Motley Moose – Archive

The FCC voted on its net neutrality proposal today, and we’ve all come out the losers.

I will admit to having been distracted of late. Between Christmas, work, the excitement over the repeal of DADT, the new tax deal, and my personal life, I pretty much forgot that this was coming up. And frankly, it depresses me, so I won’t be offering much commentary.

From Raw Story,

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), who has championed “Net Neutrality” in the past, said the FCC’s proposed rules would actually “destroy” the principle of “Net Neutrality.”

[. . .]

But the plan would also allow for a greater fractioning of the Internet and data rationing on mobile and wired networks, according to analysis of the policies. Major network stakeholders like Verizon and AT&T would be able to sell bandwidth in capped tiers, with overage charges for users who download too much information, and certain types of data traffic like peer-to-peer file transfers could be banned altogether.

Raw Story

I can’t exactly claim to have my fingertips on the pulse of the nation. I don’t travel, and I live in one of the reddest states in the union, meaning that for the sake of my own sanity I try not to draw too many political conclusions from what people around here think. I don’t even have cable anymore because I can’t afford it, so I usually miss the news, too. All I really know is what I read, and I’ll admit that probably means that my knowledge is pretty limited these days. Still, certain themes have become pervasive enough on the national scene that even I would have trouble missing out on them. One trend it would be all but impossible to miss is the general dissatisfaction voters seem to feel with both Obama and Democrats in general, and in the wake of that, the growing number of pundits, reporters, columnists, and average Joe’s (the plumber?) prophesying doom for the Democratic Party this November. We already know that incumbents are at a disadvantage this fall, but if perception is reality, then many Democratic candidates may be kind of… well, flat out screwed.

So just for the fun of it, let’s have a look at some numbers, some facts, and how we got here.

Good news for the LGBT community. Traditionally, many gays and lesbians who choose to have/adopt children have not had the option of taking long leaves from work to care for them. While the Family and Medical Leave Act — which allows workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave annually to care for loved ones or themselves, and has been applied to heterosexual adoptions — has been in place since 1993, these protections have not previously extended to gay and lesbian couples seeking to start families. Now the Obama administration is changing that, based on a new interpretation of the law.

I think nowadays most informed people realize that privacy on the Internet is an illusion. There is no real secrecy in cyberspace, and if you live in the States — unless you are born of a jackal, raised by wolves, and currently residing in a hut somewhere in the woods of Arkansas and have never so much as seen a light bulb or a sharp stick — then records of your existence are somewhere online. Your information may not be easily accessible to the public, but with enough money, diligence, and tech savvy, someone out there can find you. You can only hope that you either aren’t worth the trouble, or that no one with the means and determination to find you intends you any harm. And to some extent, that was true even before we were all linked together on this vast series of tubes. But there’s no disputing that it’s a whole lot easier to find people than it once was.  

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has successfully reenergized many among the disillusioned Left, declaring that health care reform is not in fact dead, as some of the more cynical voices among us may have come to fear. At this point, the confusion over what’s going on with HCR has become thoroughly discouraging to many who have spent the last few months (or years) championing the cause. The debate became muddled early on in the midst of GOP outrage and hysteria, and as the process progressed, the Left split along ideological lines. We were having enough trouble when we were largely united, and the growing number of divisions have simply confused the issue further.

And though I personally am fond of the president, I still feel that his lack of leadership on health care has been damaging in the long run, and possibly his largest failing thus far. Mixed and ambiguous messages from the administration about key components of the package like the public option only helped to muddy the debate. The lack of vocal support for progressives in Congress and the eagerness to praise disappointing compromises with conservadems has frustrated the liberal and progressive blogosphere to no end, and understandably so. Some among us, myself included, still believe that the better path to HCR would have been an initial push toward single payer, gradually adjusting and making concessions until we worked our way down to a strong public option, which would then have been seen as the marginal compromise that it really is, rather than the socialist government takeover of health care that the Right likes to pretend it would be.

Then again, hindsight is always 20/20, and if we really wanted a president who would push for single payer to begin with, we should have all voted for Dennis in 2008, now shouldn’t we?

According to Congressional Quarterly, in terms of winning Congressional votes on issues he took a stand on, Obama had the most successful Presidential first year in generations (based upon more than five decades of CQ keeping records).

“His success was 96.7 percent on all the votes where we said he had a clear position in both the House and the Senate. That’s an extraordinary number,” Cranford says.

The previous high scores were held by Lyndon Johnson in 1965, with 93 percent, and Dwight Eisenhower, who scored 89 percent in 1953. Cranford notes that George W. Bush’s score hit the high 80s in 2001, the year of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. But Obama surpassed them all, Cranford says.

NPR

While the road gets tougher moving forward (due to members of Congress preparing for their own campaigns/re-election efforts in the 2010 mid-terms and the likely subsequent loss of seats in both House and Senate), Obama has made his first year historic by yet another measure.

President Barack Obama faced a unique challenge in Oslo this week as he delivered his Nobel Peace Prize speech after ordering the deployment of an additional 30,000 troops into the Afghanistan conflict. Commander in Chief in the midst of two wars, Obama described the war in Afghanistan as “just” and acknowledged the need for military force in the face of violent conflict.

“In a ceremony at Oslo City Hall, Mr. Obama was formally welcomed into the ranks of Nobel laureates

who have won the prize, which was established 108 years ago. He said he accepted the award with

‘deep gratitude and great humility.'”

* All captions quoted from the New York Times, photo credit to Doug Mills.

I have waited to write this diary because I knew I needed to cool off. The health care debate has been a rollercoaster for months now, and the up-down-left-right topsy-turvy nature of the whole ordeal has been turning my stomach for a long time. Over the months, we’ve been bombarded with a dazzling and dizzying array of mixed messages. I’ve allowed myself, at times, to become as hysterical as the worst alarmists in the blogosphere, and just yesterday morning, I was ready to get up in front of all of you to curse Reid, condemn Obama, and prophesy doom. (Not my finest moment, admittedly.) But as I examine and reexamine the dialogue on this issue, my moods and thoughts are as wildly mercurial as the volatile health care debate itself. I have been torn and troubled all along, but the latest news from the Hill has me more perplexed and conflicted than ever. More mixed messages, more obstruction, more disputes — more infighting, alarm, compromises, concessions: A sea of contradictions, contravention, and confusion, well-poised to overwhelm and unravel even the steadiest among us.

So how do we navigate these roiling waters?  

I have probably watched more Fox “News” than any regular here on The Moose. In fact, I’d wager I have watched more of it than most rank and file Republicans, since I’m much more of a news junky than your average Joe. Growing up in a conservative household, it was pretty hard to escape it. (I have probably listened to more Rush than the rest of you, too, for that matter.) I have always enjoyed my parents — despite their unfortunate political leanings, they are smart, funny, cool people in most respects — and since they watched Fixed News in the den, I spent a lot of time viewing it as well, simply because it was a way of spending time with them and discussing the day’s events.

Really, it’s everyone’s issue: The health care crisis in this country affects all of us, even those fortunate enough to have coverage. But when it comes to health care and dealing with insurance companies, there are special concerns for women, especially if they are buying insurance through the individual market. Some of those concerns vary by state, making them all the more confusing, and unfortunately, a lot of women are unaware of these issues until they run into difficulties. Federal laws provide certain protections for women who receive insurance through their employers, but women purchasing insurance through the individual market face unique problems. They face institutionalized sexism in the form of higher costs, shoddy plans riddled through with gender-based exceptions, and denial of coverage based on a “preexisting condition” that may surprise some of you.