We're missing something.

Health care is the issue of the day and nobody sums up where the lines are drawn better than dday over at Digby's place. Here's the quote from the GOP congressman dday is referring to-

REP. ZACH WAMP: Listen, health care is a privilege. […]

Health care is a privilege?

I subscribe to the best plan the Fortune 500 company I work for provides. My premiums are astronomical but I've always felt this isn't an area where I want to skimp.

Despite my premium plan the deductibles are killing me. I've got an 80/20 setup towards the deductible and then nothing after I hit $1000 for myself or $2500 for my family. I guess this is pretty standard.

When my 12-year old son took that hit to the knee playing football at the end of last year I had to pay about $100 bucks out of pocket for the intial co-pays for the doctor visit then X-ray directly next door. I then had pay $200 for follow-up within the next few weeks including minor physical therapy. Then his doctor insisted on an MRI. My portion of responsibility for that was $500 dollars.

I can't even imagine what this would have cost had he actually torn his ACL and needed surgery.

Since injuries are a constant risk of sports we're seriously reviewing the financial risk having all three of our kids play sports expose us to. Youth sports must also be a privilege.

Eight years ago I was diagnosed with sleep apnea and now sleep with a cpap machine glued to my face. Yesterday, I went in for a follow-up and my machine is so old they have to do another sleep study to see what settings it needs. As I made the appointment I asked office scheduler what the study would cost under my insurance. The study itself is an outrageous $2000 so my out-of-pocket will be $400 dollars. By way of comparison I spent $15 dollars on my first sleep study.

I'm not sure I can afford this new study. $400 bucks is a lot of cash and I have other bills. Apparently sleep, a healthier heart and better productivity during the day is also a privlege for those with excess cash.

I'm well aware that my financial and health care challenges are miniscule next to what other Americans face. To many of Americans- being cancer free or getting the meds to slow the progress of MS or Aids and the rising costs of same are their own lucky privlege. These Americans would probably gladly change place with me and my medical bills given the choice.

The for-profit private health care system in this broken. As the president said today it's choking the economy to death. It's beyond obtuse to argue otherwise. It's ridiculous to accuse those of us who already pay too much of our ever shrinking income of being spoiled children. It's willful ignorance.

Oh, he's just like any other man, only more so.

Digby pretty much sums up how I feel about the about the Supremes decision yesterday defending the right of the well-to-do to buy our government:

I think we need to start thinking about how to deal with the new era of wingnut judicial activism. If anyone actually thought the Warren Court was activist for trying to right long standing social inequality, they haven't seen anything until they see what John, Clarence, Nino, Sammy and Tony do to expand the rights of rich people and corporations while turning back the clock on everything else. It's going to be a generational battle. I hope everyone realizes this.

I will never forgive Joe Lieberman, Huckelberry, St John and the the rest of the milquetoast losers of that gang of 14. This is on their heads.

That was actually my first thought- "thanks for nothing Gang of 14." It's so wonderful you were able to preserve the filibuster. No doubt it will come to good use the next time a Democratic President wants to nominate a Justice that's halfway sane and Republicans want to keep that person off the court. Conservatives get their way now. Conservatives get their way then. Everything is working well.

As for the money = speech argument I realize that there are tons of liberals that believe adherence to the 1st Amendment is such an absolute that they're willing to see the republic collapse under the weight of corporate dominance of our government. More power to them.

As for myself I tend to believe this country was founded on the principle that no citizen would have a louder voice than another in the public square. If money = speech then this principle is meaningless because the rich will dominate the discourse, as they pretty much do now. But putting that to the precedent that corporations enjoy the rights of citizens under the law continues to leave me shaking my head at the absurdity of that precedent.

The one precedent, I might ad, that the Roberts court appears to be in no danger of overturning.

We've got nothing to do with the war. Maybe that's why we're on this ship, cause we're not good enough to fight.

In my tryptophan-induced coma last week I missed a post by tristero at Digby's in which he wrestles with the question of whether one must themselves fight in a war they support.

