The insurance companies just won.

The administration, heeding the bleats of fearful and paid-off congresscritters, has just punted on the public option. Sebelius and Obama have both signaled that non-profit co-ops might do the trick by injecting some competition to the insurance industry. Sure, that might happen!

And if anyone thinks that's a reasonable, Kent Conrad-style compromise, glance at the Drudge Report, where the main art is a white flag. No, this administration is going to settle for the illusion of reform.

The mistake was to not stake out a single-payer system as their starting position, compromising if necessary on a public option. By positing the public option as their initial offer, the Democrats guaranteed the final product would be much, much less.

The need to cover those 40 million-plus is still there. What if they can't even afford co-op rates? Here's how desperate some are:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-brutal-truth-about-americarsquos-healthcare-1772580.html

I've been discounting all racial-profiling allegations in the Gates incident, and that's in part because I accepted as true reports, based on police statements, that a witness who called 911 had volunteered the two "suspects" were black. So the suspicion that fell on the Harvard professor was at least reasonable in the investigating officer's mind.

But the Cambridge police have now released audio recordings of that 911 call and the dispatch to officers heading to the scene. There is no mention of the "suspects" being black. The dispatcher in fact says "race unknown." So somebody has fudged the facts in the police summary.

Not only that, but the 911 audio has been edited to remove the question the police operator asks the witness as to race. We hear just the ending: "...spanic?" To which the witness replies that "one of them might be Hispanic." The other one, she didn't clearly see. I would suggest the police operator asked something along the lines of, "Are they black, white or Hispanic?"

As it turns out, both of them were black, and one was professor Gates. But the police officers did not, as initially reported, have reason to believe that going in. In fact, the witness had explicitly avoided any suggestion that they were black. So at least in this minor aspect, the police summary has been cooked -- and that calls into doubt all other parts of it.

Former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin had his day in court yesterday, seeking a reduction of his 12-year sentence for leaking classified information to two lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

The same judge who initially sentenced him took into account that Franklin had co-operated with prosecutors, and that all charges against the AIPAC lobbyists, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, had been dropped. He cut Franklin's term to a 10-month conditional sentence.
Fair enough, I guess. But in asking for leniency, Franklin apparently pleaded both patriotism and ignorance. According to Politico:

Franklin said he was motivated solely by "love of our republic and by the safety of our military personnel that were about to go into Iraq." He insisted he wasn't trying to leak anything, but simply to use a back channel to alert "a particular NSC source" to the dangers in Iraq. The ex-Pentagon analyst didn't know at the time that Rosen and Weissman worked for the pro-Israel lobbying group.

Really? If that last sentence was part of what Franklin claimed in court yesterday, the judge should have upheld the original 12-year sentence just for the defendant's bald-faced contempt of court. Here's the start of Wikipedia's Rosen entry:

Steven J. Rosen served for 23 years as one of the top officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the leading organization of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States. He is regarded as one of the most influential but controversial figures in the pro-Israel movement.

Twenty-three years! Franklin didn't know that -- but still gave him classified info without a clue whom he worked for? Amazingly, the judge didn't call him on it.

Unconfirmed reports out of Iran say former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has resigned as chairman of the powerful Expediency Council, which arbitrates disputes between the religious leadership (Council of Guardians) and the Majlis or parliament.

Rafsanjani also chairs the Assembly of Experts, and it's not clear if he will retain that position. That is the group that elects (and conceivably can remove) the religious Supreme Leader -- currently Ali Khamenei. If he keeps that post, it could set up an interesting dynamic.

Rafsanjani had solidly backed defeated presidential candidate Mir Hosein Mousavi, and was personally attacked for that by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There are two possible interpretations of his (alleged) resignation: either it's a protest against Khamenei's acceptance of the disputed election result, or it's Khamenei and Ahmadinejad forcing him out to nip any protests in the bud. Or a little of both.

Either way, Iran could be losing a powerful pragmatist (though conservative) voice. Not a good sign.

After all the hand-wringing over Roxana Saberi, the Iranian-American "free-lance journalist" jailed in Iran for espionage, can we now finally concede the obvious?

She was indeed a spy. Just not a very good one.

