Blagogate to Spread Rumor and Innuendo – Part 2

Thinking they smell blood in the water Republicans have released this internet video squarely aimed a conservative bloggers. Unsurprisingly, the main messages in the vid are since Obama and Blago campaigned together, they must be co-defendants; any contact that the president-elect or his people had with Blago must be suspect; since the Obama team has been less than forthcoming so far, they must be hiding something and therefore are guilty of something.

Perhaps, the RNC does not realize this is, but the presidential campaign is over. Its been over for more than a month. In fact, the nominee of your own party, the very same candidate that Obama defeated had this to say about the ad earlier today On ABC’s “This Week”:

I think that the Obama campaign should and will give all information necessary. You know, in all due respect to the Republican National Committee and anybody — right now, I think we should try to be working constructively together, not only on an issue such as this, but on the economy stimulus package, reforms that are necessary. And so, I don’t know all the details of the relationship between President-elect Obama’s campaign or his people and the governor of Illinois, but I have some confidence that all the information will come out. It always does, it seems to me.

That’s DC talk for ‘You guys are looking desperate and are embarrassing me.’

Using Blagogate to Spread Rumor and Innuendo – Part 1

As indicated by the TPM video above,  certain national news outlets have run with the pay-to-play scandal that Gov. Rod Blagojevich is embroiled in to insinuate that President-elect Obama himself is involved, despite there being no evidence of that being the case.  Interestingly enough, the Chicago local media is not ready to declare that Obama and Blago should be treated as co-defendants.

But they have taken issue with how the Obama transition team – which is kinds busy with other issues such as cabinet level appointments, reviewing federal agencies, hiring White House staff, keeping up with security briefings, and lobbying Congress to make sure the Big Three automakers don’t go under – has handled the latest episode of Chicago’s never ending story of corruption.

Yesterday’s editorial in the Chicago Sun-Times, noted that “Obama should have spoken out more strongly after first hearing the news of Blagojevich’s arrest.” By the same token, however, the President-elect’s  “staff needn’t apologize for talking to Blagojevich about the open seat. But given the charges against Blagojevich, the public deserves to know key details.”

For its part, when the Chicago Tribune editorialized on the issue, it has not only stuck to the merits of the issue, but also invited Gov. Blagojevich for a visit to clear the air, similar to how Obama himself did in March when he sat down with the Tribune and Sun-Times editorial boards as the Tony Rezko scandal became impossible to ignore.

I, of course, doubt that the governor is eager to take them up on their offer. But I do think its interesting that two of the most respected organs of the Chicago public media have refrain from groundless speculation and innuendo, while those farthest away from the story were ready to pounce. This is an unoriginal observation I know, but its still one that still bears repeating.

At the same time, however, its not hard to see that Obama team should have tried to blunt the negative coverage from the onset, even with all their responsibilities, especially if it was less than entirely forthcoming about communicating with the governor since doing so  would only inspire more suspicion. Gov. Rendell of Pennslyvania made this very point recently on MSNBC.

Otherwise we get the chattering classes reveling in the tedium just as they did here:

Myth of Eric Holder as Flaming Liberal

The National Review editors on the Holder nomination:

He is convinced justice in America needs to be “established” rather than enforced; he’s excited about hate crimes and enthusiastic about the constitutionally dubious Violence Against Women Act; he’s a supporter of affirmative action and a practitioner of the statistical voodoo that makes it possible to burden police departments with accusations of racial profiling and the states with charges of racially skewed death-penalty enforcement; he’s more likely to be animated by a touchy-feely Reno-esque agenda than traditional enforcement against crimes; he’s in favor of ending the detentions of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay and favors income redistribution to address the supposed root causes of crime.

I find this whole portrayal of Eric Holder simply laughable, especially since Obama’s nominee position on certain issues defies liberal orthodoxy. Holder advocated for stiff penalties for marijuana users, supported mandatory minimums, provided legal advice for Chiquita Brands International Inc., and while serving as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia acquired a reputation as very pro-police even at a time when use of force by cops were at historic highs.

