Source: standwithdrdean.com

Health Care Reform and the Public Option

“People like Tester and Warner had a lot of netroots support in their campaigns, so we hope they would vote in favor of the people who helped get them elected.”

- Mary Rickles, a spokeswoman for Democracy for America, which has formed an alliance with The alliance with OpenLeft.com and Health Care for America Now to pressure Democratic senators to declare their support for a “public option.” A website inspired by PBC Chairman Gov. Howard Dean is keeping a running tally of where Democratic senators stand.

* Related Title: Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform by Howard Dean with Igor Volsky and Faiz Shakir

CIA Detainee Abuse Investigation

“As attorney general, my duty is to examine the facts and to follow the law. In this case, given all of the information currently available, it is clear to me that this review is the only responsible course of action for me to take.”

- Attorney General Eric Holder, who has appointed a prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA interrogation abuses, including episodes that resulted in prisoner deaths.

* Related Title: The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer

Afghan Elections

“If the widespread rigging is ignored this is the type of regime that will be imposed upon Afghanistan for the next five years, and with that sort of a system, a system that has destroyed every institution, broken every law.”

- Abdullah Abdullah, the top challenger to President Hamid Karzai in last week’s Afghan presidential election. With 10 percent of ballots counted, Karzai has a slight edge, but Abdullah has alleged that massive fraud has been carried out in favor of the president.

* Related Title: The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power by David E. Sanger

Fed Chair Bernanke Nominated for Second Term

“I’m sure Ben never imagined that he would be part of a team responsible for preventing another [Great Depression]. But because of his background, his temperament, his courage, and his creativity, that’s exactly what he has helped to achieve.”

- President Obama announcing his nomination of Ben Bernanke to a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve.

* Related Title: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahmad

Climate Change and Heat Waves

“This report does a nice job of laying out the risks and steps we can take in the face of changing climate. Every heat death is preventable.”

- Michael McGeehin, an environmental hazards expert with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, commenting on a new report sponsored by medical, environmental and civil rights organizations, which finds that the nation is headed for strong heat waves in coming decades that will hit cities and farmers and threaten wildlife with extinction.

* Related Title: The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems by Van Jones

Healthcare Reform

“I was going to do this no matter what—whether I was in the administration or out of the administration.”

- Gov. Howard Dean, physician, former Democratic National Committee chairman, and chairman of Progressive Book Club, on his nationwide tour for health care reform. Dean has been pressing Democrats in the House and Senate to pass a health-care overhaul–including a “public option”– without Republicans, arguing that bipartisanship is unnecessary and unattainable.

*Related Title: Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform: How We Can Achieve Affordable Medical Care for Every American and Make Our Jobs Safer, by Howard Dean, with Igor Volsky and Faiz Shakir

War in Afghanistan

“It is serious and it is deteriorating.”

- Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,  regarding Afghanistan’s worsening security situation on CNN’s “State of the Union” program yesterday. President Obama has made fighting a resurgent Islamist Taliban movement in Afghanistan a top priority of his administration.

*Related Title: The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power, by David E. Sanger

Cash for Clunkers

“We kind of dragged our feet. Then we heard it was closing and we picked up our feet and ran.”

- Annette Palmer, 51, at Town and Country Honda in Berlin, Vt., on Saturday as the government’s Cash for Clunkers program ends at 8 p.m. EDT Monday, two weeks earlier than expected. As of early Friday, nearly half a million cars had been sold through the program.

*Related Title: The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems, by Van Jones

CIA Interrogations

“Decisions on whether or not to pursue action in court were made after careful consideration by career prosecutors at the Justice Department. The C.I.A. itself brought these matters — facts and allegations alike — to the department’s attention.”

- Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman, on the Justice Department’s recommendation reversing the Bush administration and reopening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases. He noted that that the recommendation had not been sent to the intelligence agency.

*Related Title: The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, by Jane Mayer

Lockerbie Bomber

“Clearly the prime minister recognizes this was a very difficult decision, and was clearly an extremely sensitive one, and there will be very strong feelings from the families of those people who were victims of this terrorist attack.”

