Photo: AP Images

Healthcare Townhall Mobs

We all had a good sense that some of this was going to take place. To be fair, I think we were probably a little surprised — just a little — at the use of swastikas and the comparisons to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich that even Rush Limbaugh has fanned the flames on. And we were a little surprised at the mob mentality.

– Brad Woodhouse, the communications director for the Democratic National Committee commenting on the orchestrated conservative campaign to disrupt town hall meetings on healthcare reform.

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

Immigration

Am I going to be able to snap my fingers and get this done? No. This is going to be difficult.

– President Obama at a news conference at the Cabañas Cultural Center in downtown Guadalajara, Mexico, said immigration reform is a priority for his administration but won’t happen before 2010.

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

Congo’s Rape Epidemic

To avoid getting raped, after 6 p.m., women are not allowed to go out of the house. With the soldiers here, no woman is.

– Maria Bitondo, a Congolese woman quoted in a New York Times article who said she was among three women attacked by a soldier last month. Congo is in the grip of an epidemic of rape that has worsened since the January deployment of tens of thousands of poorly trained, poorly paid Congolese soldiers. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is visiting eastern Congo today.

Related Title: Say You’re One of Them

Violence in Iraq

They are targeting innocent civilians, Christian churches, mosques, and police. We are encouraged that Iraqis are staying the course, away from sectarianism.

– Army Col. John R. Robinson, a U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, commenting on an uptick in violence there.

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

The Financial Crisis

If the economy worsens…then defaults will rise and the troubled assets will continue to deteriorate in value. If the losses are severe enough, some financial institutions may be forced to cease operations.

– Report from the Congressional Oversight Panel, which keeps tabs on the $700 billion bailout of the financial sector, warning that so-called toxic assets are still a major threat to any recovery. The TARP program has not relieved banks of their troubled loans.

Related Title: The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers and the Great Credit Crash by Charles R. Morris

Photo Caption: A vandalized sign outside the office of Rep. David Scott, D-Ga., is shown Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2009 in Smyrna, Ga. Scott had a contentious community meeting on health care last week. Scott, who is black, said the swastika is the latest example of what he believes is an increasingly hateful and racist debate over reforming health care. The Atlanta lawmaker said he also has received mail in recent days that used N-word references to him, and that characterized President Barack Obama as a Marxist. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

AP Images

Health Reform

These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades.

-Speaker Nancy Pelosi and chief whip Steny Hoyer, in a USA Today editorial, decry an orchestrated conservative campaign to disrupt public meetings on healthcare reform.

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

Afghanistan

This is a period where people are really looking to see which way this is going to go. It’s the critical and decisive moment.

-Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, says the new strategy he is deploying there has to show clear results within a year. Otherwise, he says, support for the war in both U.S. and Afghanistan will evaporate.

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

Organizing for America

[Last year,] Obama’s sexy, he was hot, and everybody wanted a piece of that. Now, people are going to have to work for something that is not quite as slick or sexy.

-Candice Davies, a speech therapist in Cary, N.C., who trained canvassers for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and is trying to organize support for healthcare legislation. Organizing for America, the 13 million-strong grassroots organization that grew out of Obama’s campaign, is having trouble figuring out how to operate, post-election.

Related Title: The Battle for America 2008: The Story of an Extraordinary Election, by Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson

Flu Pandemic

The virus is still around and ready to explode. We’re potentially looking at a very big mess.

-William Schaffner, an influenza expert at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine who advises federal health officials. U.S. and international experts say a new round of influenza could hit the Northern Hemisphere within weeks and lead to major disruptions in schools, workplaces and hospitals.

Sotomayor Confirmation

“These core American ideals — justice, equality, and opportunity — are the very ideals that have made Judge Sotomayor’s own uniquely American journey possible.  They’re ideals she’s fought for throughout her career, and the ideals the Senate has upheld today in breaking yet another barrier and moving us yet another step closer to a more perfect union.”

– President Obama, reacting to the Senate’s confirmation, by a vote of 68-31, of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Sotomajor becomes the 111th Supreme Court Justice, only the third female Justice, and the first Hispanic Justice.

Related Title: The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin

Energy Policy and Climate Change

“We are changing the destiny of the earth, but we have the opportunity to minimize that change…. But let’s get moving.”

– U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu during a forum at Harvard’s Kennedy School on energy policy.

Related Title: The Green Collar Economy by Van Jones

Pakistani Taliban leader killed

“This is a major setback for the Taliban in Pakistan. He was the leader. The successors are all non-entities.”

– Mahmood Shah, a former security chief in the tribal region of Pakistan, responding to reports that a CIA missile strike had killed Baitullah Mehsud, the main leader of Pakistan’s Taliban militia.

