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The topic of the day is pre-existing conditions: namely the fact that the latest version of the Republican health care bill guts Obamacare's guarantee that insurers have to insure all customers at the same price. It's what everyone is talking about.

Wait. Did I say "gut"? National Review editor Rich Lowry disagrees:

The Phrase Pre-Existing Conditions Leads to the Suspension of All Thought

The moderates are abandoning the health-care bill largely because it makes it possible for states to get a waiver from the pre-existing condition regulation in Obamacare. This is being distorted as an abolition of that regulation, with the moderates either contributing to the misunderstanding or being carried along by it. Ramesh ably explained the other day why this isnt true. But apparently all you have to do to win the debate over Obamacare repeal is say pre-existing condition, regardless of whether you have any idea what you are talking about. I dont think anyone wants to go back to the pre-Obamacare status quo on this issue, but....

The Ramesh Ponnuru post that Lowry links to is worth a read, though I think Ponnuru downplays the real effect of the waiver clause. I'm also pretty sure that, actually, lots of people would like to go back to the pre-Obamacare status quo. That's especially true of people who really understand how health insurance works. After all, once you accept that people with pre-existing conditions should be allowed to buy health coverage at the same price as everyone else, you pretty much have to accept both the individual mandate and the federal subsidies in Obamacare. You can call them "continuous coverage" and "tax credits" if you want, but they're the same thing.

But for a moment let's put that all aside, because there's a more fundamental question here. Like it or not, Obamacare does protect people with pre-existing conditions. Insurers have to accept anyone who applies and they have to charge them the same premiums as anyone else. This has no effect on the federal budget, which means it can't be repealed in a reconciliation bill.1 Unless someone kidnaps the Senate parliamentarian's dog and threatens to kill poor Fido unless they get a favorable ruling, any attempt to repeal Obamacare's pre-existing conditions ban will be tossed out of the bill. And keep in mind that Obamacare's ban is absolute. As long as it's around, insurers have to take all comers at the same price no matter what any other legislation says.

So all the limitations regarding pre-existing conditions in the Republican bill are just kabuki. What's the point?

1Oh sure, you can gin up a case where it has some small effect. But that doesn't work. Reconciliation bills are limited to things that directly affect the budget. Incidental effects don't count.

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Republicans Are Playing Pre-Existing Conditions Kabuki - Mother Jones

One of the most exciting things for conservatives after the election was that they had a quasi-Republican president, and, more importantly, a GOP-controlled Congress. With House Speaker Paul Ryan at the helm the Randian wonk with a powerpoint budget plan the federal government could be a lean, mean, fiscal machine, cutting spending and shrinking the government in no time. But alas, when they had their chance, Congress failed to cut the bloated behemoth that is Planned Parenthood and didn't even slice a comma off the Affordable Care Act. This is, as they like to say, "How we got Trump."

What the GOP promised

Political Twitter is a toddler's playground wrapped in a group therapy session inside an insane asylum but sometimes it's so spot on:

Indeed, Ryan is a stud, but after shenanigans like these please wait while I roll my eyes to California and back. "Pretty is as pretty does" my mama used to say, and Ryan has failed to do as he promised the American people he would. The most fiscally hawkish of them all knows full-well Republicans as a collective group promised to defund Planned Parenthood, repeal all or most of Obamacare, and a litany of other things. We the American people are not so enraptured with Ryan's dapper appearance that we believed all those things, but c'mon now: Those were the basics. And with a Republican majority in Congress, they should be feasible.

What this means

The ACA is a complicated leviathan, but it's politicians who made it that way: You can't be a mechanic for Ford and pretend not to know the basics of how a Chevrolet works. They can tinker with partisan bills and repair what's ailing it. That's literally what they're supposed to do. No one believes this charade that it was too hard everyone thinks Republicans are either liars or wusses. Republicans had years to cobble together ideas, research, policy proposals that could replace parts of, or repeal all of, the ACA. When their moment in the spotlight came, they drove the broken-down Chevrolet to the Ford dealership and said, "We don't know what to do."