- A spokesman for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, on Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill’s decision to allow the release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, back to Libya on “compassionate” grounds.

*Related Title: The Infernal Machine: A History of Terrorism, by Matthew Carr

Homeland Security

“After that episode, I knew I had to follow through with my plans to leave the federal government for the private sector.”

- Former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, the first director of the Department of Homeland Security, says in a new book that he was pressured by other agency heads to raise the terrorism threat level on the eve of the 2004 presidential election. (He resisted.)

*Related Title: Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them, by John E. Mueller

Healthcare Reform

“Tonight was a productive conversation — we discussed our progress and remain committed to continuing our path toward a bipartisan health care reform bill.”

- Sen. Max Baucus, one of the so-called Gang of Six — three Democrats and three Republicans — on the Senate Finance Committee. The statement comes as Democrats consider abandoning efforts to forge bipartisan support for healthcare reform legislation and passing a bill over Republican opposition.

*Related Title: Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform: How We Can Achieve Affordable Medical Care for Every American and Make Our Jobs Safer, by Howard Dean, with Igor Volsky and Faiz Shakir

The Housing Crisis

“No matter what you send in, or where, it just disappears.”

- Stan Hurwitz, a 58-year-old California man who along with his wife enjoyed good credit and good salaries before both lost their jobs in the current recession. Rising unemployment is causing more Americans to fall behind on their house payments, triggering a new round of foreclosures.

*Related Title: Our Lot: How Real Estate Came to Own Us, by Alyssa Katz

Afghanistan

“Everything is closed. Right now, I am hiding in my house. There are rockets and explosions outside.”

- Roshanak Wardak, an Afghan lawmaker in the southern province of Wardak. Taliban attacks claimed 26 lives on election day Thursday amid reports of low turnout and fraud.

*Related Title: The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power, by David E. Sanger

The Privatization of Intelligence

“There are skills we don’t have in government that we may have an immediate requirement for.”

- Former CIA chief Gen. Michael V. Hayden, speaking at a panel on the privatization of intelligence on Thursday. The New York Times is reporting that the company formerly known as Blackwater has been contracted to put bombs on unmanned drones used to kill Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

*Related Title: Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army,  by Jeremy Scahill

It’s wrong to think this counterterrorism program was confined to briefing slides or doodles on a cafeteria napkin. It went well beyond that.”

- A government official quoted by the New York Times, which today reports that the CIA in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda. The House Intelligence Committee is investigating why lawmakers were never told about the program.

* Related Titles: The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer; Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army by Jeremy Scahill

“It’s fair to say the steam is going out of these bipartisan negotiations.”

- A Democratic congressional aide quoted in the Wall Street Journal. Reports suggest that Democrats are giving up on getting Republican support for their health care reform plans and considering breaking the legislation into two parts, passing the most expensive provisions solely with Democratic votes.

* Related Title: Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform by Howard Dean, MD with Igor Volsky, Faiz Shakir

“I’ve seen so much war. It’s my whole life. I don’t know anything else. Why would I be afraid now?”

Mohammed Yosin, an Afghan man living in Kabul. There has been a wave of insurgent attacks and threats in advance of today’s presidential election.

* Related Title: The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power by David E. Sanger

“It is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated.”

- Rep. Barney Frank lashing out at protester at a town hall meeting on federal health care reform at a senior center in southeastern Massachusetts. The protester, a woman, was brandishing a poster depicting President Barack Obama with a Hitler-style mustache.

* Related Title: The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right by David Neiwert

“Last year, more humanitarian workers were kidnapped, seriously injured or killed during violent attacks than ever before. This is unacceptable.”

- UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon paid tribute yesterday to the growing number of aid workers who are being killed each year, on the first World Humanitarian Day. The United Nations says 260 humanitarian aid workers were killed, abducted or harmed in attacks in 2008.

* Related Title: Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World by Samantha Power

Healthcare Reform

“The Republican leadership has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama’s health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day.”

-Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff. Democrats now say they see little chance of Republican cooperation on healthcare reform, and are focusing on generating support on their own side.

*Related Title: Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform: How We Can Achieve Affordable Medical Care for Every American and Make Our Jobs Safer, by Howard Dean, with Igor Volsky and Faiz Shakir

Afghan Elections

“The empty bags he brought with him have already been filled. It will take a long time for new people to fill their bags of money.”

-Khaiyal Wali, a 27-year-old Afghan, referring to Afghan President Hamid Karzai. He says he’ll vote for Karzai in this week’s presidential election.

*Related Title: The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power, by David E. Sanger

Robert Novak

“There was almost nothing you could embarrass him with. You’d say, ‘Bob, do you want people in the gutters here like in Calcutta?’ And he’d say, ‘If they’re not working, that’s what happens in a capitalist society.’ “

-Margaret Carlson, who tangled with her friend Robert Novak for years on CNN. Novak died yesterday.

*Related Title: Right Is Wrong, by Arianna Huffington

Climate Legislation

“It’s just a sense of outrage and disappointment with the bill passed by the House. If we all drove in cars, it wouldn’t look good.”

-James T. Hackett, a petroleum executive who attended a lunchtime rally in Houston Texas yesterday. Many attendees came to the rally in buses paid for by an oil industry group. The rally was one of about 20 planned for Southern and oil-producing states, and backed by the oil industry, to organize resistance to climate legislation.

*Related Title: The Tyranny of Oil, by Antonia Juhasz

Conservative Online Activism

“When I saw what they were doing a few years ago I thought, ‘They’re building a sense of community, those sons of a gun.”

-Timothy Phillips, GOP strategist from South Carolina who leads Americans for Prosperity, a conservative organization seeking to emulate the success of the liberal netroots.

*Related Title: Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press, by Eric Boehlert

Defense Spending

“It’s inexcusable. It’s an affront to the American people and to our troops. And it’s time for it to stop.”

- President Obama criticizing the defense industry and Congress yesterday for wasting tax dollars on weapons and strategies better suited to Cold War-era conflict than to today’s wars.

* Related Title: The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America, by Robert Scheer

Health Reform

“We are a testament to the success of a health care cooperative. But it took us over 30 years to get where we are today.”

- Larry J. Zanoni, executive director of the Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin. Health care cooperatives could inject competition in some insurance markets around the country, economists and health policy experts said. But they would need time to buy sophisticated information technology and to negotiate contracts with doctors, hospitals and other health care providers.

* Related Title: Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform, with Igor Volsky and Faiz Shakir

The War in Afghanistan

“The insurgency in Afghanistan didn’t just happen overnight and we won’t defeat it overnight.”

- President Obama, speaking to an audience of military veterans in Phoenix. AZ.

* Related Title: The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power, by David E. Sanger

Immigration

“Today’s announcement confirms our very worst fears. [The US government's detention system for illegal immigrants is] devoid of transparency and accountability.”

- David Shapiro, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. Immigration officials said Monday they discovered records of 10 previously unreported deaths of detainees in government custody.

* Related Title: The Accidental American: Immigration and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization, by Rinku Sen and Fekkak Mamdouh

Mubarak in Washington

“The trip is symbolic of the rewarming of a relationship that underwent a lot of tension during President Bush’s time in office.”

- Tamara Cofman Wittes, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution think-tank in Washington, commenting on Egyptian President/Autocrat Mubarak’s visit to Washington.

* Related Title: Engaging the Muslim World, by Juan Cole

Healthcare Reform and the Public Option

“I don’t think it can pass without the public option. There are too many people who understand, including the president himself, the public option is absolutely linked to reform. You can’t have reform without a public option. If you really want to fix the health-care system, you’ve got to give the public the choice.”

-Gov. Howard Dean, “The Early Show” on CBS, responding to news reports that the White House is backing away from a “public option” for buying health insurance. Health secretary Kathleen Sebelius yesterday said the public option was “not the essential element” in healthcare reform.