The TPM main page links to a New York Times article that lays out in detail, mostly in her own lawyer's words, the evidence arrayed against her, much of which hadn't been reported till now: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/world/middleeast/14iran.html

Her confession, possession of classified material, secret trips to Israel, recruiting meetings with the CIA, and a debunking of her alibi that she was acting for NPR or the BBC -- the Times does everything but spell out that the initial court verdict (and eight-year sentence) was fair. Saberi is free today simply because Iran has decided to suck up to the Obama administration.

Look, the United States does spy on other countries. Not that there's anything wrong with that, unless you get caught. 

Where, as in Tehran, the United States has no diplomats, it's forced to rely on journalists, businessmen and tourists -- almost always dual citizens -- for intelligence-gathering. It's a fact of life, as is the orchestrated outcry over freedom of the press and politically motivated prosecution when one of these ad-hoc agents gets arrested. Amazingly, much of the public still mindlessly buys into the standard State Department denials.

After North Korea announced it will launch its first satellite next week, the West went ballistic, saying it's really a disguised test of the Taepodong 2 rocket. And that violates a 2006 Security Council resolution, passed in the wake of North Korea's half-successful nuclear test, which bans it from testing long-range missiles.

But the attempt to pressure North Korea into backing down has been bumbling and incoherent. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that the launch would have "consequences to the six-party (nuclear) talks, which we would like to see revived and moving forward as quickly as possible." That's supposed to be a threat? It's the West, not the North, that is counting on success in those talks. 

As for taking the issue to the Security Council, North Korea is already in open violation of several sanctions resolutions. One more won't faze them.

Then there's the threat to shoot down the missile. Warning that the Taepodong 2 could in theory reach the continental United States, Pacific commander Timothy Keating said he was "prepared" to do so, and the Japanese defense minister chimed in that he might too. He even deployed anti-missile ships to the Sea of Japan. 

All a bluff. Defense Secretary Robert Gates came out today and told Fox News the U.S. can't shoot it down and won't even try -- and neither will the Japanese. Maybe someone looked at the UN resolution and realized it doesn't authorize any military action.

So the satellite launch (or missile test, if you prefer) will go ahead. And one has to wonder what all the sound and fury was about. A conspiracy theorist would point out that all U.S. military spending is currently under a microscope. The anti-ballistic-missile pilot project is one of the most wasteful boondoggles on the books, and stoking fears about crazy North Koreans with nukes might help preserve its funding. Thankfully, Gates has again been the adult in the room.

There! Much better than my original headline: "Enough with the teleprompter bullshit, AP!"

Washington bureau chief Ron Fournier began his analysis of President Obama's press conference last night: "What kind of politician brings a teleprompter to a news conference?"

And ended it: "Even better, he likes to have it up on the teleprompter."

Forget the technical detail that it wasn't an actual teleprompter but a big TV screen at the back of the room. Fournier no doubt drafted his story in advance, and wasn't going to waste a good punchline.

But Ron, you're not even being original. Jokes about Obama's "dependence" on his teleprompter have been all over the right-wing media and blogosphere for months: Fox, Politico, Townhall, Drudge and now AP ... the list is shockingly long. Google "obama teleprompter" and make your own. There's even a link to yet another bogus teleprompter story on the TPM main page today.

The amazing thing is that these twits actually seem to think they've exposed Obama's glaring flaw: that he's a terrible communicator, when someone else isn't feeding him his lines. Read the deranged comments on their blogs and you'll inevitably see the phrase "Manchurian candidate." None of the commenters know whom Obama is a front for, but it's obviously somebody really evil.

Never mind that anyone with ears and eyeballs knows it's bullshit. After reading his introductory remarks yesterday, Obama spent nearly an hour answering questions -- clearly, smoothly, articulately. Presidentially.

So drop the teleprompter meme, guys. Nobody outside your bizarro little self-reinforcing world buys it, and it just makes you look stupider.

David Letterman has just summed it up best:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/24/teleprompter-vs-no-telepr_n_178474.html

Not that reasons are hard to find.

The only thing I watch on Fox is The Family Guy, so I certainly don't ever stay up past 3 to catch Red Eye. But someone emailed me a link, and I thought I'd share:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPmXKEsm-HE

Not clever or funny to begin with, but especially unfunny to relatives and friends of the four Canadian soldiers whose bodies returned today from Afghanistan -- the 113th, 114th, 115th and 116th to die there since Canada took on a combat role in 2002.

More than 2500 are fighting in Kandahar, the Taliban heartland. Thousands more have rotated through. Proportionally, their casualties have been higher than U.S. troops in the country -- far higher, in fact, than U.S. troops in Iraq, and comparable to Canadian losses in World War II.

