President Bill Clinton delivered the opening keynote address in the Keystone State last night at Netroots Nation. It wasn’t as much a rousing barn burner as it was a frank come-to-Jesus, a bit defensive about his own record on hot button issues like health care reform and gays in the military, but absolutely blunt in telling the audience that we need to provide more support to President Obama than we did to Clinton if we expect real change.
If there’s a break in my day, perhaps I’ll post some audio and video clips. Perhaps.
Today is an absolutely jam packed agenda, starting with a health care reform town hall with Gov. Howard Dean, followed by the much anticipated Pennsylvania US Senate race face-off between Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak, and newly-Democratic incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter, who’s gotta be given credit for stepping into the lion’s den.
Then I’ll be going to the state blogger caucus where I plan to bitch loudly about the dearth of panels aimed at state bloggers (by far the largest contingent of attendees), before heading off to an energy policy forum featuring Washington state’s own Denis Hayes and Rep. Jay Inslee.
After that… I dunno… maybe a nap?
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Bill was wearing an orange tie. As in the Great Orange Satan.
Symbolism is meaningful.
Hey Goldy,
We on for dinner Saturday evening? I’m over at the Sheraton Station Square across the river from the convention center. I leave Sunday.
Where are you staying?
Wouldn’t it be fun to sit down and compare notes?
Let me know…
The Piper
Between NAFTA, ending welfare, militarizing the drug war, illegally expanding the role of NATO, continuing programs like ‘star wars’ what did Clinton do for ‘us’ ie those on the left side of the spectrum?
Rowdy Roddy doesn’t know his Pittsburgh geography.
Station Square is across the Mon from the Golden Triangle, while we’re looking at PNC Park across the Allegheny.
Yeah, I heard that a few of you teabagger jag-offs were shadowing the real action again this year. I’m sure it’s just an “accident” that some of you dead-enders are here, just as they “happened” to meet in some Motel 6 in Austin last year.
N in S
My oh my…as Obama plummets in the polls
The paranoia explodes!
Friday, August 14, 2009
@5…NinS….
Whatever…
My offer to Goldy still stands – you can eat at the mission soup kitchen.
As for me – I’m havin’ a great time.
The Piper
Gee I’m disappointed that the Pooper isn’t screaming at a townhall in his home state at the command of some outfit funded by Koch…
Must be on the orders of another billionaire trying to “conserve” the status quo..
You mean like how your democrat rulers won’t be using the same heatlhcare they want you to use instead of their gold-plated healthcare paid for by your tax dollars.
Status quo for your democrat rulers.
@1 Specter was one of the very few credible leaders the GOP had left and you’re celebrating his potential defeat? Of course, because you fools weren’t smart enough to keep him in your party while you still had the chance. The GOP is hell-bent on making itself untenable and irrelevant as fast as possible! Rally ’round Bailin’ Palin, little boys; the Pied Piperess will lead your party to political oblivion!
@6 If your numbers are correct, and that’s debatable, it merely proves that propaganda works. Goebbels is laughing in his grave.
@9 Of course, all the Republican lawmakers don’t go that generous congressional health care trough that Democrats feed at because they’re all trudging up Capitol Hill to Group Health along with the rest of us, right Marvie baby?
You are so fucking fun-neeee …
Piper… I’ll have to pass. Not much time in my schedule Saturday, but I’d be happy to get together in Seattle. In fact, you should stop by DL sometime and meet the whole gang. Ask Puddy… we don’t bite.
No, but you suck.
Heh. So Stamnster – what say you about the “free health care” just doled out at the Inglewood Forum?
Ever play the Forum?
Only in America, right? The greatest country in world. I believe it. You gotta be proud of such a country whose “free market” based health care system (that the whole world is just dying to emulate) produces such positive healthcare outcomes.
Clinton (Bill) has some nerve. Hard to know who the (we) Goldy is referring to is – the blogosphere didn’t exist in ClintonTime – but the biggest online progressive advocacy group in the country, MoveOn, got its start sticking up for him when he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.
If he means progressives should have abandoned our principles so that we could cheerlead his policy provisions, he made that impossible. “Triangulation” by definition meant he was going to ignore whatever his base wanted except as a guidepost for what to compromise from. If we’d backed policies like NAFTA or welfare reform, he would have simply given away more of the store. So why shouldn’t we have demanded what we actually wanted?
