Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com
Friday Oct. 9, 2009 07:10 EDT

When I saw this morning's top New York Times headline -- "Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize" -- I had the same immediate reaction which I'm certain many others had:  this was some kind of bizarre Onion gag that got accidentally transposed onto the wrong website, that it was just some sort of strange joke someone was playing.  Upon further reflection, that isn't all that far from the reaction I still have.  And I say that despite my belief that -- as critical as I've been of the Obama presidency regarding civil liberties and Terrorism -- foreign affairs is actually one area where he's shown genuine potential for some constructive "change" and has, on occasion, merited real praise for taking steps in the general "peace" direction which this Prize is meant to honor.

Obama has changed the tone America uses to speak to the world generally and the Muslim world specifically.  His speech in Cairo, his first-week interview on al-Arabiya, and the extraordinarily conciliatory holiday video he sent to Iran are all substantial illustrations of that.  His willingness to sit down and negotiate with Iran -- rather than threaten and berate them -- has already produced tangible results.  He has at least preliminarily broken from Bush's full-scale subservience to Israel and has applied steadfast pressure on the Israelis to cease settlement activities, even though it's subjected him to the sorts of domestic political risks and vicious smears that have made prior Presidents afraid to do so.  His decision to use his first full day in office to issue Executive Orders to close Guantanamo, ostensibly ban torture, and bar CIA black sites was an important symbol offered to the world (even though it's been followed by actions that make those commitments little more than empty symbols).  He refused to reflexively support the right-wing, civil-liberty-crushing coup leaders in Honduras merely because they were "pro-American" and "anti-Chavez," thus siding with the vast bulk of Latin America's governments -- a move George Bush, or John McCain, never would have made.  And as a result of all of that, the U.S. -- in a worldwide survey released just this week -- rose from seventh to first on the list of "most admired countries."

All that said, these changes are completely preliminary, which is to be expected given that he's only been in office nine months.  For that reason, while Obama's popularity has surged in Western Europe, the changes in the Muslim world in terms of how the U.S. is perceived have been small to nonexistent.  As Der Spiegel put it in the wake of a worldwide survey in July:  "while Europe's ardor for Obama appears fervent, he has actually made little progress in the regions where the US faces its biggest foreign policy problems."  People who live in regions that have long been devastated by American weaponry don't have the luxury of being dazzled by pretty words and speeches.  They apparently -- and rationally -- won't believe that America will actually change from a war-making nation into a peace-making one until there are tangible signs that this is happening.  It's because that has so plainly not yet occurred that the Nobel Committee has made a mockery out of their own award.

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By Juan Cole
Oct. 1, 2009 | salon.com

The assumptions most Americans hold about Iran and its policies are wrong

Thursday is a fateful day for the world, as the U.S., other members of the United Nations Security Council, and Germany meet in Geneva with Iran in a bid to resolve outstanding issues. Although Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had earlier attempted to put the nuclear issue off the bargaining table, this rhetorical flourish was a mere opening gambit and nuclear issues will certainly dominate the talks. As Henry Kissinger pointed out, these talks are just beginning and there are highly unlikely to be any breakthroughs for a very long time. Diplomacy is a marathon, not a sprint.

But on this occasion, I thought I'd take the opportunity to list some things that people tend to think they know about Iran, but for which the evidence is shaky.

Belief: Iran is aggressive and has threatened to attack Israel, its neighbors or the U.S.

Reality: Iran has not launched an aggressive war modern history (unlike the U.S. or Israel), and its leaders have a doctrine of "no first strike." This is true of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as of Revolutionary Guards commanders.

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By Nikki Schwab, Washington Whispers
U.S.News & World Report
September 16, 2009

Howard Dean, former Democratic National Committee chairman, minced no words about Sen. Max Baucus's
healthcare proposal, unveiled to the public this morning. "The Baucus
bill is the worst piece of healthcare legislation I've seen in 30
years," Dean said last night at a healthcare town hall and book signing
in Washington. "In fact, it's a $60 billion giveaway to the health
insurance industry every year," he said. "It was written by healthcare
lobbyists, so that's not a surprise. It's an outrage."

The Baucus bill leaves out some of the president's goals for
healthcare reform, such as the controversial public option. While more
palatable to Senate moderates, the Baucus proposal also drew criticism
from Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat from West Virginia, who said yesterday he would not vote for
it in its current form. "I'm glad Senator Rockefeller is not going to
vote for it. I wouldn't vote for it at all under any circumstances,"
Dean added. Instead, Dean said Senate Democrats should and would end up
using the reconciliation process to pass a plan with the public option.
"It can be done, and that's how it will be done," Dean said, pointing
out that a majority of Senate Democrats still support a more robust
bill.

story at USnews.com

Bill Maher
Host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher"
Posted: September 11, 2009 06:48 PM
The Huffington Post

New Rule: Democrats must get in touch with their inner asshole. And no, I'm not being gratuitously crude when I say that. I refer to the case of Van Jones, and I'm sure you know who Van Jones is. At least I hope you do, because I haven't a clue, or at least I didn't until this week, when I found out he was the man the Obama administration hired to find jobs for Americans in the new green industries. Seems like a smart thing to do in a recession, but Van Jones got fired because he became the Scary Negro of the Week on Fox News, where, let's be honest, they still feel threatened by Harry Belafonte.

