Avoiding a double disaster

Elections are underway in Canada and the United States, and health care is not high on the political agenda in either country. Yet health care reform could emerge as an important issue following the American presidential vote. A victory for Barack Obama will encourage fans of single-payer health insurance because the Democrats have a majority in Congress and a history of supporting Canadian-style health reforms.

I love the smell of conservative fear.

Via hippachria: 10 Myths About Canadian Health Care, Busted

9. People won’t be responsible for their own health if they’re not being forced to pay for the consequences.  Read more 

The headline:

Iraq Shooting Illustrates Contractors’ Legal Void

The story:

Guards employed by Unity Resources Group, a security company responsible for the shooting deaths of two Iraqi women here Oct. 9, had shot and seriously wounded a man driving a van 3 1/2 months earlier on the same Baghdad thoroughfare, according to four witnesses.

The case demonstrates how security companies such as Unity operate in a lawless void in Iraq, with many shooting incidents escaping official or public scrutiny.

Most of the more than 100 security firms in Iraq work under contracts or subcontracts for government agencies, private companies or individuals, creating layers of responsibility that make oversight difficult. Unity effectively regulates itself: The company reported 38 weapons-discharge incidents while protecting RTI employees over the past two years, according to a source familiar with the data. In each instance, the company conducted its own investigation.

Iraq is a conservative paradise! It’s a laboratory for Conservative social engineering! Entrepreneurs, free of pesky governmental regulations like the rule of law, free to unleash the magic of the marketplace in a war zone! What could go wrong?  Read more 

Whether the Conservative vanguard is pushing forced pregnancy, or torture (or practicing child abuse, or animal abuse), it’s all about consent.

Or the lack thereof.  Read more 

Just asking.  Read more 

Many have commmented on Sara Taylor’s alas, no longer remarkable views on oath-taking, but nobody, so far as I know, has called it out for what it is. Here’s the transcript of Leahy and Taylor’s exchange via Big Orange:

LEAHY: And then you said, I took an oath to the President, and I take that oath very seriously. Did you mean, perhaps, you took an oath to the Constitution?

TAYLOR: Uh, I, uh, yes, you’re correct, I took an oath to the Constitution. Uh, but, what—

LEAHY: Did you take a second oath to the President?

TAYLOR: I did not. I—

LEAHY: So the answer was incorrect.

TAYLOR: The answer was incorrect.

LEAHY: No, the oath says that you take an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States. That is your paramount duty. I know that the President refers to the government being his government — it’s not. It’s the government of the people of America. Your oath is not to uphold the President, nor is mine to uphold the Senate. My oath, like your oath, is to uphold the Constitution.

The idea that a civil servant takes an oath to the Leader has a name, and a history:  Read more 

I kid you not. I know that torture-loving conservatives have a hard time distinguishing fantasy from reality, but this is ridiculous.  Read more 

So much for the idea that the Conservapedia guys are anything but Republican operatives, eh? And so much for the “Neutral Point of View” that Wikipedia uses. I mean, did the Encyclopedia Brittanica endorse Margaret Thatcher?

But actually, I went to Conservapedia, inspired by Xan, to see what the conservative definition of vagina is. Here it is:  Read more 

[I’ve updated this on the flip, since it’s always nice to see one’s theories confirmed in today’s news.]

Not to go all poli-sci on you, but I’d like to suggest that the conservative approach to governance can be summarized in the following equation:

where

Or, in the vulgate:  Read more 

I’m not angry, not at all. ’Cause if I were angry, I wouldn’t be able to use big words. Here’s telling analytical point from Harold Meyerson on conservative autocoprophagia:

American conservatism is a house divided against itself. It applauds the radicalism of the economic changes of the past four decades — the dismantling, say, of the American steel industry (and the job and income security that it once provided) in the cause of greater efficiency. It decries the decline of social and familial stability over that time — the traditional, married working-class families, say, that once filled all those churches in the hills and hollows in what is now the smaller, post-working-class Pittsburgh.

Problem is, disperse a vibrant working-class community in America and you disperse the vibrant working-class family.

Which is how American conservatism became the primary author of the very social disorder that it routinely rails against, and that Republicans have the gall to run against.

So, just to sharpen Meyerson’s point a little:

On the one hand, conservative billionaire capitalists make billions (and we make nothing) by driving down wages toward a subsistence level. (Wasn’t there some 19th Century guy who predicted that?) On the other hand, conservative pundits make millions denouncing what the billionaires caused.

I’d call that a win-win situation! What’s not to like?

Oh, and autocoprophagic?  Read more 

There is a season, spin, spin, spin

And a time for every purpose under heaven

Purposes like helping a man of conservative convictions [DCOW] stay out of jail. It only took The Corner 2 1/2 hours to pump this out, and it shows:

President Bush should pardon I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. The trial that concluded in a guilty verdict on four of five counts conclusively proved only one thing: A White House aide became the target of a politicized prosecution set in motion by bureaucratic infighting and political cowardice.

Sheeeit. Fitz as Ken Starr?  Read more 

Ooooh, nice smack from Josh Marshall on the attempt by conservatives to run away from Bush. Smack some more, Josh. Smack, smack smack:

Balanced budgets and shrinking the size of government hasn’t been part of conservatism — or to be more precise, Movement Conservatism — for going on thirty years. The conservative movement and the Republican party are the movement and party of deficit spending. And neither has any claim to any real association with limited or small government. Just isn’t borne out by any factual record or political agenda. Not in the Reagan presidency, the Bush presidency or the second Bush presidency. The intervening period of fiscal restraint comes under Clinton.  Read more