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Politics

Dobbs Calls Himself Latinos’ ‘Greatest Friend,’ Denies Tying Leprosy To Undocumented Immigrants

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Nov 20, 2009 at 8:32 pm

Today in an interview with Maria Celeste on Telemundo’s Al Rojo Vivo, ousted CNN anchor Lou Dobbs denied ever erroneously claiming that undocumented immigrants are bringing leprosy to the United States. Instead he attacked Celeste for bringing up reports that he aired on his show in the past. From interview (translated from Spanish):

DOBBS: Let’s be very clear: I did not support that report, in fact we corrected that report. And secondly, in fairness to me, I never said a word about leprosy and undocumented immigrants as you call them. My correspondent on our broadcast ad-libbed…obviously she was wrong. My only declaration in response to that report was one word: “incredible.”

CELESTE: You were also confronted with this erroneous information by Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes and you said that you supported 100% of what you had said on the show, and that you were the managing editor of the program, and in your show, everything that was said was factual….

DOBBS: Maria, in the interest of fairness, would you like to tell your audience how long ago that report was?

CELESTE:That was a few years ago…

DOBBS: No, Maria, that was four years ago…

CELESTE: It doesn’t matter how many years ago, you never retracted…This is your opportunity to clarify that and once and for all put it to rest doing whatever you choose to do — an apology, a retraction — whatever you feel most comfortable with.

Watch it:

Despite the fact that Dobbs did in fact state that “the invasion of illegal aliens is threatening the health of many Americans,” he refused to issue a retraction or apology on Telemundo.

However, Dobbs did tell the Latino community that he is one of its “greatest friends,” and he wants to work with them. He defended himself on the show by explaining that he is not “an enemy of Latinos,” but rather that the far-left has characterized him as such with its propaganda. The CBS website shows the 60 Minutes segment that aired in 2007.

Politics

New Birther Billboard In Colorado Features Picture Of Obama And Asks ‘President Or Jihad?’

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Nov 20, 2009 at 7:08 pm

Today, a new birther billboard went up above Wolf Automotive off I-70 in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. The sign has a picture of President Obama wearing a turban, asking, “President or Jihad?” and exhorting, “Wake up America! Remember Fort Hood”:

Obama Billboard

ThinkProgress spoke with Phil Wolf, the owner of the car dealership. He said that the billboard is his personal project because he believes the American people have a right to know the facts about the president:

I’m probably like a lot of other people that have asked the question, I want to know who our president is. And to date, I don’t think I know, I don’t think a lot of people know, I don’t think it’s ever been asked — answered. [...]

When this Fort Hood massacre occurred, and I saw the response of our Commander in Chief to this unbelievable, politically correct, nonsense — to me it was just enough. And I wanted to bring a little bit more attention to this thing, because to me it just wasn’t getting addressed.

Wolf added that he and the staff at his dealership have been receiving a significant number of death threats in response to the billboard. “I never expected people to threaten to kill us,” he told us. “I never expected people to harm my employees. … I’ve had people leave the office today — they’re terrified.”

Wolf also denied that the billboard is making a “racist comment,” calling such a notion “absolutely hilarious” and pointing out that in the presidential election, he wrote in the name of conservative Alan Keyes.

In the past, Wolf’s billboard has featured other birther designs, as well as regular advertisements for cars. Wolf denied that the billboard has any affiliation with WorldNetDaily, which has sponsored other birther signs around the country.

ProgressNow Colorado has launched a campaign asking people to boycott Wolf’s business.

Health

Why Rush Wyden’s Choices Amendment?

By Igor Volsky on Nov 20, 2009 at 6:40 pm

WydenReidSenate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has agreed to include a watered-down version of Sen. Ron Wyden’s (D-OR) ‘Choices Amendment’ in the merged Senate bill. Wyden, an ubiquitous presence on cable television, has been hawking his idea of instantly opening up the insurance exchanges to Americans in employer-sponsored coverage for months. He introduced the amendment in the Senate Finance Committee just hours before it ended its marathon mark-up session, but withdrew it for later consideration.