Jose Chung and DavidByron both seem to believe (and I'm sure they'll correct me if I'm wrong!) that the chickenhawk issue really is about whether only those with military service are qualified to opine on the subject of war. But that's not quite right. Of course, military service, or the lack of, has no genuine importance to the worth of an argument pro or con the Bush/Iraq war.* The real issue is the total cluelessness of a particular group of war advocates whose drooling enthusiasm for war isn't grounded in reality.

I tried to make it clear in my post - but it wasn't clear enough, apparently - that the hostile question, "well, if you support the war so much, why doncha serve?" is no query at all, but an angry, exasperated, assertion amounting to saying, "You don't know a damn thing about what you're talking about, or you wouldn't talk about Bush/Iraq in such a foolish, callous way." So yes, as DavidByron says, the question is a nasty, sarcastic, ad hominem attack. What makes it appropriate is that the reasoning of the chickenhawks was beyond serious discussion. Thomas Friedman's insistence that even if Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 or had WMD's, "we" still oughta whack him because "we" can. George Packer's utterly naive kumbaya-save-the-world attitude. John Podhoretz' floating the suggestion that maybe US forces should have killed more young Iraqi males at the beginning of the invasion. And, of course, the 101st Keyboarders who talk as if Mr. Kurtz's "Exterminate all of the brutes" doesn't go far enough by half.

I've been tossing this question of whether or not one is qualified to speak on military matters if one has never worn the uniform of the United States military. Obviously from a purely pedantic standpoint the answer is in the affirmative. Citizens make decisions on the use of military in broad strokes through support of platforms advocated by individual candidates at the ballot box. Support of specific military action (such as that in Kosovo or Iraq) generally takes the form of arguing the necessity of the action with their fellow citizens and bumper stickers. Speech and franchise are constitutionally protected with no caveat of prior military service necessary.

Ultimately the chickenhawk issue is really a question of personal morality. There's a whole series of questions that those of us practicing realpolitik work through before deciding to lend their support to specific military action. Is this action necessary for the security of the Untied States an it's allies? Does it meet the long term strategic interests of the United States? Have we exhausted all diplomatic and alternative means of solving the problem? Does it meet the Powell Doctrine and, if not, would I be willing to send me an mine to fight?

Chickenhawks aren't just people who avoided service but are today glib about sending others to fight in wars they advocate. Chickhawks are people who refuse to ask themselves any of all of those moral questions before advocating military conflict. They chose not to expose themselves to the moral ambiguity of war when they were younger and choose today not to expose themselves to the moral ambiguities of war by not facing and coming to terms with them today. They are both physical and moral cowards.

Take your stinkin' paws of me, you damn dirty ape!

Damn, dirty hippies are apparently trying to ruin everything in Kentucky (and America.) I'm sure Digby and Duncan will be on the case.

What an excellent day for an exorcism.

With a hat tip to the all powerful OVERDROID and the semi-powerful Digby and Chris Bowers I dedicate this Googly-bomby. Bombs away...

--AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl
--AZ-01: Rick Renzi
--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth
--CA-04: John Doolittle
--CA-11: Richard Pombo
--CA-50: Brian Bilbray
--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave
--CO-05: Doug Lamborn
--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell
--CT-04: Christopher Shays
--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan
--FL-16: Joe Negron
--FL-22: Clay Shaw
--ID-01: Bill Sali
--IL-06: Peter Roskam
--IL-10: Mark Kirk
--IL-14: Dennis Hastert
--IN-02: Chris Chocola
--IN-08: John Hostettler
--IA-01: Mike Whalen
--KS-02: Jim Ryun
--KY-03: Anne Northup
--KY-04: Geoff Davis
--MD-Sen: Michael Steele
--MN-01: Gil Gutknecht
--MN-06: Michele Bachmann
--MO-Sen: Jim Talent
--MT-Sen: Conrad Burns
--NV-03: Jon Porter
--NH-02: Charlie Bass
--NJ-07: Mike Ferguson
--NM-01: Heather Wilson
--NY-03: Peter King
--NY-20: John Sweeney
--NY-26: Tom Reynolds
--NY-29: Randy Kuhl
--NC-08: Robin Hayes
--NC-11: Charles Taylor
--OH-01: Steve Chabot
--OH-02: Jean Schmidt
--OH-15: Deborah Pryce
--OH-18: Joy Padgett
--PA-04: Melissa Hart
--PA-07: Curt Weldon
--PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick
--PA-10: Don Sherwood
--RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee
--TN-Sen: Bob Corker
--VA-Sen: George Allen
--VA-10: Frank Wolf
--WA-Sen: Mike McGavick
--WA-08: Dave Reichert

Gomez, last night - you were unhinged. You were like some desperate, howling demon. You frightened me. - Do it again!