In sum, Holder was a prosecutor who shared a lot, though not all, of the conservative views that many other prosecutors have. So, to suggest that he’s some flaming liberal is completely off base.

On the Anti-Eric Holder Movement

By nominating Eric Holder (see picture) to become the nation’s next attorney general, President-elect Barack Obama intended to signify the end of Bush era cronyism, incompetence, politicization, and use of enhanced torture techniques at the Department of Justice.

At the press conference where the President-elect unveiled his national security team, Obama said, “Let me be clear. The attorney general serves the American people. And I have every expectation that Eric will protect our people, uphold the public trust, and adhere to our Constitution.”

He also praised Holder’s independence and spoke of the native New Yorker’s deep familiarity “with the law enforcement challenges we face from terrorism to counterintelligence, from white-collar crime to public corruption.”

But there seems to be a movement afoot in among conservatives to portray Holder as a figure that lacks the integrity and the independence necessary to become the nation’s top law enforcement officer. In referring to the Marck Rich affair, the National Review tell us that Obama  nominated an “AG nominee who promoted a corrupt pardon process that sprung mass-murderers from prison.”

The Wall Street Journal editorial board would have their readers believe that Holder is a terrorist sympathizer because President Clinton pardoned 16 members of a rebel and domestic terrorist group seeking state sovereignty for Puerto Rico called the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional. Other critics of the Holder nomination are even dredging up the whole Elian Gonzales affair as another instance that implicated him in another low point for the Clinton administration.

One has to wonder why the Holder opposition people were not as critical of the Alberto Gonzales nomination, considering he would be going from White House Counsel to running the Department of Justice. As many people pointed out at the time the appointment was fraught with conflicts of interest problems. At least Holder did not come from an Obama White House position to become the nation’s top lawyer.

At any rate, for his part, Holder has already admitted that the Marc Rich incident was a mistake. This is not to say that it does not merit scrutiny. But it does suggest, however, that it should not overshadow a long record of distinction in public service.

Here is a man who served as a federal prosecutor within the Justice Department’s Office of Public Integrity  going after everyone from influence peddlers in and out of government and organized crime figures. As Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton administration, Holder also “issued guidelines on the use of the False Claims Act in civil health care matters,” according to his biography on the Covington & Burling website.

After serving as a judge for some time, Holder also set up a Children Exposed to Violence Initiative within the Justice Department. In sum, Holder has the experience, the record, and the know how to run the Justice Department – all of which is a must for the next AG nominee considering its the Department’s current state. But of course, the real goal here is not to shoot he kill on this nomination in my opinion, the real goal here by conservatives is not to kill the Holder nomination, but to generate enough of a cloud of suspicion and simply to knock Obama down  a notch.

Just as the guilt by association card has been used to implicate Obama in the  Gov. Blagojevich pay to play scandal right wingers are trying to use Holder’s involvement in President Clinton’s controversial pardons to tar Holder and Obama with the same brush of perceived corruption.

And now the anti-Holder opposition has resorted to pressuring Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy to delay the start of the confirmation hearings. Sam Stein of the Huffington Post is reporting that Republican Senators Jon Kyl and Tom Coburn have signaled that if they are not given more time to “consider” Holder’s record, they will hold up his confirmation, i.e., filibuster the nomination. If Senator Leahy were to grant to such a request, that would only penalize Obama for having picked his nominee so early, which gave the Senate at least 39 days to review Holder’s record. And as Leahy himself noted in a letter to Senator Arlen Specter on the same subject:

Other Attorney General nominations, which you and I have considered together, include that of your fellow Pennsylvanian, Dick Thornburgh, whose hearing was held 24 days after he was announced. He remained in office when Vice President George H.W. Bush was elected President. When he left the post toward the end of that administration, we proceeded with Bill Barr, whose hearing was held 25 days after he was announced. The beginning of President Clinton’s administration was unusual, but when he settled on Janet Reno, her hearing was held 26 days after she was announced.