Related Title: The Inheritance by David E. Sanger

Cyberattack on Twitter

“My immediate thought was, ‘There is no replacing this platform.’ … I couldn’t satisfy the need to communicate.’”

– MC Hammer, the 1980s rapper, describes his reaction upon finding that Twitter was down. (He had tried for 10 minutes to check messages from his 1.2 million followers.)  Twitter said a cyberattack took down the service for about two hours, affecting millions of users worldwide. Other sites, including Facebook, were targeted.

Related Title: Bloggers on the Bus by Eric Boehlert

Drug Companies and Health Reform

“As far we are concerned, that is a done deal. It’s up to the White House and Senator Baucus to follow through.”

– Billy Tauzin, the former Republican House member from Louisiana who now leads the pharmaceutical trade group, after it was revealed that the Obama administration made a behind-the-scenes deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from drug makers beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion.

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

Housing Market

“We’re returning more to what was normal in the 1960s. People didn’t buy homes then as an investment. They bought them to raise families.”

– Dowell Myers, housing demographer at the University of Southern California, responding to a new study predicting that the rate of homeownership will drop steadily in the next decade.

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

Foreign Policy

“I think we could have worked out some of the challenges that are raised concerning our membership by our own government, but that has not yet come to pass.”

– Hillary Clinton, at a town hall meeting in Kenya, when asked how the US could support having the international criminal court intervene in Kenya’s problems when the U.S. government had not subjected itself to the court’s procedures. She described as “a great regret” that the U.S. government is not a member of the court.

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

Healthcare Reform

“Who knows, we may not have a product. But sometimes that’s the result of negotiations.”

– Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) on the prospect that health reform talks may yet fall apart.

Related Book: Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crisis — and the People Who Pay the Price, by Jonathan Cohn

Photo: AP Images

Sotomayor Confirmation

“She can be no worse than Souter from our point of view.”

-Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the only Republican on the Judiciary Committee to back Sotomayor, on Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s expected confirmation to Republican Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who is opposing Sotomayor.

Related Book: The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, by Jeffrey Toobin

Healthcare Reform

“If you’re looking for savings, don’t come at us.”

-Tim Trysla, who represents medical-imaging equipment makers, speaks out against cuts in federal payments as the health-insurance industry launches a lobbying effort, sending insurance-company employees to public meetings nationwide this month to rebut criticism of the industry from the White House and top Democrats.

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

Wall Street Profits

“It’s very counterintuitive to think that they’d be able to generate this much profit and this much revenue in the middle of an ongoing recession. But the fact that so many of their competitors are out of business or severely wounded has put them in a very strong position.”

- William Cohan, a former banker at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Lazard Ltd. and author of “House of Cards” on Goldman Sachs record $100 million trading days.

Related Book: Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, by David C. Korten

Immigration Crackdown

“Whenever I hear somebody say, ‘The border’s out of control!’ I know that that’s somebody who’s just trying to gin people up because, in reality, there is way more physical infrastructure, technology and manpower down there than there ever was. So it is not the same border as it was in the early ’90s. It’s changed remarkably, and it is very, very difficult to cross illegally.”

-Janet Napolitano, Department of Homeland Security Secretary, on a recent study citing a decline in the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. while answering reader questions on immigration, Gitmo, an improved FEMA, and swine flu during a USA Today editorial board meeting.

Related Book: Ex Mex: From Migrants to Immigrants, by Jorge G. Castaneda

Big Pharma

“It’s almost like steroids and baseball. You don’t know who was using and who wasn’t; you don’t know which articles are tainted and which aren’t.”

- Dr. Joseph S. Ross, an assistant professor of geriatrics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, who has conducted research on ghostwriting, on the level of hidden pharmaceutical-industry influence on medical literature.

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

Photo: AP Images

Bill Clinton in North Korea

“The North Koreans have a lot of nostalgia for the end of the Clinton administration. The question is going to be how could he go to Pyongyang without some assurance that they would be released. For someone at his level to go without a prior assurance of some kind would be to risk a huge loss of face.”

– Scott Snyder, of the nonprofit Asia Foundation, on the former president’s trip to North Korea to negotiate the release of two American journalists who were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor.

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

Healthcare Reform

“Are you asking me are progressives going to vote against universal, quality, affordable healthcare for all Americans? No way.”

– Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the threat, by a group of 60 progressive Democrats, to oppose a Democratic healthcare bill. They are frustrated over a deal cut with centrist Blue Dogs.

“It didn’t take us very seriously. She may be overlooking the strength behind the 60, and there are more who are absolutely committed to a robust public option.”

– Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), co-chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who expressed outrage at Pelosi’s comments and said her group is being “laughed at.”

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

Immigration Crackdown

“We are expanding enforcement, but I think in the right way.”

– Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, commenting on the Obama administration’s aggressive strategy for an illegal-immigration crackdown, which  has opened a political rift with some immigrant advocacy and Hispanic groups.

“Our feelings are mixed at best. We understand the need for sensible enforcement, but that does not mean expanding programs that often led to civil rights violations.”

– Clarissa Martinez De Castro, immigration director of the Hispanic advocacy organization National Council of La Raza.

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

Cash for Clunkers

“We’re seeing people that we haven’t seen in years and years and years, coming back to where they bought the car 10 years ago. I had every person in my dealership working nonstop. It was great. Very encouraging.”

– Patrick Dazzo, the general manager of Joe Rizza Ford Lincoln Mercury in North Riverside, Ill., voices his support for the federal program offering $3,500-$4,500 rebates for car owners who trade in their gas guzzlers for more fuel-efficient models.

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

Teabaggers Against Healthcare Reform

“This is not a grass-roots effort. This is a very coordinated effort where the local Republican Party, the local conservative meet-up groups sent people to my event.”

–  Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat from Texas, who held “neighborhood office hours” to discuss health reform but was forced to flee when confronted with a “boisterous crowd of about 150″ who chanted “Just say no!” while carrying signs that made reference to “Socialized Health Care.” The protesters were gathered by a man who has organized anti-tax “tea party” demonstrations.

Related Book: The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right, by David Neiwert

Heathcare (Heath Insurance?) Reform

“Our job is to help folks understand how this will help them.”

– David Alexrod on the administration’s big August push to sell the public on its vision for healthcare reform.

“We understand the future of health reform could hinge on how the conversation with the American people goes in the next six weeks.”

– Representative Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland and assistant to the speaker, who is coordinating the House effort.

“August is going to be a critical period for closing the deal.”

– Ron Pollack, director of the advocacy group Families USA.

Related PBC Books

• Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform, by Howard Dean with Igor Volsky and Faiz Shakir
• Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis by Tom Dashle
• Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crisis — and the People Who Pay the Price by Jonathan Cohn
• Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Health Care Is Better Than Yours by Phillip Longman

Middle East Peace Process

“We’re at a crucial moment now. There are only so many visits George Mitchell can make.”

– Martin S. Indyk, a former ambassador to Israel and peace negotiator in the Clinton administration.

“The minute Abu Mazen and Netanyahu sit down to negotiate, it’s going to be clear there are galactic differences between them.”

– Aaron David Miller, a public policy analyst at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars who was a peace negotiator in several administrations.

Related PBC Books

• Engaging the Muslim World by Juan Cole
• My Hope for Peace by Jehan Sadat
• The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power by David Sanger

US Navy Officer’s Remains Discovered

“They asked me if it was religiously acceptable to bury a Christian like you’d bury a Muslim. I told them that regardless of religion, any person should be properly buried.”

– A Bedouin tribal leader recalls Iraqi army officers coming to him for guidance shortly after the remains of Navy Capt. Michael Scott Speicher, whose fighter jet was shot down during the opening days of the Persian Gulf War, were found in a remote desert expanse of Anbar province, Iraq.

Sarah Palin in Campaign 2008

“Yes yes yes. Pls let me say this!!!”

Sarah Palin, Oct. 4, 2008, responding to an email from McCain campaign high command suggesting she say that then-candidate Barack Obama was given to “pal[ling] around with terrorists”

“It was awesome.”

Palin, in subsequent email to McCain staffers, after she delivered said lines almost exactly as scripted at a Colorado fundraiser.

Related PBC Books

• The Battle for America 2008: The Story of an Extraordinary Election by Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson
• The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right by David Neiwert

Wall Street’s lucrative business with the Fed

“You can make big money trading with the government. The government is a huge buyer and seller and Wall Street has all the pricing power.”

– An executive at one leading investment management firm. The Fed has emerged as one of Wall Street’s biggest customers during the financial crisis

“You can’t rescue the credit system without benefiting some of the people in it. We don’t want the Fed to drive the hardest possible bargain, but we don’t want them to get ripped off.”

– Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House financial services committee

Related PBC Books

• The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington by David Sirota
• The Waxman Report: How Congress Really Works by Henry Waxman
• Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed

War in Afghanistan

“We will support the Afghan people for as long as it takes — let me repeat that, for as long as it takes.”

– Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister who became NATO secretary general on August 1.

Related PBC Books

• The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power by David Sanger
• The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism by Andrew J. Bacevich