Historic legislation well on its way

The most fateful piece of legislation since FDR's New Deal programs in the 1930s and the Civil Rigths Act of 1964, the Senate version of the health bill (already passed in the Senate on Dec. 24) passed the House of Representatives by a 219-212 (To correct something: I believe I said previously that it still needed to be approved by the Senate, but that body has already voted on it), and here is a map from The New York Times on how the vote broke down across the nation:




Obviously, the most progressive parts of the country are easy to pinpoint, and less progressive folks, rabble that are easily roused, were clearly on display this weekend, heckling lawmakers and making fools of themselves. After all, when mind power and logic isn't a person's strong suit, all that's left is emotion.

So, what now? Well, the House (still in session as of late Sunday) will vote on the reconciliation bill, which will then go to the Senate for approval. The one that was just approved is one and done and will now go to the president's desk.

The perceived blowback from all this is complete conjecture, no matter what the talking heads might say. As I noted in the last post, the Congressional Budget Office has already released its cost estimate for the bill, but all other theses — impending socialism, uncontrolled debt and, in the most extreme cases, the destruction of America, are the products of guesswork and attempts to inject fear into the public about the bill. Folks said the same thing after FDR's New Deal programs, and we're still here.

I, personally, am not to going to live in fear or loathing of the government, its programs or anything else. As I've noted to friends, if we have the resources to help people, in this case, 30 million, we should; damn the politicians, and damn the lobbyists who line their pockets. Calls from Mark Levin, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and others that we are headed toward socialism are laughable. Too many of those same politicians have a vested interest in the capitalistic status quo that they would never let us take their money.

What if the bill is flawed? If parts of the bill are not working, the parts can later then be retooled; this has been the story of decent legislation made better down through the decades. The key, after nearly a century (!) of debate on the topic, was action, and we saw historic action today, regrettably, without Republicans. Clearly, parts can be made better, and we can leave it to lawmakers to improve the bill. As Jim Wallis, author of Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street -- A Moral Compass for the New Economy (www.godspolitics.com) said,

... despite the very flawed health-care bill coming up for a vote this weekend, and the even more flawed processes that we will witness during its debate and vote, I believe (as does Sojourners) that something is better than nothing, and that this bill will hopefully be only the beginning of a process, and a first step toward comprehensive health-care reform. We simply cannot walk away from the 30 million people without health-care coverage who would benefit from this bill. And it is absolutely clear to us that simply doing nothing and letting the opportunity pass once again for beginning to reform the health-care system is a formula for everyone's health care getting worse -- more people being uninsured, higher premiums for those with insurance, continually diminishing benefits for us all, more family bankruptcies, and more people literally dying without proper health care.

I'm not quite as "bleeding heart" as this guy, but something clearly had to be done. When we, as a country, keep folks uneducated, poor, unhealthy and frightened, we can more easily control them. The measure of a strong government, however, is when we have a health, educated and thriving body politic, as Tony Benn said in the movie, Sicko, in this telling interview:




A 1948 leaflet issued in England, as read by Benn:

"'Your new National Health Service begins on the fifth of July. What is it, how do you get it? It will provide you with all medical, dental and nursing care. Everyone, rich or poor, man, woman or child can use it, or in it part of it. There are no charges, except for a few special items. There are no insurance qualifications. But it is not a charity. You are paying for it mainly as taxpayers, and it will relieve your money worries in times of illness.' Now somehow, the few words some of the whole thing up."

Now somehow, the few words sums the whole thing up."

Why Israeli-Palestinian resolution is impossible

Yesterday's New York Times editorial, titled Diplomacy 102, suggested that it "would be a very important start" if

the (Obama) administration would hold both Israelis and Palestinians “accountable for any statements or actions that inflame tensions or prejudice the outcome of talks.”

And continuing:

We also hope that if progress lags (in moving forward with a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine), the administration will be ready to put forward its own proposals on the central issues of borders, refugees, security and the future of Jerusalem.

Mr. Obama has another chance to move the peace process forward. This time he has to get it right.

