Panic on the Right

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The Right has figured out another way to sabotage Obamacare — persuade people who don’t have insurance to not get any, even if the ACA makes it possible. Reuters:

With the Obama administration poised for a huge public education campaign on healthcare reform, Republicans and their allies are mobilizing a counter-offensive including town hall meetings, protests and media promotions to dissuade uninsured Americans from obtaining health coverage.

Brian Beutler writes,

It almost goes without saying that this effort is being undertaken to keep younger, healthier people out of the exchanges, and send the individual insurance market into an adverse-selection “death spiral.” That would ruin the system for people who want the help Obamacare offers them. And so the campaign effectively amounts to asking people to continue putting their well-being and livelihoods at risk for the good of the cause of keeping health care for sick people unaffordable.

It sounds as if the Right is gearing up for a multipronged attack, and they will be cranking out the propaganda with everything they’ve got. And, y’know, massive disinformation campaigns are what the Right is really, really good at. But this part struck me as weird (Reuters again) —

FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, a conservative issue group financed by billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch, known for funding conservative causes, are planning separate media and grassroots campaigns aimed at adults in their 20s and 30s – the very people Obama needs to have sign up for healthcare coverage in new online insurance exchanges if his reforms are to succeed.

“We’re trying to make it socially acceptable to skip the exchange,” said Dean Clancy, vice president for public policy at FreedomWorks, which boasts 6 million supporters. The group is designing a symbolic “Obamacare card” that college students can burn during campus protests.

“Obamacare card”? This sounds like something a bunch of geezers would come up with. Do today’s college students know that much about the draft card burnings of more than 40 years ago? Do they care? And why would college students — many of whom are on mommy and daddy’s policies, thanks to the ACA — take part in something that’s such obvious astroturf? I know a few will, but I can’t see this as widespread.

See also Charles Pierce, “The Approaching Storm of Stupid.”

Fear Itself

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In spite of a recent uptick in violent crime rates in urban areas, around the country rates of violent crime have been dropping for several years. In 2011 it had reached all-time lows —

Murders are at the lowest point in 40 years. Violent crime, according to the FBI, includes murder, rape, robbery and assault. …The peak of violent crime and property crime came in the early ’90s. The 2011 report represents a 30.6 drop in property crime since 1991, and a 38 percent drop in violent crime since 1992.

(And before anyone suggests this is because of “concealed carry” laws, note that similar drops have been going on i other countries without concealed carry laws.)

Why, then, have so many people become so fearful that they cannot leave their homes without a firearm? Charles Blow writes,

Gun sales have surged. And our laws are quickly being adjusted to allow people to carry those guns everywhere they go and to give legal cover to use lethal force when nonlethal options are available.

This is our America in a most frightful time.

When Illinois — which has experienced extraordinary carnage in its largest city — enacted legislation this month allowing the concealed carrying of firearms, it lost its place as the lone holdout. Now “concealed carry” is the law in all 50 states.

And as The Wall Street Journal reported this month, “concealed carry” permit applications are also surging while restrictions are being loosened. Do we really need to have our guns with us in church, or at the bar? More states are answering that question in the affirmative.

And now that more people are walking around with weapons dangling from their bodies, states have moved to make the use of those guns more justifiable.

And, of course, the answer is twofold. The firearm industry is ginning up fear to push gun sales, and right-wing politicians and gun-rights groups are ginning up fear because it raises money.

Weenies of Wonder, Part Trois

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First, I want to say — Anthony Weiner, will you please go now? I sincerely hope he is not elected Mayor. I cringe at the thought of four years of weiner jokes.

Second, I second the opinion expressed by Katy Waldman, that most of us ladies are not enticed by depictions of the mighty member in isolation. There are studies that support this, in fact. Maybe guys misunderstand this because they’re wired differently, but trust me when I say we ladies would be more enticed by a picture of your face. Or your dog’s face. Maybe even your bowling trophies.