Pro-life Americans will have even less sympathy when they discover Republicans didn't bother to defund Planned Parenthood while negotiating their budget. For starters, the House Oversight Committee found two years ago the organization was sufficiently funded without the $500 million it takes in federal taxpayer funds. Second, most pro-lifers disagree with its primary activity (performing abortion) so this should have been a one-two punch: It's immoral, and it's a poor use of taxpayer dollars. Yet it too remains fully-funded. Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood's CEO, is laughing so hard on her yacht right now, for a moment she's forgotten she spearheads the nation's largest abortion shop.

What Ryan should have done

Of course, Ryan's political excuse is that he won't be able to get votes from the moderate wing of the party to defund Planned Parenthood and repeal Obamacare completely, so they have to negotiate with them, moving the GOP to the Left in the process. What the leadership should do is hold a hard line on these items. Republicans that don't go along with defunding Planned Parenthood, repealing Obamacare, and cutting taxes will find themselves in a primary, challenged by more conservative members of the party. Sure, the Democrats will take the opportunity to pick off some vulnerable moderate seats where a conservative challenger is able to knock off a moderate Republican, but overall it will shift the party to the Right. Then he may find it easier to accomplish some of the things they said they would do.

In the meantime, people will still ask, "How did we get Trump?" It's because politicians never do what they say they would. So the people didn't elect one, for better or for worse.

Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator's Young Journalist Award.

If you would like to write an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, please read ourguidelines on submissions here.

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Dear Republicans in Congress: You had one job, and you failed - Washington Examiner

When Sen.Bernie Sandersbegan to emerge as a viable contender for the Democratic presidential nomination during the primaries, Sanders supporters expected that Sen. Elizabeth Warren would be one of the few Democrats in office who would endorse him. Warren is often seen in tandem with Sanders in the Senate, leading the fight for economic justice and against the greed and excess of Wall Street. Sanders supporters waited and waited for her endorsement. EvenafterRep.Tulsi Gabbard boldly resigned asDNCvice chair to endorseSanders, Warren continued to sit silently. Her endorsement never came. Instead, she waited until theDemocratic primariesended to formally endorse Hillary Clinton. Her endorsement was exclusively announced in an interview withMSNBCsRachel Maddow and was touted byClintonsupporters as a final nail in the coffin to Sanders candidacy.

Since the primaries, Warrens rapport with progressives has continued itsdownward trajectory. During the protests against theDakota Access Pipeline, Warrenignoredprogressives despite her history of claiming Native American ancestry based on anecdotal evidence from her grandmother. Even after the general election, when the political risk of taking a position on the pipeline waned, Warren stood on the sidelinesuntilthe Army Corps of Engineers made the decision to temporarily halt thepipelinesconstruction.

After Clinton lost the general election, Warren joined theDemocratic Partyin defendingClintoninstead of providingconstructive criticism forwhat went wrong forDemocrats. Finally, in April 2017,Warrennoted in aninterviewwith USA Today that the blame forClintonselection loss lies not just with Clinton, but with all Democrats. Its all of us, she said. We have to bear responsibility for thatWe didnt get out there and fight hard enough.

In a recentinterviewwith the Guardian, Warren lent rare criticism toward former President BarackObamaandDemocratsby hitting a note similar to the brand of economic populism that made Warren famous as a popular progressive voice.I think President Obama, like many others in both parties, talks about a set of big national statistics that look shiny and great but increasingly have giant blind spots. That GDP, unemployment, no longer reflect the lived experiences of most Americans, she said. And the lived experiences of most Americans is that they are being left behind in this economy. Worse than being left behind, theyre getting kicked in the teeth. Warren added that while Republicans have embraced wealth and power over voters, manyDemocratshave done the same. Warrens rhetoric is much needed within theDemocratic Party, whichhas been abrasive toward any push for reform. However, she still hasa long way to go towin back the support of progressives whose support she has lost.