Under this compromise, a small sliver of the population — individuals and families under 400% of the federal poverty line who receive employer-sponsored coverage and spend 8-9.8% of their income on premiums — could “convert their tax-free employer health subsidies into vouchers that they can use to choose a health insurance plan in the new health insurance exchanges.” Currently, individuals in employer-based coverage who have to spend more than 9.8% of the incomes on premiums aren’t required to purchase health insurance and don’t quality for affordability credits if they enter an Exchange:

“As I have long said, empowering Americans to choose the health insurance that works best for them and their family is the single best way to hold health insurance companies accountable,” Wyden said in a statement. “While this is just one step in the direction of guaranteeing choices for all Americans, it is a major step because – for the first time – it introduces the concept of individual choice to a marketplace where it has long been foreign. This is a significant step toward real reform.”

The theory of instantly “empowering Americans to choose the health insurance that works best for them” is sweeter than the reality. The merged senate bill establishes a time line that more or less allows everyone to choose a plan from an exchange by 2017. In this way, the legislation builds on the current structure but also sows the seeds for an eventual transition to a more ‘individualistic’ system — or what Wyden calls “real” reform.

This ‘time release’ approach — to borrow a pharmaceutical term — is intentional. Opening the exchanges only to small businesses, individuals and the self-insured for a limited period preserves the employer contribution in the health care system and allows the exchanges to build a capacity for covering more people over time. It helps the Exchanges find their footing without being overrun by millions and millions of new applicants from the employer market. Care continuity is also better preserved.

In short, the existing legislation accomplishes the main goals of Wyden amendment on a more realistic timetable. Wyden was concerned that it didn’t have his name stamped all over it. Now it does.

Yglesias

Endgame

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 20, 2009 at 6:14 pm

Decide what you came here for:

— Feminists should defend Twilight fans . . . or maybe not.

— Even the woeful Knicks won’t touch Allen Iverson but we’re still all assured he’s a great player.

— Senate bill’s employer responsibility provisions are an improvement over Finance Committee draft.

— Higher gas prices alone won’t make cars substantially cleaner.

— Performance parking can fund appealing local amenities as well as improving the availability of parking spots.

— Coal kills.

LoveLikeFire’s refusal to rename themselves “Love Like Fire” annoys me, but I like their songs. Here’s “Stand in My Shoes”.

Security

Support Iran’s Opposition Or Bomb Iran: You Can’t Do Both

By Matt Duss on Nov 20, 2009 at 5:59 pm

Washington Times national security editor Barbara Slavin has an article on Iranian filmmaker and dissident Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who has become a spokesperson for Iran’s Green Movement in the wake of the June 12 elections. Makhmalbaf called upon President Obama to more explicitly support Iran’s opposition movement and more strongly condemn Iranian human rights abuses. He also had some interesting things to say about the prospect of further sanctions:

“Inevitably, you are going to put [new] sanctions on Iran,” Mr. Makhmalbaf told a small group of Iran specialists and journalists in Washington. He said the U.S. should “let the Iranian people know why you are going to sanction and what the targets are so they can support you.”

He rejected proposed U.S. legislation that would target gasoline imports to Iran, saying that would hurt average people. He said it was better to focus on the Revolutionary Guards, who have been at the forefront of repressing demonstrations and who have taken control of considerable elements of the Iranian economy.

You know who also opposes U.S. legislation targeting gasoline imports to Iran? The Iranian regime. For some, this shared interest is quite enough to tar Makhmalbaf as a regime apologist. Those who are genuinely interested in supporting Iran’s opposition — and not just in smoothing the road toward a U.S.-Iran war — understand that this is silly, of course. The Iranian opposition — and its supporters outside the country — include a number of different factions and trends with various end goals and methods of reaching them.

Speaking of smoothing the road toward a U.S.-Iran war, the very same Washington Times also runs an editorial today telling Americans to Get Ready To Bomb Iran:

Force need not be used to be effective, but the threat of force must be credible to have any chance of influencing Iranian behavior. Right now, there is no credible threat emanating from the United States. The Obama administration unambiguously opposes military action against Iran, particularly by Israel. But it would help to have a little ambiguity on this issue. So long as Tehran thinks the United States will work actively to prevent Israel from taking action, it has one less reason to worry. It would be most helpful if the United States began to send signals to Tehran that the United States will assist Israel in its preparations for military action and maybe even participate when the attack ultimately is launched.

If the regime in Tehran is not made to fear serious consequences for its continued intransigence, it has no reason to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

Leaving aside that anyone who talks seriously about bombing Iran has revealed themselves to be no friend of Iran’s opposition — Abbas Milani represents the overwhelming consensus when he writes that “the forces now controlling Iran would be immeasurably strengthened by an American or (especially) Israeli attack” — this shows a pretty serious misapprehension of the situation in Iran right now.

