Brilliant Politics

What happens when women and people of color start to move into real high-level positions of power in America? White men who believe that they should hold onto ALL of the power start behaving badly as a way to deal with their anxiety. Below are two examples: Lou Dobbs’ anti-Latino crusade and the National Republican Campaign Committee suggesting that Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, be “put in her place.”

Expect to see more White Men Behaving Badly in the coming years as increasing numbers of people of color and more women ascend to higher levels of political and economic power.

Photo by Chuck Pierson, November 2007

Andrew Sullivan comments on Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize today:

I don’t think Americans fully absorbed the depths to which this country’s reputation had sunk under the Cheney era. That’s understandable. And so they also haven’t fully absorbed the turn-around in the world’s view of America that Obama and the American people have accomplished. Of course, this has yet to bear real fruit. But you can begin to see how it could; and I hope more see both the peaceful intentions and the steely resolve of this man to persevere.

This president has done a huge amount to bring race relations in this country to a different place, which is why the far right has become so vicious in attacking him and lying about him. They know he threatens their politics of division and rule. He has also directly addressed the Muslim world, telling some hard truths, and played a small role in evoking a similar movement of hope and change in Iran, and finally told the Israelis to stop cutting their nose off to spite their face….

We do know that we were facing a spiral of conflict that, unchecked, could have taken the world to the abyss. I see this prize as an endorsement of his extraordinary reorientation of world politics, and as an encouragement to see it through.

A Public Service Announcement:

Rick Sanchez has started practicing journalism at CNN with this piece on how health insurance companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to influence the outcome of health care reform, i.e., water down reform so that their profits vastly increase and an affordable Medicare-like public option for the uninsured is torpedoed:

After the euphoria many of us felt about Americans electing a talented and inspiring black president, I think people are startled by the ugly racist backlash that we are seeing. Andrew Sullivan goes to the heart of the matter:

“But the vicious anger from the far right, which is to say what is currently the right, seems totally out of proportion to these reforms. Where does that come from? It comes from the same place as the tea-party protests. It’s partisan, of course – most Republicans, including Glenn Reynolds, ignored the deficit under Bush, blamed Obama for it within minutes of his election, and never refer to the impact of the recession on deficits. But it is also surely cultural – an expression of the rage some in white America feel at the new social make-up of their country. I just sat through a PJTV segment on Sarah Palin, in which the host blithely referred to the heartland as “real America.”

If that is what you really believe – that people in cities or suburbs, that minorities, that gays, that blacks and Hispanics are not part of “real America” – then of course, you are angry. You believe a fake America has taken over. You cannot understand this. So you start believing that we have a fascist/communist dictatorship, that there was some fraud allowing a non-citizen to become president, that the government is about to “take over” all healthcare provision … and on and on. And no one is left in the GOP to challenge this, to calm it down, to present practical alternatives to the obvious crushing problems the country and the private sector have in paying for increasingly costly healthcare.”

Harold Meyerson asks the question of the moment. Is paralysis in politics the “new normal”?

“Watching the centrist Democrats in Congress create more and more reasons why health care can’t be fixed, I’ve been struck by a disquieting thought: Suppose our collective lack of response to Hurricane Katrina wasn’t exceptional but, rather, the new normal in America. Suppose we can no longer address the major challenges confronting the nation. Suppose America is now the world’s leading can’t-do country. [...]

Centrist Democrats’ opposition to health reform verges on the incoherent … Why Democrats of any ideology want to cripple their own president in his first year in office, and for seeking an objective that has been a stated goal of their party since the Truman administration, is a more mysterious matter.”

(h/t Daily Kos)

President Obama lays it on the line today about health care reform, confronting Republicans who would block access to health care for millions of Americans in an attempt to make him look bad:

In his weekly address this past Saturday, the President clarified the importance of including a Public Option in the health care reform bill (h/t mcjoan):

That’s why any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange: a one-stop shopping marketplace where you can compare the benefits, cost and track records of a variety of plans – including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest – and choose what’s best for your family. And that’s why we’ll put an end to the worst practices of the insurance industry: no more yearly caps or lifetime caps; no more denying people care because of pre-existing conditions; and no more dropping people from a plan when they get too sick. No longer will you be without health insurance, even if you lose your job or change jobs.

Andrew Sullivan has not backed off of the story of how close we came to having Sarah Palin – a woman totally unprepared, and uninterested in being prepared, for national office – a heartbeat away from being president. He explains why it matters:

I’m getting lots of emails telling me to move on. I will. But I want to explain why I think the Palin drama is actually important. It’s not because of her: she’s a delusional, narcissistic and disturbed person who would be voted off a reality show in the first rounds. It’s because of John McCain, the Republican establishment and the mainstream media. What happened last fall was a warning sign to all of us about how corrupt and cynical the GOP, McCain and the MSM are. They colluded in such a way that this unstable, erratic, know-nothing beauty queen could actually have been president of the United States. What matters is that all those in on this scam be exposed and their way of conducting themselves be reformed until they stop risking the fate of the country and the world on their own vanities and cowardice.

Matt Steinglass makes a good argument for blaming McCain for putting Palin in the potential position to be president:

He certainly has a substantial amount of charm and an instinct for playing the press, and he’s hardly the dumbest guy in the Senate. But he is not a responsible or serious person. And to a great degree, when he met Sarah Palin, he probably felt he was looking at a younger version of himself. Which is to say that the “rot” in the GOP, the eagerness to substitute celebrity and resentful pseudo-patriotic gibberish for real political discussion, goes back a lot longer than 8 years.

It is time to start preparing for the possibility of a serious flu pandemic during the coming winter flu season. Here is what the experts are thinking and worrying about:

“Hundreds of specialists from 40 countries meeting at a posh beach side resort in this tourist mecca were plotting strategies for what many dread could become an outbreak rivaling a 1918 flu pandemic that killed tens of millions of people.

Health officials in the United States, Mexico and Canada fear that a strengthened virus will return north with the winter cold. And the United Kingdom’s health minister warned this week that the flu could strike as many as 100,000 Britons a day by the end of August.

“We need to plan for the most extreme scenarios as well as for the likely scenarios,” said Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Influenza is perhaps the most unpredictable of infectious diseases.”

the experts