Much of the discussion among progressives as of late has been centered around the possibility of overkill with investigations of the Bush Administration should the Democrats retake one or both houses of congress. The theme running through this conversation is Democrats are so frustrated at the constant lies and transgressions of this President that, once they have the institutional levers of oversight under their control, they risk the possibility of going completely apeshit to the degree they dilute the possibility of actual oversight. For this reason Democrats should limit the investigations to one or two big-ticket items. Digby comes with a list of three items to investigate.

I agree with Matt that the Democrats need to be smart about how they go about investigating the Bush administration and should concentrate on the key areas that best illustrate their massive failure. I also agree that war profiteering is an overlooked subject that focuses on the corrupt crony capitalism that has fueled this administration from day one. (Jane was on this a year ago.) It's long past time people started asking where in the hell all that money went.

I would suggest that the other two issues that are ripe for investigations, and which would capture the worst of the egregious actions of the Bush administration, are presidential abuse of power and the manipulation of intelligence and strategic errors of Iraq. Those are the areas in which it is important to demand accountability from the administration and demonstrate to the American people that mature, responsible leadership will not allow such behavior to go unpunished.

Putting aside the HUGE cart-before-the-horse element of this conversation I think there's another thing missing here: it's built on the assumption that the Democrats have effectively assumed opposition party status and are itching for a fight.

I don't doubt for a second that if the Democrats were to win Congress (an enormous, colossal, gargantuan "if") there would be investigations of the administration. The difference will be in that these investigations will be institutional rather than partisan. Democratic leaders will focus on issues in which the lines of the traditional balance of powers between the coequal branches of government have been redrawn these last few years. The hearings will focus on the loss of institutional power by congress itself. In short: they will once again miss the forest for the trees.

The administration through Alberto Gonzalez's Unitary Executive theory has asserted unchecked power on matters of policy ranging from torture of prisoners, secrecy, ability to interpret statute covering the Executive branch and even the ability to declare war above and beyond congressional authorizations for the use of force (themselves probably unconstitutional.) Efforts by congressional Democrats in a majority to reign in the administration on all of these issues would be pointless if it didn't address the philosophy behind their assertion of power in the first place. It's not enough to say "Congress matters!" The extraconstitutional philosophy that led to this radical and dangerous rogue presidency needs to be exposed and exercised from the body politic. Congressional Democrats just don't have it in themselves to do this.

We know this because even while in the minority for twelve years, even while dealing with an unprecedented level of corruption by majority Republicans, even while being neutered to the point of political impotence and treated like dogs, congressional Democrats continue to show deference to their collegues across the aisle.

Take Jay Rockefeller for example. As the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee he has continued to let himself get pushed around by Chairman Roberts and done nothing about it. Yesterday it was reported that Roberts was going to kick the can of Phase Two of the Iraq war intelligence down the road until after the election and it appears Rockefeller is okay with that. His officed announced he wouldn't have objections to postponing the postponement of the postponement of the investigation that they had already postponed on numerous occasions. He then rolled over on his back and begged Roberts to scratch his belly.

The point being it's hard to imagine a situation where CHAIRMAN Rockefeller would act differently in defference to a request by then ranking minority leader Roberts request to postpone. Out of respect for the instititution, deference to his collegues, etc. Rockefeller would probably postpone the investigation rather than ignore the request. These guys don't have the fire in their belly no matter how much the grassroots has tried to beg and cajole them into realizing these are different times and you can't show deference to radical maniacs who clearly want to eliminate you and everything you stand for and the country in the process.

Meek and mealy-mouthed Democratic Senators and Congressmen aren't going to suddenly grow a spine once they take the majority. In the inverse Republican Senators and Congressman won't suddenly understand the importance of comity and consensus once they're back in the minority. All of us will be better off once we come to terms with that.