But the Obama administration has no chance to "get it right," as his predecessors had the same bleak prospects. Why? Because the conflict betweem Israel and the Palestinians go back thousands of years, with each side claiming, for religious and imperialistic reasons (which are often intertwined) that they are the "true" proprietors of the disputed land.

Case in point, Elizabeth, apparently on Israel's side, commented on the above-referenced editorial:

There will be no true peace in the Middle East until the Arab world acknowledges that the land of Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people there can be no peace.

Jews were living in ancient Israel, Judea and their capital of Jerusalem for over 1,800 years before the birth of Muhammad and over 2,000 years before the Muslim Conquest of the Holy Land.

Just because our ancestors were expelled into exile by the Romans does not mean we Jews have forfitted our rights to our ancestral land.

Now that does not mean there cannot be a peace agreement with the Arabs, it does mean though that this history deserve recognition.

Similarly, just as Palestinian refugees need to be recognized so too do the hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from Arab countries in the 40's and 50's.

The key to resolving this conflict is understanding the history and connections of the other side.

Meanwhile, Efraim Karsh's book "Islamic Imperialism," which makes the case that the push for Islamic expansion among Muslims is the key to understanding the constant and unending turmoil in that region, quotes numerous Arab sources touting Palestinian ownership of the lands. Citing Palestinian Authority Television from Oct. 2, 2000, Karsh records:

Since [the caliph] Umar and Saladin we haven't given up our original rights in Jerusalem and al-Aqsa, our Jerusalem, our Palestine. If time constitutes the [the criteria of] existence, then Israel's temporary existence is only fifty-two years long while we, the Palestinian Arabs, have lived here for thousands of years, and we, the indigenous population, will eventually expel the invaders, however long it takes.

Or, Karsh notes,

In other words, the "Question of Palestine," is neither an ordinary territorial dispute between two national movements nor a struggle by an indigenous population against a foreign occupier. It is a holy war by the worldwide Islamic umma to prevent the loss of a part of the House of Islam to the infidels: "When our enemies usurp some Islamic lands, Jihad becomes a duty binding on all Muslims." Like other parts of the world conquered by the forces of Islam, "the land of Palestine has been an Islamic trust (waqf) throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection, [hence] no one can renounce it or part it, or abandon it or part of it." This makes the present struggle over Palestine a direct extension is Islam's historic fight against its two foremost medieval enemies — the crusaders and the Mongols:

"The Muslims had faced those invasions and planned their removal and defeat, [and] they are able to face the Zionist invasion and defeat it. This will not be difficult for Allah if our intentions are pure and our determination is sincere; if the Muslims draw useful lessons from the experiences of the past, and extricate themselves from the vestiges of the [Western] ideological onslaught; and if they follow the traditions of Islam."

So, this isn't a battle that's going to be won, I don't think, with Diplomacy 101 or Diplomacy 102 because the struggle itself predates modern diplomacy, democracy and rationality itself. The millennial struggle for that section of the Middle East can be reduced to only one of three conclusions: the efforts or intentions of Muslims regarding Palestine have simply not been to Allah's liking (thus conflicts continue) or Allah is impotent to assist Arabs in reclaiming the land from Israel or Allah wasn't there in the first place. Since the Koran was strewn together in the 6th century, much of it replicated the Bible, and coming long after even the New Testament was written, I would conclude the latter.

As Karsh correctly notes,

Only when the political elites of the Middle East and the Muslim world reconcile themselves to the reality of state nationalism, forswear pan-Arab and pan-Islamic imperialist dreams, and make Islam a matter of private faith rather than a tool of political ambition, will the inhabitants of these regions at least be able to look forward to a better future free of would be-Saladins.