BO’s situation is actually quite different. Aside from having more D’s in Congress now, he also shows signs of having actual views of his own. Those, unfortunately, are mostly on the more conservative, corporatist side of his party (c.f. last week’s deal with Billy Tauzin to preserve the ban on the govt’s negotiating for better prescription drug prices). But the political moment and players are very different. Leave it to Bill to make it about him.
Geov,
Thanks for a succinct reminder of how I think about the Clinton years.
If I was there, I’d grill Joe Sestak on his thoughts about the thorium fuel cycle and liquid flouride thorium molten salt reactors.
My nerdy, all too technical, silver bullet for our energy and climate problems.
Which of course is why it’s highly unlikely it stands a chance of taking its rightful place in the solutions (or non-solutions) mix as it were.
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Your obsessive homoerotic KenStarr Clintophobia fixation has got to stop, Geov. We and MoveOn have MovedOn. Why can’t you?
Firedoglake uploaded the Clinton speech:
http://www.youtube.com/user/fi.....ay/uploads
Search through the uploads for “Bill Clinton”
Clinton’s remarks on health care were quite valuable (they’re in part 4):
We spend 16 percent of GDP on health care. Canada spends 11. Other countries like Japan, Europe, UK spend even less. They cover 100 percent of their people and we cover what? And then of those who are covered, how well are they covered? All I know is that when people get sick the eventual outcomes are often ugly: personal bankruptcies, overfull emergency rooms, even deaths.
The difference makes our economy less competitive and if not dealt with will put us into an even greater world of hurt than we’re in now.
Change is difficult because those who stand to lose see clearly what they’re going to lose and those who stand to gain are not sure of what they’re going to get.
But change must come if this country is to avoid sinking into becoming even more of a backwater.
Of course they do.
And look how you feel about them.
Yet you give democrats a pass for the same exact thing.
If america should model out healthcare after those in europe, shouldn’t we also drill for our own oil and use nuclear energy like they do?
23 – With sufficient adoption of the thorium fuel cycle, there will be little need to use any fossil fuel ever again.
And it could certainly bridge the way to some dark horse fusion approaches out there (definitely not ITER) that would not only fuel civilization and prosperity indefinitely but allow us to live and explore the extensive real estate outside the bounds of our atmosphere.
Anywhere you look, there’s plenty of thorium, hydrogen and boron. Uranium too, but we should leave that alone.
All it takes is some will on the part of people to forgo the greed and selfishness of some for something that will benefit all of humanity.
@23 Yeah, maybe so. Maybe in the same vein we should make a massive investment in public transit, prohibit forced overtime and mandate vacations, and make sure nobody spends their retirement eating dog food.
Then again another technical way is conceivable.
An obscure company in Texas is trying to build the best way ever to store electrical energy.
A super-super-capacitor.
The CEO recently said this technology truly enables wind and solar. Just store it up for when you need it. The wind is always blowing somewhere, sometime. The sun is always shining somewhere, sometime.
I’m crossing my fingers for that one too. If it’s for real it changes EVERYTHING as powerfully as anything out there and in a much shorter time frame than the sea change in the nuclear status quo that I mention above.
Income inequality is higher than it has EVER been in America, higher even than the previous peak in 1928. The top .001 percent of American earners took home 6 percent of total U.S. wages, a figure that has nearly doubled since 2000. As of 2007, the top decile (10%) of American earners, Saez writes, pulled in 49.7%of total wages, a level that’s higher than any other year since 1917 and even surpasses 1928, the peak of stock market bubble in the Roaring 1920s.
Here’s the version of the study for non-Economics PhDs (PDF)
Isn’t it funny how the conservatives are accusing Barack Obama of producing staged events? I remember that Bush had somje pretty hokey stuff, but we didn’t start accusing him of holding staged events until, you know, we found out that he was holding staged events.
Serving turkey to the troops? Staged. The turkey was a fake that they were using as a centerpiece until the president’s advance men commandeered it. The Mission Accomplished speech? They only held up an aircraft carrier offshore and kept the sailors form getting home from Iraq for an additional day so that they could turn it for the photo/video shoot of Captain Codpiece being flown onto the deck of the carrier (as if here were flying it himself!) before giving a speech in front of the banner that his men made but denied making. Then there was “public” meeting after “public” meeting of pre-screened Republicans who had to sign a loyalty oath before being admitted.
Hey, speech is free, but admit that you have no evidence whatsoever of staging for this president.
Oddly, I don’t have a problem with that. I think we SHOULD be as energy self reliant as possible, and if it takes Nuclear to do that, so be it. You give me single payer health care and lets build 21th century tech SAFE(er) nuke power plants. Fair?