Several polls have citedSandersas the most popular politician. One of the most recent polls conducted by Morning Consult putsSandersfavorability at 75 percentandWarrens at 56 percent. This gap likely stems from Warrens recent record of silencerather than taking strong, principled stances. It remains to be seen if Warren will embrace populist rhetoric and begin to adopt progressive stances, such as disavowing donations from Super PACs. In 2016, a pro-Warren Super PAC, Level the Playing Field, raised $1.6 million, and a PAC run through MoveOn.org has raised over $300,000 for Warren during her Senate career, according toOpen Secrets.Though Warren has dodged questions about a potential 2020 run for president, she iswidely expected to be in the field of contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination. ThoughWarrenis making effortsto win back progressives support, she will need to run a grassroots fueled presidential campaign to winthe primaries and defeatTrump. Thereare still manyquestions regarding how progressive she will actually turn out to be.

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With Sights on 2020, Elizabeth Warren Tries to Woo Progressives - Observer

Could you ask for a more perfect bookend to Obamas blood-soaked neocon abortion of a presidency than his receiving $400,000 to give a speech at a health care conference organized by a Wall Street firm?

My God I hate every single thing about every single part of this. Let me type that out again in segments, so we can all really feel into it: Four hundred thousand dollars. For a former President of the United States. To give a speech. At a healthcare conference. Organized by a Wall Street firm.

Why are Wall Street firms organizing motherfucking healthcare conferences, one might understandably ask? And why are they hiring the man who just completed an eight-year war on progressive healthcare policy and a torrid love affair with Wall Street criminals? These are extremely reasonable questions that might be asked by anyone who is intelligent and emotionally masochistic enough to look straight at this thing, and the answer, of course, is America. Thats what America is now. The man who continued and expanded all of Bushs most evil policies, created a failed state in Libya, exponentially expanded the civilian-slaughtering US drone program which Chomsky calls the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times to unprecedented levels, facilitated the Orwellian expansion of the US surveillance state while prosecuting more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined, and used charm and public sympathy to evade the drastic environmental policy changes well need to avert climate disaster and lull the progressive movement into a dead sleep for eight years now gets paid nearly half a million dollars an hour to continue bolstering the exploitative corporatist nightmare hes dedicated his life to. American University has compiled data indicating that the already extremely wealthy Obama family may end up being worth as much as $242 million in their post-White House years, and if Barry keeps whoring himself out like this, he might exceed even that.

Anyone whos familiar with my work knows that I harbor markedly less affection for Hillary Clinton than I do for malaria-infected mosquitoes, but I still find it annoying how clued-in people on the anti-establishment left are to how horrible she is while still maintaining a degree of sympathy for Obama. Theres a general awareness that Obama was far from perfect and did immoral things, but you rarely see the same vitriol and disdain for him as you do for Clinton on the left, which is absurd because they are the same monster. This needs to change before there can be any forward movement on the progressive front. Unless we get crystal clear that these Democratic neocons are unacceptable, theyre going to keep finding political influence among our ranks.

I began this essay by saying that Obamas $400,000 oligarchic shill job was a bookend. I did that because, in what was easily the single most important and egregious WikiLeaks email of 2016, we learned that Wall Street was calling the shots in the Obama administration before the Obama administration even existed. Before he was even elected, an executive from Citigroup (the corporate owner of Citibank) gave Obama a list of acceptable choices for who may serve on his cabinet. The list ended up matching Obamas actual cabinet picks once elected almost to a t.

Feel like doing a little citizen journalism? Here is a link to the aforementioned WikiLeaks document. Go to Attachments and select Cabinet Example to see the cabinet members offered to Obama, and compare the names there to this Wikipedia list of actual cabinet appointments and note the tremendous amount of overlap for his 2009 appointments.

Feel like doing a little more citizen journalism? Try and find any mainstream coverage of this email after it came out. Write about your findings somewhere on the internet, and boom, a guerrilla investigative journalist is born.

The email was ignored by everyone but the fringe of the fringe, with the most significant coverage coming fromRussia Todayand right here in theObserver, whose ties to Trump via then-publisher Jared Kushner have been well-documented. The anti-establishment right didnt care about it because they were focused on beating Clinton, and the anti-establishment left didnt care because why? It should of course have been a front-page scandal for weeks, but at the very least progressives should have lifted up a big fat NO to it. This was the cabinet that determined the administrations response to the criminals who caused the 2008 financial crisis that had just ravaged the nation, and they were treated with a light finger wag and a kiss goodnight by these Citibank appointees, who then went on to help assemble the exploitative and climate-killing TPP.