But that's not the stated call for Muslims. The stated purpose, as Karsh notes, and as I have referenced previously, has been consistently the following down through the centuries:

• “I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘There is no god by Allah.’ – Muhammad’s farewell address, March 632


• “I shall cross this sea to their islands to pursue them until there remains no one on the face of the earth who does not acknowledge Allah.” – Saladin, January 1189


• “We will export our revolution throughout the world … until the calls ‘there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah’ are echoed all over the world.” – Ayatollah Khomeini, 1979


• “I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is not god but Allah, and his prophet Muhammad.” – Osama bin Laden, November 2001

Thus, forging peace in that region, while reason and logic are far from its shores, becomes impossible while that particular brand of religion entangles every strain of independent thought.

Talk radio echo chamber claptrap

If you haven't heard of radio host Michael Savage, he's another in the long line of neocon talking heads who wrap their heads in the American flag, while attempting to make readers tremble in their boots about the socialist spiral in which we are apparently unequivocally headed — at least for the next three years.

On Tuesday, he devoted most or all (I didn't get to listen to the whole thing because I was traveling away from the radio signal) of his show to theories that tie President Obama (He calls him Barack Hussein Obama, and for reasons that escape me, he insultingly pronounces the second syllable in "Barack" with a short-A sound) with the Red Army Faction, Herbert Marcuse, Frankfurt School and even more wrongly, Mao Zedong.

Here's a clip (apologies for the poor quality)

He said last night that unlike the Red Army Faction, Obama is not seeking a violent revolution toward a socialist "takeover," but a nonviolent one, more along the lines of Marcuse's line of thinking and others. Savage calls it a "quiet revolution:"

I realize it's not the meat and potatoes that you've come to expect from talk radio, but we have to do it. We have to do it so you understand the danger we're in. You have to do it until you understand how little time is left before there's a total takeover of every aspect of your life from cradle to grave, which starts with health care reform.

Thus, Savage isn't unlike any of the other right wingers out there attempting to frighten folks into thinking the Obama administration is up to some big conspiracy to bedazzle us into socialism. For one, the lawmakers, even Democrats, who very much benefit from this capitalistic free-for-all era corporate lobbying wouldn't stand for it. Second, Obama's only got four more years, eight at the most. What does Savage think is going to happen in that time? Health care reform doesn't bring any new far left agendas to the table. We've already passed bills in this country that could, like health care, be called socialist, and numerous presidents prior to Obama were charged with the same crime.

So, we hear the same old claptrap over and over, and it's tiring. You don't want a few seeds of socialism (an economic system) or communism (a political system ... Savage seems to use the two interchangeably.) in this country? Good. Call your lawmakers or state lawmakers and tell them you want to abolish your local police station and your local sheriff's office. Tell them to do away with county-maintained fire departments. Tell them to stop working on the roads. Tell them to shutter the Federal Reserve so we can go back to trading in gold and silver and bartering. Tell them to do away with Medicaid, which helps children and disabled people, and Medicare, which helps the elderly. Tell them to offer up all Forest Service land to speculators, since that worked so well the last time. Public schools? Closed. Everyone will be home schooled from now on. Public colleges? Unnecessary and filled with folks who think too much.

Obama will either be our president in 2012 or he won't. The propogators of such nonsense will either continue the frenetic push to get people infused with fear and loathing for the administration, or they will tone their rhetoric back if a Republican gets in office and level the vitriol at whichever Congressman or woman seems the most progressive. The country will move on just like it did after FDR enacted his giant New Deal.

By the way, the Red Army Faction was actually an anti-imperialistic organization responding to the Vietnam war, German capitalism at the time and Germany's concealment that high-ranking officials were former Nazis. While it by no way excuses the violence and death caused by the organization, Savage fails to mention much in his incendiary, fear-mongering rhetoric.

And one final thought: Savage actually said that Obama's policy on economics was to take from the middle class and give to the rich. He calls it "reverse" Robin Hood. Has he even been paying attention? Has he heard the $250,000 figure tossed around ... reversing Bush's policy of giving tax breaks to the rich? I don't know about Savage, but I don't consider someone who makes more than 250k middle class at all. Maybe he has a different income gauge than I do. But I'm sorry to break the news: 250k is not a middle class wage level by any stretch. See here.