It’s not at all clear that Iran’s ruling hardliners, who are currently weathering the most serious crisis of legitimacy in the Islamic Republic’s history, wouldn’t actually welcome a military strike by either Israel or the U.S. Such a strike, in addition to extinguishing the Green Movement, would effectively end the ongoing debate within the regime over whether to obtain a nuclear weapon in favor of those who have been arguing “yes,” in very much the same way that the preventive U.S. invasion of Iraq convinced Iran’s hardliners that they needed to keep open the option of having a strategic deterrent.

It’s pretty broadly understood across the U.S. defense establishment that a strike on Iran — either by Israel or the U.S. — would very likely result in a number of disastrous consequences, consequences Iran knows that the U.S. would rather avoid. There’s really no credibility to be generated by pretending otherwise.

Yglesias

If You Build It, Will They Maintain It?

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 20, 2009 at 5:30 pm

In its largest reconstruction effort since the Marshall Plan, the United States government has spent $53 billion for relief and reconstruction in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, building tens of thousands of hospitals, water treatment plants, electricity substations, schools and bridges.

But there are growing concerns among American officials that Iraq will not be able to adequately maintain the facilities once the Americans have left, potentially wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and jeopardizing Iraq’s ability to provide basic services to its people.

Oooops!

Spencer Ackerman did an item this morning urging the appointment of General David Petraeus as DC Police Chief, observing that many of the ideas of counterinsurgency strategy are basically in line with a modern progressive “tough on crime, tough on the root causes of crime” approach. I don’t actually think it would make much sense to put a high-ranking general in charge of a police department, but the point the suggestion is meant to illustrate has, I think, a lot of merit. The basic ideas employed in something like a “clear, hold, build” approach to Baghdad are basically a super-charged version of what you would want to do to get serious about bringing improved public safety, economic opportunity, and public health to a bad neighborhood in Washington or Baltimore or Detroit.

Which sort of raises the question of whether it mightn’t make more sense to deploy these kind of resources in troubled parts of our own country. A lot of the things that seem really problematic for COIN—language problems, this issue with the locals actually being too poor to maintain the projects we kick off, etc.—wouldn’t apply in a domestic context.

Security

Michigan Town Rejects Liz Cheney’s ‘Fearmongering’ And Welcomes Guantanamo Detainees

By Zaid Jilani on Nov 20, 2009 at 5:25 pm

Recently, the Liz Cheney-founded right-wing advocacy group Keep America Safe released a mini-documentary that features several residents of Standish, Michigan, speaking out against a possible transfer of detainees from Guantanamo Bay to a prison in the city. The video ominously warns that the transfer would turn the town into “Guantanamo North” and claims that Standish residents are dead set against moving Guantanamo detainees to their city. Watch it:

Yet, as the Plum Line’s Greg Sargent reports, the video poorly represents the views of the residents of Standish. He interviewed Standish City Manager Michael Moran, who dismissed Liz Cheney’s “fearmongering” and said the documentary was “off base“:

Standish’s City Manager tells us that local leaders and residents want the facility, and dismissed Cheney’s efforts as “fearmongering.” Cheney is “certainly not representing the views of our community,” the City Manager, Michael Moran, told our reporter, Amanda Erickson.

While some local residents do appear to have expressed mixed feelings or opposition to the plan, Moran says that they’re an isolated minority that Ms. Cheney’s video elevates out of proportion in a way that’s “off base.”

The truth is, the residents of Standish — like the residents of Thomson, Illinois — aren’t afraid of housing terrorism suspects on U.S. soil. Last month, the Standish City Council voted 6-0 in support of a resolution asking the federal government to relocate Guantanamo prisoners to their city. Moving detainees to the city would help keep their prison facility open, which would guard against “the loss of the 350 jobs provided by the [jail].”

Related Posts

Health

Why Does The Senate Bill Establish Two Separate Exchanges?

By Igor Volsky on Nov 20, 2009 at 5:00 pm

reidtwoOver at FiredogLake, Jon Walker points out that the merged merged Senate bill would “create two exchanges per state. There would be an exchange for individuals and a “Small Business Health Options Program” know as the SHOP exchange for businesses.” “This is, pure and simple, a dumb idea,” he writes. “The more customers using one exchange the larger the risk pool and the better the bargaining power.”