I can understand why pro-establishment liberals are defending this man; he stands for everything they stand for. If all you stand for is vapid tribalism and vanity politics and you are willing to sacrifice integrity along with economic and social justice and the lives of other peoples kids in corporatist wars overseas in order to feel like youre on the right team, Obama is your man. But if youre an actual, real progressive and not just a latte-sipping NPR listener with a sense of self-righteousness and a pro-choice bumper sticker, youve got no business regarding Obama with anything but disgust.

I mean, its wrong, but I also get it. The sympathy were tempted to feel for that child-killing corporate crony is one of the very few problems that we actually can blame mostly on Republicans. They spent eight years hammering the guy, but they couldnt criticize any of his actual evil policies because they were all policies that Republicans support too, from warmongering to bolstering the Walmart economy. So they had to make up the most ridiculous bullshit wed ever heard, which you couldnt just stand around listening to without screaming and disputing. They couldnt attack his Orwellian surveillance programs, so they said hes a Muslim. They couldnt attack his eat-the-poor neoliberalism, so they said hes a Kenyan. They couldnt attack the unforgivable bloodbaths he was inflicting on other countries, so they said hes a socialist (Ha! Remember that one?). So by attacking these moronic right-wing narratives, we often wound up tacitly taking his side, which fostered sympathy.

That sympathy is what needs to go. Anyone whos ever escaped from an abusive relationship knows that sympathy is the very first thing that you need to get rid of in order to be free, because sympathy is how a manipulator sucks you in. When youre dealing with a government that in 2013 gave itself the legal right to use media psy-ops on its own citizens, you cant afford to have any stray strands of sympathy laying around out there. The war were fighting against the oligarchy is first and foremost a media war, and we may be certain that any sympathies progressives maintain toward their establishment oppressors will be exploited. By letting ourselves really see Obama for the vicious ecocidal warmongering corporatist that he is and letting the resulting disgust wash through us, we are inoculating ourselves against sympathy for him and everyone like him. That disgust will serve as a kind of psychological gag reflex that rescues us from swallowing any more of their bullshit.

Obama is not the poor widdle victim here, the American public is. Remember that not even a year after the taxpayer took the brunt of the damage from the banks idiotic gamble on subprime loans, he was out there inspiring rallies of people with his talk of hope and change, but at the exact same time as he was promising the American people that he would take Wall Street to task, in private he was allowing Citigroup to handpick his cabinet.

Just let that sink in for a minute. He was out there galvanizing and re-energizing the whole progressive movement, commanding giant rallies of people with his inspiring words and heartfelt promises, but at the very same time, he was emailing Wall Street to get their list for his cabinet appointments. Remember, this email wasnt after hed won. Hed engaged in this transaction while he was still campaigning, still sucking up every bit of hope America had for reversing the ravages of neoliberalism. He. Was. Lying.

That does not deserve sympathy. He knew what he was doing and he wasnt forced into it by any obstructionist congress. The stage was already set. One could easily make the case that he not only killed off hope for change, but that he meant tothat the whole thing was deliberate from the start and that he meant to magnetize any hope left in the bruised and abused population, and suck it into the vortex forever, leaving everyone despondent and without hope. But one things for sure: he certainly never intended to give America the changes he was promising. Ever. The Citigroup email proves that beyond a doubt.

And now hes out there raking in the cash. So I do not weep for Obama, and neither should you.

A friend of mine who has a background in Alcoholics Anonymous once shared with me her view that the majority of 12-steppers are actually pre-Step 1that most of them really havent really grokked into how powerless they are over their addiction in any meaningful way. Well I see rejecting Obama as Step 1 of fighting the progressive revolution, and I think it might be possible that a majority of progressives havent fully done that yet. Some of my readers will have already worked their way down this rabbit hole and processed what needs to be processed while many others will find it a bit confronting, but I think everyone can benefit from a little more Obama hate. We must never go back there. We must unequivocally reject anyone who would take us back there.