“Ultimately, if the president decides that he’s going to go with a reform effort that doesn’t include a public option, what he will have done is spent a ton of political capital, riled up an incredibly angry right wing base who’s been told that this is a plot to kill grandma, grandma, and he will have achieved something that doesn’t change health care very much and that doesn’t save us very much money and won’t do very much for the American people.  It’s not a very good thing to spend a lot of political capital on.”

-Rachel Maddow, on Meet the Press, responding to same.

*Related Title: Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform: How We Can Achieve Affordable Medical Care for Every American and Make Our Jobs Safer, by Howard Dean, with Igor Volsky and Faiz Shakir

Afghan Elections

“We can’t vote. Everybody knows it. We are farmers, and we cannot do a thing against the Taliban.”

-Hakmatullah, an Afghan farmer. Across eastern and southern Afghanistan, where Taliban insurgents control many villages, people are being warned against voting in Thursday’s presidential election.

*Related Title: The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power, by David E. Sanger

Public Schools

“Schools are really getting that they can’t just expect students to show up any more. They have to go out and recruit.”

-Lisa Relou, who directs marketing efforts for the Denver Public Schools. Public schools are increasingly deploying marketing professional marketing techniques — think: infomercials, direct mail, “rebranding” — to to win back students fleeing to charter schools, private schools and suburban districts.

*Related Title: Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade, by Linda Perlstein

Climate Legislation

“There is a lot of wishful thinking on the part of some senators. They want to do what is easy, not what is needed.”

-Daniel Weiss, an energy and climate specialist for the Center for American Progress. Four Democratic senators are saying that the Senate should strip legislation of provisions curbing greenhouse-gas emissions this year and concentrate on a narrower bill to require use of renewable energy.

*Related Title: The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems, by Van Jones

Photo: AP Images

Healthcare Debate

“I guess what surprised me is the ferocity, it’s much stronger than I expected; It’s people who are ideologically opposed to Mr. Obama, and this is the opportunity to weaken the president.”

-John Rother, the executive vice president of AARP, which is supportive of the health care proposals and has repeatedly declared the “death panel” rumors false.

*Related Title: Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform: How We Can Achieve Affordable Medical Care for Every American and Make Our Jobs Safer, by Howard Dean, with Igor Volsky and Faiz Shakir

Education

“If there’s anything Americans should be mature enough about to have a decent conversation, it’s the education of their children.”

-Rev. Al Sharpton, liberal Democrat and community activist, who is working alongside unlikely ally and Republican former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to promote Obama’s school reforms.

*Related Title: Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade, by Linda Perlstein

Afghanistan

“I think some administration officials realized that by being so openly critical of Karzai, they faced the risk that they could get a Karzai who was not only reelected but was hostile to the U.S. because of how he had been treated.”

- Zalmay Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, commenting on Afghan President Hamil Karzai, who is favored to win the August 20th presidential election. The Obama administration says it is “actively impartial” in the vote.

*Related Title: The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power, by David E. Sanger

New Era of Progressive Politics

“We have entered a new era of progressive politics which, if we do it right, can last 30 or 40 years. America has rapidly moved to another place on a lot of these issues. The president needs your help. And the cause needs your help.”

-Former President Bill Clinton speaking at the Netroots Nation conference in Pittsburg, PA.

*Related Title: The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, by Michael Lux

The Financial Crisis

“We don’t know whether these numbers are going to hold out in the long run, but they do seem to indicate that we’re reaching a bottom a lot sooner than we thought. It looks like the worst might be over.”

-Raj Badiani, senior economist for IHS Global Insight in London, on fresh signs of modest economic recovery as Germany and France become the first industrial nations to officially pull out of the global recession.

*Related Title: The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, by Paul Krugman
Photo Caption: Former President Bill Clinton addresses the Netroots Nation Convention at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, Pa., Thursday Aug. 13, 2009. (AP Photo/John Beale)

Photo: AP Images

In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him. He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that. The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney’s advice. He’d showed an independence that Cheney didn’t see coming.