It’s unclear why the Senate separates the individual and small business markets rather than follow the Massachusetts model of combining the two markets. Under the Senate bill, insurers would pool risk for all policies in the individual market (inside and outside of the exchange) and all small business policies (inside and outside of the exchange) but couldn’t combine the risk unless the state voluntarily merges the two markets.

As Sarah Lueck explains, allowing multiple exchanges to participate in the same geographic area would increase administrative costs and “diminish the ability of an exchange to improve efficiency by creating a well-functioning marketplace”:

If there were multiple exchanges in the same area, the exchanges would have to spend money on marketing and advertising in order to attract customers….Also, permitting multiple exchanges in a single area would require a vastly more complex risk-adjustment system. Risk adjustment provides higher payments to insurers enrolling higher-cost beneficiaries, while lowering payments to plans enrolling healthier individuals with lower-than-average costs. In areas with multiple exchanges, the risk-adjustment mechanism would have to compensate for risk differentials across the various exchanges, as well as among the insurers within each exchange. This would make it more difficult to risk-adjust accurately.

One possible reason for the separation, a source suggests, is the reluctance of some insurers operating in the small group market to expand their options to individuals. The may not want to change their business model or cover a potentially sicker crop of newly insured individuals.

The so-called SHOP-exchanges have also been promoted by the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) and championed in the Senate by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Blanche Lincoln (D-AK) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME). But why they’re still necessary in the broader context of health reform is somewhat of a mystery.

SHOP may not make policy sense, but it may help win the support of a few moderate lawmakers.

Yglesias

Michael Jordan Displays Uncharacteristic Classiness, Humility

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 20, 2009 at 4:44 pm

Michael Jordan seems to have been stung by the negative reaction to his horrifying Hall of Fame speech and decided to start showing some class and humility:

If the NBA were to retire Michael Jordan’s No. 23 leaguewide, the newly inducted Hall of Famer says there are several more players just as worthy of the distinction. LeBron James, who wears No. 23 for the Cleveland Cavaliers, said last week he would change jersey numbers next season in honor of Jordan, and said no other players should wear it, either. [...]

“Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Bill Russell all those guys should have their jerseys retired, too,” Jordan said. “I understand his gesture, but I am in the same group as those guys so I wouldn’t want to see my jersey retired unless you retire those guys. It is a compliment. I totally understand that. I appreciate LeBron for doing that and it is very thoughtful.”

Good for him.

Politics

GOP Lawmakers Complain About Revised Mammogram Guidelines While Opposing Requirements For More Tests

By Matt Corley on Nov 20, 2009 at 4:30 pm

On Wednesday, a group of women GOP lawmakers held a press conference to denounce a new recommendation by the federal Preventive Services Task Force that women receive mammograms less frequently. “This is how rationing begins,” said Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). “This is the little toe in the edge of the water.”

“Women in particular may lose a great deal of clout in decision making,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). “We don’t know how far government will go in this bureaucracy,” she added, noting that they “want to empower women” and “want to have all the data on the table so individuals can make the best decision they can.”

On MSNBC this afternoon, Dr. Nancy Snyderman took Blackburn to task for getting the “public health message lost in the politics.” “Now, there’s nothing that came out of this panel recommending rationing,” said Snyderman. “Just a prudent use of screening tests.” When Blackburn tried to claim that the guidelines meant “bureaucrats deciding what they’re going to allow,” Snyderman pointed out that Blackburn was acting as a “bureaucrat” standing between patients and “the best possible evidence”:

BLACKBURN: It is troubling also that another of our colleagues has said many times, we. And that we means bureaucrats deciding what they’re going to allow.

SNYDERMAN: But you’re one of those bureaucrats. You’re my bureaucrat!

BLACKBURN: But I’m not, no. And you see, I don’t think a bureaucrat should be between a patient and a doctor. See, I don’t want to be that bureaucrat.

SNYDERMAN: Excuse me, I think that’s exactly where you are right now.

Watch it:

As the Washington Independent’s Mike Lillis notes, the concern of the congresswomen about rationed mammograms is especially ironic considering that they oppose legislation that “would require insurance companies that cover diagnostic mammograms also to cover routine, annual breast cancer screenings for all women 40 and older.”

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