News reports feel say the Obama team feels fairly confident that they have they votes, but they may be concerned that if the Republicans can make the vote on the nomination partisian then they could force the President-elect to expend the kind of political capital the won his centrist transition team a 79 percent approval rating.

The Holder nomination serve as an early test of whether or not team Obama can handle Republican opposition in Senate as much as it will serve as an early indication of how united the GOP’s caucus is in the that chamber.

Stumping on the Economy

A little history and analysis from Dan Balz at the WaPo:

Only once since World War II has a political party maintained control of the presidency for three consecutive terms, which was from 1981-1993. Eisenhower’s eight years were followed by Kennedy’s and Johnson’s eight years, which were followed by Nixon’s and Ford’s eight years, which were followed by Carter’s four years.

Voters would not give Democrats a third term after the Clinton presidency, despite a robust economy and a nation at peace. After the tumult of Bush’s eight years, what might compel voters to reward the Republicans with a third consecutive term in control of the White House?

McCain has managed to make the best of this terrible environment. His pick of Sarah Palin proved enormously effective in the short term. His party appears newly energized, even enthusiastic about their ticket, even if they still distrust the leader of that ticket.

[snip]

How long can he sustain all this? Absent external events, he was doing well. With the economic news of this week, the polls hint at a deflation in his position. The playing field has once again tilted slightly toward Obama, who now must take advantage of it.

This of course begs the question as to why the race remains so close given the present climate. I of course will leave that to readers of this blog to figure out. But I do think that aside from Obama being a black guy with a funny name who is still largely unknown to huge swaths of the electorate and still manages to come off as inexperienced, it has a lot to do with the fact that the hope machine has never been as compelling candidate when stumping on the economy as much as he was campaigning as an anti-war advocate against Senator Clinton in the primary.

As Nate Silver at Fivethirtyeight.com observed yesterday, “Obama’s never going to be a Clintonesque natural out there on the stump in responding to the economy — he might have to repeat a message three times where with Clinton it would have sunken in the first one.” Of course, this does not entirely account for his lack of support among those in Kentucky or West Virginia, but it may help explain some skepticism on the part of some persuadable independents and crossover voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Nevada, and perhaps Ohio.

Of course, Obama is slowly morphing into a harder edged populist during these past few weeks, but he is going to have to work a lot harder to among certain segments of voting population.

I Got This

With the advent of Palinmania, many Obama supporters have grown worried about their candidate’s prospects this coming November, but a recent column by Gail Collins urges observers and fervent supporters alike to sober up.   To Collins, to many people are paying attention to the fluctuations in polls among independents and undecideds when those are the very people who tend to make up their minds at the last minute.

One of the great things about this campaign is that both sides are convinced they’re going to lose. Remember how nuts all the Obama people went when Hillary refused to concede? How suicidal the Republicans were when Obama was knocking them dead in Europe while McCain was tooling around in a golf cart with the president’s father? We still have nearly two months to go. The people who haven’t decided who they want to vote for by now aren’t going to make up their minds until the last minute. Just chill for a few weeks until the debates start and let the Sarah Palin thing play itself out.

And as for the national polls Collins also noted:

If the Obama brain trust seems relatively serene compared with its seething base, it’s because they live in the Electoral College world, where the presidential race only takes place in a third of the country. They don’t care about national polls — a concept as quaint as measuring one’s wealth by caribou pelts. They worry about the undecided vote in Minnesota and Ohio and run their TV ads (about the economy) in places like Colorado and Michigan and Florida. If you live in California or New York or Texas, you don’t really have much of a feel for their level of effort because as far as they’re concerned, you’ve already voted.

“They Call Themselves Mavericks”

Finally, an ad with some real teeth.