We dont get to keep him. We dont get to keep the first black president. We dont get to let that be ours; we have to reject it, in the same way wed have to reject the first female president had Hillary won. Any pride in him, any benefit of the doubt because of his place in history, is an obstacle to judging his true behavior for what it is, as it is. I do sincerely hope there can one day be presidents who transcend racial barriers and shatter glass ceilings and also do their best to advance a pro-human agenda, but Barack Obama was no such president. Hes not ours. Kick him out.

Caitlin Johnstone is a reader-supported independent journalist from Melbourne, Australia. Her political writings can be found on Medium and on her Facebook page.

Continued here:
If Progressives Don't Wake Up to How Awful Obama Was, Their Movement Will Fail - Observer

I have found my silver lining!The dark cloud of election night and a Donald Trump presidency has lifted or at least thinned.

Nov. 9, 2016, as I awoke (probably still drunk), picked myself off my bed, dried my eyes and applied my mask, I did what can only be described as a Hail Mary:

I ordered books off Amazon.

While this might seem a small step in a general direction, these were special books. Although I havent gotten through them all (yet), the first has given me new pride in my Oklahoma home.

Davis D. Joyces collected essays,An Oklahoma I Had Never Seen Before,changes my life with every new sitting. Each essay brings a new facet of our progressive beginnings: from Kate Barnard and prairie populism to a personal essay by Clara Luper, the collection of the peoples history easesthe aches in every progressive-stuck-in-a-red-states soul.

(Editors Note:The text below referencesthis article by Jim Loganas well as this book by Musselwhite and Crawford.)

The annals of time have been cruel to our first hero, Kate Barnard. As a pioneering reformer whose political career started almost a decade before the passage of the 19th Amendment, she lives on as a feminist icon for Oklahoma progressives.

Barnard started her career as a teacher in Oklahoma City. Within 10years, she had moved on to social reform. As one of the authors of the Shawnee Demands, her belief in child-labor laws and mandatory childhood education made a dramatic impact on the Demands, which would soon become the basis for our new states constitution.

With the first election, Barnard became the first woman elected to public office in Oklahoma and only the second nationwide (again, before women were allowed to vote). While the first state Legislature expected her to sit quietly in her corner and attend her feminine duties, Barnard had other plans.

Within a year, she had created drastic changes in Oklahomas prison system (or lack thereof). Having infiltrated a Kansas penitentiary housing Oklahoman prisoners and seeing the abominable conditions, including torture, Barnard petitioned the state to build its own prison system and end many inhumane practices previously in use.Gaining national attention from the scandal, Barnard began speaking across the country about prison reform.

This, combined with her new crusade championing orphaned Native children, would prove to be her downfall.

Native children were stripped of land and mineral rights, abused by court-appointed guardians and subjected to aracist, capitalist system by ones entrusted with their care. As she continued protecting the rights of children, Barnard would end up taking on judges, representatives and corporations.

In response, the Legislature continuously attacked Barnard as well as her prosecutor. Unable to remove her from office without a popular vote, they gutted her budget and created popular dissidence for her new campaign as well as her focus on speaking publicly nationwide.

Sadly, Barnard faded into obscurity later in life. Suffering from a skin disease as well as other health complications, shedied alone in a hotel room at the age of 54. For more than 50 years, her body resided in obscurity in an unmarked grave.

Todays young Oklahoman women can take solace in Kate Barnards story. In a millennial generation stunted by a poor economy and the shackles of growing student loans, fellow late bloomers remind us that its never too late to start caring or effect change. Barnards compassion for the poor, unrepresented and abused masses in a state that so often forgets so many of its citizens reminds us all to add a little more sympathy to our everyday humanity.

I highly recommend you visit Barnards grave in Fairlawn Cemetery and pay tribute to a local heroine in any way you see fit.

Continue reading here:
Kate Barnard: An icon for Oklahoma progressives - NonDoc