Stupid Is as Stupid Writes

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Although I usually avoid it, every time I’ve read Victor Davis Hanson’s florid and supercilious prose I’ve imagined him looking like a gaseous cloud, possibly a fart, wearing a bow tie and a monocle. But his National Review photo reveals that he looks like a normal human being, which goes to show you can’t judge people by what they look like.

His most recent column reveals him to be a garden variety racist, albeit one who knows big words. Ta-Nehisi Coates takes him down so I don’t have to. And may I say, this is a bit like watching Leonardo da Vinci critique Thomas Kinkade.

White men who believe the key to personal safety is avoiding black men crack me up. All kind of data say that I am more likely to be sexually assaulted by a white man than by a black one. And, frankly, I don’t remember ever being physically threatened by a black person, although there have been some white men who scared the stuffing out of me.

So, by Victor David Hanson’s logic, I should have sat my children down and told them to avoid white people. But my blue-eyed Celtic-American offspring might have found that difficult.

In other stupid news, Hunter informs us that Jennifer Rubin has declared racism in America to be solved.

Desperate Times, Stupid Measures, and Obamacare

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Republicans in Washington are determined to sabotage the Affordable Care Act. This week already, Sen. Mike Allen (R-Utah) proposed a government shutdown if Obamacare isn’t repealed. Steve Benen lists several other ways Republicans are determined to either stop the law or make sure it doesn’t work.

Ed Kilgore:

It’s taken a few years, but the GOP has managed to talk itself into a very firm belief that this national version of Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts health plan is a satanic abomination that will either, depending on which talking point they are following at any particular moment, crash and burn taking the entire U.S. economy down with it, or succeed in seducing Americans to sell themselves into the voluntary slavery of “socialized medicine.”

If they really believed it will crash and burn, I don’t think they’d be quite so frantic to stop it. If it crashes and burns, this would give the GOP a great issue for the 2014 midterms. If they really believed it will crash and burn, I think they would just step aside and let it. But if they can sabotage it …

Paul Krugman wrote a few days ago that Obamacare is the Right’s worst nightmare —

Yglesias is right: there will be bobbles along the way, but this is going to become an immensely popular program. By the time Liz Cheney challenges Hillary Clinton’s reelection campaign, there will be signs at the rallies declaring “Don’t let the government get its hands on Obamacare!”

Conservatives are right to be hysterical about this: it’s an attack on everything they believe — and it’s going to make Americans’ lives better. What could be worse?

Byron York probably speaks for many righties when he says that once Obamacare is in effect, it will be too late to repeal it entirely. That’s because people will like it. He says,

When Washington conservatives gather to talk among themselves, and the discussion turns to Obamacare — it happens pretty frequently — it’s not unusual to hear predictions that the president’s health care law will “collapse of its own weight.” It’s a “train wreck,” many say, quoting Democratic Sen. Max Baucus. It’s unworkable. It’s going to be a big, smoking ruin.

So what’s the problem?

On the other hand, a lot of thoughtful conservatives are looking beyond Oct. 1 to Jan. 1, the day the law (except for the parts the president has unilaterally postponed) is scheduled to go fully into effect. On that day the government will begin subsidizing health insurance for millions of Americans. (A family of four with income as high as $88,000 will be eligible for subsidies.) When people begin receiving that entitlement, the dynamics of the Obamacare debate will change.

At that point, the Republican mantra of total repeal will become obsolete. The administration will mount a huge public relations campaign to highlight individuals who have received government assistance to help them afford, say, chemotherapy, or dialysis, or some other life-saving treatment. Will Republicans advocate cutting off the funds that help pay for such care?

The answer is no. Facing that reality, the GOP is likely to change its approach, arguing that those people should be helped while the rest of Obamacare is somehow dismantled.

What the GOP continues to ignore is that the rest of it can’t be dismantled without dismantling all of it. The program is about a lot more than subsidies. The many moving parts work together to make it possible for more people to get insurance. Even many who don’t get subsidies will be paying lower premiums.

So, yeah, it’s starting to sink in to some of them that they’d better kill Obamacare now, or they’re going to find themselves in a far more unfavorable political landscape.