Now, I know that right now, I'm supposed to be all re-injected with yes-we-can fever after the big health care speech, and it was a great speech -- when Black Elvis gets jiggy with his teleprompter, there is none better. But here's the thing: Muhammad Ali also had a way with words, but it helped enormously that he could also punch guys in the face.

What got Van Jones fired was they caught him on tape saying that Republicans are assholes. And they call it "news." And Obama didn't say a word in defense of Jones and basically fired him when Glenn Beck told him to. Just like we dropped "end of life counseling" from health care reform because Sarah Palin said it meant "death panels" on her Facebook page.

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Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com

Yesterday, Meet the Press hosted a panel discussion to debate two primary issues:  (1) foreign policy -- specifically, the war in Afghanistan, and (2) health care.  The panel:  Rudy Giuliani, Tom Friedman, Harold Ford, Jr., and Tom Brokaw (as Jay Rosen often notes, Meet the Press is doing a fantastic job of fulfilling its pledge to present "fresh voices" in its discussions).

With regard to Afghanistan, there is a major debate currently taking place about whether we should stay in that country.  A majority of Americans now opposes the war.  But there was not a single participant there who shares that view.  All of them believe that it is imperative we remain, and put on their little General hats to exchange deeply Serious analyses of how we need to adjust our strategy and tactics for greater mission success.  Of course, all of three of those whose views were known about Iraq -- Friedman, Ford and Giuliani -- were vehement supporters of the invasion.  As always, not only does support for that war not produce shame or even impair one's credibility and Seriousness, but the opposite is true:  having supported it is a prerequisite for being considered credible and Serious, which is why those are the only people -- still -- from whom we hear when it's time to convene Serious discussions of foreign policy.  What an odd filtering standard for The Liberal Media to use.

On health care, the same dynamic repeated itself.  The prime controversy in that debate is over the inclusion of a "public option," with large numbers of Americans supporting it.  Yet once again, not a single member of the panel advocated it (though David Axelrod was interviewed before the panel and paid lip service to the public option on his way to clearly signaling it would not be part of the ultimate plan).  Guiliani warned there would be no health care with a public option; Ford told his "liberal friends in Congress" that they will have to be disappointed by the outcome; Friedman insisted that Obama adopt the proposals of Mitt Romney and John McCain and ensure he has the support of centrist Republicans (Brokaw offered some mild pushback against the attempt to demonize the public option).   The words "single payer" were never spoken. 

continued

How Washington is screwing up health care reform – and why it may take a revolt to fix it

MATT TAIBBI
Rolling Stone | rollingstone.com
Posted Sep 03, 2009 11:33 AM

Let's start with the obvious: America has not only the worst but the dumbest health care system in the developed world. It's become a black leprosy eating away at the American experiment — a bureaucracy so insipid and mean and illogical that even our darkest criminal minds wouldn't be equal to dreaming it up on purpose.

The system doesn't work for anyone. It cheats patients and leaves them to die, denies insurance to 47 million Americans, forces hospitals to spend billions haggling over claims, and systematically bleeds and harasses doctors with the specter of catastrophic litigation. Even as a mechanism for delivering bonuses to insurance-company fat cats, it's a miserable failure: Greedy insurance bosses who spent a generation denying preventive care to patients now see their profits sapped by millions of customers who enter the system only when they're sick with incurably expensive illnesses.

The cost of all of this to society, in illness and death and lost productivity and a soaring federal deficit and plain old anxiety and anger, is incalculable — and that's the good news. The bad news is our failed health care system won't get fixed, because it exists entirely within the confines of yet another failed system: the political entity known as the United States of America.

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PacifiCare's Denials 40%, Cigna’s 33% in First Half of 2009

More than one of every five requests for medical claims for insured
patients, even when recommended by a patient's physician, are rejected
by California's largest private insurers, amounting to very real death
panels in practice daily in the nation's biggest state, according to
data released Wednesday by the California Nurses Association/National
Nurses Organizing Committee.

CNA/NNOC researchers analyzed data reported by the insurers to the
California Department of Managed Care. From 2002 through June 30, 2009,
six of the largest insurers operating in California rejected 47.7
million claims for care -- 22 percent of all claims.

The data will be presented by Don DeMoro, director of CNA/NNOC's
research arm, the Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy, at
CNA/NNOC's biennial convention next Tuesday, Sept. 8 in San Francisco.
The convention will also feature a panel presentation from nurse
leaders in Canada, Great Britain, and Australia exploding the myths
about their national healthcare systems.

press release

By Alexander Bolton | The Hill
Posted: 08/24/09 06:59 AM [ET]

Howard Dean has emerged as President Barack Obama’s chief antagonist from the left on healthcare reform, raising questions over whether Obama made a mistake by snubbing Dean for a position in his administration.

Dean’s strong advocacy for creating a broad government-run health insurance program, known as the public option, has become a headache for Obama while at the same time giving liberals a powerful spokesman with national credibility.

Dean, who once declared himself a representative of the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” has been traveling the nation this summer offering his own views on Obama’s healthcare proposal. His uncompromising stance is reminiscent of his 2004 presidential campaign that took many Democrats by surprise, and has begun to symbolize a rift between the president and those activists who played a major role in electing him.

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from Democracy Now!:

We speak to Rep. Raul Grijalva, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, on the latest in the debate over healthcare reform. Grijalva has threatened to vote against any healthcare legislation that does not include a public health insurance option. He also recently co-wrote a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, criticizing her for saying that the public option is not the essential element of comprehensive reform.

click here for Amy Goodman's interview with
Rep. Grijalva