- A participant in one of the informal conversations with authors, diplomats, policy experts and past colleagues that former Vice President Dick Cheney is holding to discuss his forthcoming memoir.

* Related Title: The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008, by Bob Woodward

We have heard from both chambers that the House sees a public plan as essential for the final product, and the Senate believes it cannot pass it as constructed and a co-op is what they can do. We are cognizant of that fact.

- White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel commenting on the Senate Finance Committee’s outsized prominence in the health reform debate.

* Related Title: Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform: How We Can Achieve Affordable Medical Care For Every American and Make Our Jobs Safer, with Igor Volsky and Faiz Shakir

It was like taking a senior NCO and telling him he now runs the regiment. It popped people’s eyes.

- A. B. Krongard, the C.I.A.’s executive director from 2001 to 2004. He’s referring to Kyle D. Foggo, who in 2003 oversaw construction of several secret CIA detention centers, each built to house about a half-dozen detainees. In 2004, partly in reward for his work on the prisons, he was named the C.I.A.’s executive director, the third-ranking position at the agency. (Before he had been merely the chief of the agency’s main European supply base.) Foggo is currently serving a three-year sentence in a Kentucky prison for fraud relating to CIA contracts.

* Related Title: The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, by Jane Mayer

I did check into private schools, but there was no way in the world I could afford the $700 a month. Charter was the only other option.

- Wendy Lewis, a 46-year-old single mother on Chicago’s South side. The U.S. Education Department is engaged in a high-pressure campaign to get states to lift limits on charter schools through a $4 billion education fund. Proponents say charter schools offer healthy competition in public-education systems. The data on whether charters are working are mixed, at best.

* Related Title: Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade, by Linda Perlstein

..New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks called these protesters “insane.” Wrong. That diminishes their importance (and lets “mainstream” conservatives off the hook for not denouncing them in the strongest possible terms). … I do not consider this insanity but a calculated statement of values.

- Author Susan Jacoby, referring to protesters at many town hall health reform meetings who have called President Obama a Nazi and even carried posters featuring him with a Hitler mustache.

* Related Title: The Age of American Unreason, by Susan Jacoby

The Bush Attorney General Firings

“He was the dominant voice. The White House involvement began earlier than we had thought, and their input went well beyond what they had stated publicly.”

-Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), a former prosecutor who led the judiciary committee’s questioning of Karl Rove about the firings of US attorneys general. Newly released documents show Bush’s top political aide focused on GOP calls to oust New Mexico’s top U.S. prosecutor.

Related Title: Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy, by Charlie Savage

Scare Tactics and Healthcare Debate

“I am not in favor of them. I just want to clear the air. Let’s disagree over things that are real, not these wild misrepresentations.”

-President Obama, speaking at a town hall meeting on health reform in Portsmouth, N.H., on conservative claims that he supports assembling a “death panel” of experts that would decide whether patients live or die.

Related Title: Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform, by Howard Dean, with Igor Volsky and Faiz Shakir

The Financial Crisis

“We’ve averted the worst, and there are clear signs the stimulus is working.”

-Kenneth Goldstein, an economist at the Conference Board in New York. A Bloomberg News survey shows that the Obama administration’s economic stimulus efforts appear to be paying off.

Related Title: The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, by Paul Krugman

Healthcare Townhalls

“I think it is very hard because [Democrats] don’t have the message machine the Republicans do. The Democrats still believe in Enlightenment reason: If you just tell people the truth, they will come to the right conclusion.”

-George Lakoff, a UC Berkeley linguistics professor who has advised some Democrats on how to sharpen their message, commenting on the wild fallacies being spread by conservative critics of the Obama administration’s health reform efforts.

Related Title: The Political Mind, by George Lakoff

The CIA’s Interrogation Program

“I remember him saying they were preparing people for intense interrogations.”

-Robert J. Madigan, a psychology professor at the University of Alaska who had worked closely with Dr. Jim Mitchell, one of two military retirees and psychologists who found business opportunities working with the Central Intelligence Agency as the architects of the most its interrogation program.

Related Title: The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, by Jane Mayer