Again in the “has anyone noticed” category, have you been hearing a lot of “no cap and trade” or “nop cap and tax” being screamed at the so-called “health care reform” town halls and rallies?
It’s not a coincidence. America’s energy companies, figuring that the health insurers were onto a goood thing with the old “fund and guide crazy ordinary citizens (with a goodly number of industry employees among them) into being your sockpuppets” scam. So they’re imitating it.
A memo from the American Petroleum Institute was obtained by Greenpeace, and they’re not denying authorship.
The memo,signed by API president Jack Gerard, outlines a plan to create astroturf rallies at which industry employees posing as “citizens” will urge Congress to oppose climate change legislation. The memo also warns: “Please treat this information as sensitive … we don’t want critics to know our game plan.”
The memo urges oil companies to recruit their employees (there’s no possibility of an impression of coercion, right?) for events that will “put a human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy.” The campaign is being funded by a coalition of corporate and conservative groups that includes the anti-health-care-reform group 60 Plus, FreedomWorks, and Grover Norquist’s Americans For Tax Reform.
@14 Not me. I don’t suck. All I do is straightaway fucking because I’m on a mission from the Great Mother Rabbit Spirit to populate the planet with as many rabbits as possible. Want to suck a rabbit dick? For a good time, call 1-900-SUCK-ROG. All proceeds go to the Help Roger Rabbit Live Like A Republican Fund.
@18 Does it work? Seems to me that’s the question. Personally, I think He3 is sexier, but I doubt it works.
@22 What health care the congress critters get makes a terrific sound bite but is pretty damned irrelevant to the health care debate.
(In any case, why are you surprised that powerful people earning six figures have a better insurance plan than a retired rabbit paying premiums out of his own pocket for the Group Health Value Plan? Yeah, I expect my premiums, copays, and deductibles are more than theirs. I’m a nobody, and they’re somebodies, and that’s how things work in this world.)
Frankly, I don’t give a shit what my congressman’s health plan is. I think we should be discussing what the health plan is for the 300 million of us who aren’t CEOs or congressmen.
@23 We’ve been drilling our own oil for 150 years, idiot. We have 5% of the world’s oil reserves and consume 25% of the world’s oil production. Are your math skills good enough to calculate what that means in terms of having to import oil?
@27 Well they’d better spend it because the other 90% of us don’t have any money and therefore aren’t going to spend any money to get the economy going again.
Of course, if these rich folks want to pay me $75 for the Harley Davidson stock I bought for $15 two months ago, I’ll be happy to help them spend their money …
@13…Goldy…
I weep…
Geov has invited me to DL umpteen times, and one day I’ll take him up on it.
I know you don’t bite – we do.
BTW…you still have an outstanding invitation from me to be my Facebook friend. Maybe if you accept then I can convince that grumpy ol’ Ivan Weiss to be my friend. Diversity is a wonderful thing!
The Piper
32 – I believe years of research in the 60 and 70’s at Oak Ridge National Labs definitely showed it could work. Some research these days is being carried on in Russia, France and the Czech Republic – mostly as a way to burn hazardous nuclear waste from current pressurized nuclear power reactors. India is planning to fuel their country with Thorium because they have so much of it and very little uranium but they are going about it in a needlessly difficult way.
Thorium fuel cycle lost out because it’s a lousy way to produce stuff for nuclear bombs. So politics dictated the uranium fuel cycle path.
By the way Joe Sestak inserted an amendment to the budget mandating the Navy to study the thorium fuel cycle for the nuclear navy. Other politicians like Orrin Hatch and some Senator from either Idaho or Wyoming where there are thorium reserves have also expressed interest.
what did you delete at 1? i want to hear what people have to say.
The Thorium fuel cycle is superior in practice than the Uranium fuel cycle for a number of reasons. The MSR is only one approach to using Thorium in commercial power production. Pebble bed reactors have been tried and produced power in this country for a few years. The Chinese have apparently gotten the kinks out of the German design and are intending on mass producing them. Like the MSR, this is a safe and high temperature reactor capable of making cheap hydrogen and efficiently desalinating water while also producing electricity. Uranium reactors cannot achieve this as easily. There is also a fuel design produced by Thorium Power Ltd that uses Thorium in a light water breeder design capable of being dropped into existing reactors. This fuel has higher burn up than Uranium and is proliferation resistant. Like all Thorium based fuel, it produces markedly less long term radioactive waste to be dealt with on the back end of the fuel cycle, about 1/10th in this case. This may seem nerdy, but nerdy is what builds the future, so deal with it.