Too Bad Obama Dumped Howard Dean

Obama needs Howard Dean's help on health care. Dean understands the issue; he is a doctor, was governor of Vermont, the best Democratic candidate for President in 2004, and former head of the DNC. This NYT article on Rahm Emanuel talks about how Sidney Blumenthal lost a job at State because he got crossed up with Emanuel, but a more serious rift is between Emanuel and Dean. Dean and Emanuel had very different visions for the Democratic Party's strategy in 2008. While Emanuel gets the credit for the sweeping Democratic victory in the House, Dean played an important role that may have surpassed Emanuel's by making the Democratic Party competitive everywhere, not just in strongly "blue" states. But because Emanuel and Dean fought during the 2008 election, Dean is persona non-grata in the While House.

Dean would probably have been a better choice for HHS Secretary than Tom Daschle, Obama's original choice. Daschle is just an old pol; he can slap backs and cajole, but he doesn't have the vision that Dean does, something that everybody says is badly lacking in the While House at the moment. Obama has just thrown his very fuzzy vision of health care into the lions' den of Congress. As a result, Obama may get something, but it may not be worth very much. Dean would have had a much more focused plan, and as former DNC chairman, would at least have had a shot at getting it approved. Emanuel has a lot of clout in the House, where many members may feel they owe him their jobs, but he doesn't have as much in the Senate, where the real problems lie at the moment.

It may be impossible for Obama to get Emanuel and Dean to work together. It's unfortunate for the country that he can't.

Fareed Zakaria Was Top Sunday News Show Again

The good and bad news from Fareed's interview with Israeli Amb. Michael Oren was that the Ambassador defended Israel's positions about as well as they can be defended.

On Iran, Fareed pressed Oren hard on the issue of whether Iran was not allowed to have a peaceful nuclear power capacity by the Non-Proliferation Treaty. They are. Oren's reply was that a normal state would be allowed to have nuclear power, but Iran's leaders have misbehaved so badly that they have forfeited their right to do so. The question is whether other countries, particularly Russia and China, would agree with Israel. Probably not, but it's a good argument. That brings up the mirror question of whether Israel should bring its nuclear program under the international monitoring of the NPT. On that issue or a related on about whether Israel has nuclear weapons, as I recall Oren begged off and did not really answer. He has some finely worded statement about Israel not being the first to introduce nuclear weapons, more or less a "no first use" statement, although I think he refused to characterize it as such.

Fareed also had a segment on the real meat of Hilary Clinton's trip to Africa, rather than just the 10 second sound-bite about not channeling Bill, or about the 2000 Florida presidential election mess. It just showed how poorly everyone else covered her trip. Poor Hilary gets no points for trying to help Africa. The news anchors could care less about people dying in Africa.

Anyway, kudos to Fareed.

Great Article on Flash Trading

Whatever it is, flash trading of stocks is pretty certainly bad, as I pointed out earlier. This article in Asia Times has the best explanation I've read. I don't understand the problem enough to know if his proposed tax solution is the best one, but I would certainly support it while we look at other options.

Sen. Coburn Approves Killing Poor Babies

Yesterday on "Meet the Press" Sen. Tom Coburn said the following:

We talk about neonatal mortality. Where’s the neonatal mortality? It’s not in the private insurance plans, it’s in Medicaid. Well, here’s the government-run program that is failing us in terms of neonatal mortality, and yet we use as an indicator neonatal mortality to say we need more government rather than less.

Rachel Maddow replied, "That is so disingenuous, that's unbelievable."

Rachel is right, although she didn't get to explain why. Medicaid is not a federal government insurance program. It's a joint state/federal program to provide last ditch assistance to people without health insurance to allow them to get treatment rather than die in the streets. Many of the 45 million people without health insurance probably benefit from Medicaid if they have a serious illness, or have a baby. So the people on Medicaid are the people targeted by the new program exactly to do things like allow them to have regular visits to a doctor while they are pregnant, rather than seeing a doctor for the first time when they go to the emergency room to give birth. If it weren't for Medicaid, many more poor babies would die, because mothers would get no medical care at all.

Coburn is basically saying that since people on Medicaid are poor, he doesn't care if their babies die. He would join Sarah Palin in calling for babies of trailer park trash to die so that Palin's Trig and other rich babies can live.

It's the same selfishness expressed in the town hall meeting protests that say, "Don't mess with my Medicare." They worry that their "socialist" government provided health care would suffer if the government tried to provide similar coverage to more people. They are saying I want those other people to die rather than give up my free health care.

Decent, loving people (which should certainly include people who call themselves Christian) would frame the issue as follows: We would like to have decent health care for everybody, not just me. How can we best do that, and how much can we afford? The latter question might also be phrased, how much am I willing to give my neighbor so that he can continue to live.

People screaming, "Don't touch my Medicare," are clearly not Christians.