See also Jonathan Cohn, Conservatives Brace for the Possibility Obamacare Won’t Totally Suck and Charles Pierce, Mike Lee’s Latest Great Plan.

The Establishment Wants Us to Move On

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You are no doubt aware that the Right went on ugly overdrive after the Zimmerman verdict, and then doubled down on the ugly after the President’s remarks on race last week. See, for example,

Nastiest conservative responses to Obama’s Trayvon speech

Top 12 Conservative Freakouts After Obama’s Race Speech

Fox News Host Calls Obama ‘Race-Baiter In Chief’ After Trayvon Martin Statement

Tea Party Host David Webb Hits Obama For ‘Playing Into Black-White Racist Dynamic’ With Zimmerman Speech

Sean Hannity Asks If Obama Is Like Trayvon Martin Because ‘He Smoked Pot’ And ‘Did A Little Blow’

I could go on and on. The mere mention of race drives the wingnuts into a rabid frenzy. It appears that even to treat racial injustice as a serious issue that deserves respectful discussion, or that African-Americans really do experience ill treatment because of race, is taboo. It must not be said in public. It’s like talking about your porn collection in church.

(One does not need a degree in psychology to know that the reason wingnuts feel this way is that they are in massive denial about their own racism. Which, in a way, is progress. Fifty years ago they would have been aiming their shotguns at freedom marchers. Now they’re mostly reduced to throwing tantrums. Well, except in “stand your ground” states.)

What I’m seeing today is, in a way, more insidious. For example, the Los Angeles Times has an op ed piece called “Rhetoric, race and reality in America” that fairly oozes with white paternalism. And yes, I realize one of the co-authors is black.

After criticizing the “hysterical response of some civil rights leaders” to the verdict, and their “message of victimhood and division,” the authors remind us that young black men kill other young black men at higher rates than whites kill young black men. Yes, but one suspects the police actually arrest the perpetrators within a reasonable amount of time.

And what would we do without Shelby Steele telling us that the civil rights establishment is in decline.

On television in recent weeks you could see black leaders from every background congealing into a chorus of umbrage and complaint. But they weren’t so much outraged at a horrible injustice as they were affronted by the disregard of their own authority. The jury effectively said to them, “You won’t call the tune here. We will work within the law.”

Never mind that the law is an outrage. Last year Steele was among the many right-wing media elites who willfully refused to acknowledge that the real issue was the inaction of the police. See also Conservatives Still Don’t Understand The Trayvon Martin Story from April 2012.

Whatever. The Establishment wants us to know that we’ve gone on long enough about Trayvon Martin, and it’s time to accept reality and move on.

Oh, and there are more threats to voting rights on the horizon, but I suppose we’re not supposed to notice that, either.

You’re Not Oppressed Until a White Man Says You’re Oppressed

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I’m not necessarily suggesting you read it, but FYI today’s Ross Douthat column tells us that Texas-abortion restrictions really don’t oppress women, so liberals should quit bellyachin’ about it. Yeah, I’m sure Douthat is an expert on what women find oppressive.

He comes to this opinion via his usual highly creating juggling of cherry-picked “facts.” Yes, it’s true that many European countries have gestation limits for elective abortion that are even lower than 20 weeks. However, most of these countries do not have goon squads of Fetus People closing clinics on trumped-up pretenses, demanding transvaginal ultrasounds, or second-guessing physicians about which later-term abortions are medically necessary. And I believe in most of these countries abortions are covered by the national health care system, so that women don’t have to delay having an abortion while they save up the money to have an abortion.

Douthat writes of the potential consequences of Texas abortion law,

One possible answer is that Texas will make a forced march into squalor, misery and patriarchal oppression. Women’s lives will be endangered, their health threatened, their economic opportunities substantially foreclosed.

To the extent that this case rests on facts rather than fear, it’s based on cross-country comparisons. Around the globe, countries with abortion bans often do have worse outcomes — more poverty, fewer opportunities for women and, yes, often more abortions as well.

But, he says, comparisons with sub-Sahara Africa are not exactly like-to-like. What about Ireland? he asks. Which is a hoot, considering that it’s probably much easier for an Irish woman to take a ferry from Dublin to Liverpool than for a woman in middle-of-nowhere Texas to go anywhere civilized. Douthat says, “even if abortion were somehow banned outright in Texas tomorrow, it would still be available to women with the resources to travel out of state.” And the women who do not have those resources almost certainly can find hangers.

And Irish law specifically provides that Irish women have a right to travel to Britain or anywhere else to get an abortion. Just watch the whackjobs in the Texas legislature pass laws that prosecute women for crossing state lines to get an abortion.

And yes, Douthat mentioned Savita Halappanavar, a woman who really truly died in an Irish hospital because she was denied an abortion. But Douthat tells us soothingly that “there is little evidence that the Halappanavar tragedy reflects a larger trend.” I’m sure that’s a great comfort to her family.

Douthat continues,

Meanwhile, international rankings offer few indications that Ireland’s abortion laws are holding Irish women back. The country ranks first for gender parity in health care in a recent European Union index. It was in the middle of the pack in The Economist’s recent “glass-ceiling index” for working women. It came in fifth out of 135 countries in the World Economic Forum’s “Global Gender Gap” report. (The United States was 22nd.)

Now it’s also true that Ireland, like most of Europe, is to the left of Texas on many economic issues. All the abortion restrictions described above coexist with universal health care, which Rick Perry’s state conspicuously lacks.

So perhaps, it might be argued, abortion can be safely limited only when the government does more to cover women’s costs in other ways — in which case Texas might still be flirting with disaster.

But note that this is a better argument for liberalism than for abortion.

Dude — it’s all of a piece. Notice that the yahoos who lay awake at night thinking up new abortion restrictions are the same ones trying to sabotage “Obamacare.” And they’re often the same ones denying that women are really paid less than men or that anyone might need Affirmative Action or a living wage.

The day that abortions are covered by a national health care program, all women have reasonably good access to abortion providers, and physicians are allowed reasonable discretion in determining medical need for a later-term abortion, then a 20-week gestation limit on elective abortions wouldn’t be that big a deal. But until those other things happen, it is.

And if I were God, I’d give Douthat a womb. It might broaden his perspectives.

Well, I wasn’t going to rant on about Douthat quite this long, because I also wanted to mention the on-air argument between professional white guy Ben Ferguson and CNN host Don Lemon. Basically, Ferguson told the African-American Lemon that black men are not, in fact, profiled or harassed by police or treated differently by pearl-clutching matrons than white men, and an exasperated Lemon said,

“I’m telling you my experience, the president’s telling you about his experience. And you’re saying that we’re not having that experience. Who are you to tell us we’re not having that experience, when you’re not living it? You’re not in our bodies. It’s insulting for you to say, ‘No that’s not happening.’ You don’t live as a black man, you don’t know that.”

Hey, he’s the white guy; he knows everything. And you’re not oppressed until he says you’re oppressed.

President Obama and a Poignant Anniversary

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The President made a powerful statement on race in America today. In the wake of the tragic Zimmerman verdict,

Mr. Obama eloquently rebutted those — like Republican Congressman Andy Harris with his dismissive “get over it” remark on Tuesday — who said that the verdict should have ended discussion of the case, especially talk about race and gun laws.

“Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago,” Mr. Obama said, adding that “it’s important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.”

He said there are “very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store” or “the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off.”

“That,” he said, “includes me.”

The full transcript is here. See also Why Obama Decided To Speak Out On Race And The Zimmerman Verdict.

It so happens today is the 150th anniversary of the assault on Fort Wagner by the 54th Massachusetts regiment, which you might remember was portrayed in the film Glory a few years back. The 54th Massachusetts was the first African-American regiment organized in the North to fight for the Union. The 54th suffered nearly 45 percent casualties at Fort Wagner, but gained immortality.