The Fox show also mocks the RCMP. More than three dozen Canadian police -- half  of them Mounties -- are also posted to Kandahar, where they train Afghan cops. Fortunately, none of them have been killed yet.

I realize this is just a stupid, cheap timeslot-filler for nightowl viewers bored with infomercials. Not really worth the indignation. It's Fox, for God's sake. But maybe it tells us that it's time Americans took back their media.

Well, can't say we didn't try. Back to the War Room!

My God, our media don't do nuance very well, do they? Thank God Obama will read the actual translation of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's speech. Because it had lines like "If you change your behavior, we will change our behavior" -- a near-exact parallel to Obama's offer "If you unclench your fist ..." with the added notion of "After you, Alphonse."

Has anyone noticed it took Khamenei just one day to respond to Obama's appeal? Yeah, that's treating it with contempt and derision, isn't it? While sticking with the media's groupthink assessment that Khamenei has dismissed Obama's overture, the L.A. Times reported that Khamenei read carefully from his speech, as if his words had been carefully weighed. You can bet they were. Example:

"Have you released Iranian assets? Have you lifted oppressive sanctions? Have you given up mudslinging and making accusations against the great Iranian nation and its officials? Have you given up your unconditional support for the Zionist regime? Even the language remains unchanged," Khamenei said.

Here Khamenei has set out four concrete things he thinks Obama could do to signal his overture is more than window-dressing. Notice that Israel comes in only at No. 4, almost an afterthought. Notice also what he's asking for: "give up your unconditional support" for Israel. With a Netanyahu-Lieberman government looming, that one's a gimme. Check. Done and done.

Obama's already changed the tone with his televised appeal, so No. 3 appears to be no problem. Nos. 1 and 2? Hey, let's sit down and talk about those. So rather than dismissing Obama's offer, as the media have almost universally concluded, Khamenei has started negotiating.

Well, not really. Just amused and not buying it one bit. The House did what it had to do, legal niceties be damned. And the Senate and the White House, tone-deaf or not, will fall in line.

Is this just catering to populist anger? Absolutely. Is Congress hypocritical in parroting that anger? Yep. Is the amount to be recovered negligible weighed against past, current and future bailout totals? Obviously.

But is the clawback a first step toward arbitrary meddling with the tax code? No, it's a one-off -- or it will be, if Congress, the White House and above all Wall Street internalize the warning: No more business as usual. Or to quote Jon Stewart, "It's not a fucking game." As a bonus (no pun intended), once a Republican has voted for a 90% tax rate, it's hard for him to argue a 35% marginal rate is unconscionable and socialistic.

Is the clawback a distraction from the all-important task of creating a regulatory system that works? Not at all; it's actually put more focus on that need, probably speeding its passage. The AIG bonus issue had to be defused before that larger debate can begin.

Americans, I know, are reluctant to hit the streets. But we're at a potential Kerensky moment here. If an arguably unenforceable tax law is the alternative to Dr. Guillotine dragging out his new invention and demonstrating it in public, maybe that's a reasonable price.

Interesting discussion over at the Book Club about Juan Cole's new book, and whether it was the Oil Lobby or the Israel Lobby that tricked the U.S. into invading Iraq. It's kind of a moot debate; I have yet to read Cole's book, but I believe he argues there was a confluence of interests.

Let me suggest precisely where (aside from Dick Cheney's office) that confluence occurred: Kirkuk. Here (slightly condensed) is something I wrote back in mid-2003. In fact, I had posted an earlier version on Slate on March 8, 12 days before U.S. troops crossed into Iraq. The scenario never materialized -- but not because it wasn't on the radar of those who launched the Iraq War:

At a press briefing the week the war began, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer erroneously referred to it as Operation Iraqi Liberation. He did not use the acronym, but the Internet buzzed over the apparent freudian slip, which neatly reinforced the conviction of the millions marching behind banners reading, ''No blood for oil.''
Their skepticism is understandable. This White House is filled with oil persons. President George Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld all ran or worked for major energy companies, as did adviser George Schultz. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's former employer, Chevron, named an oil tanker after her.
Unlike weapons of mass destruction, everyone agrees that  Iraq has oil. Not that the White House has harped on that fact. Asked about it, Bush had only this to say: ''The resources of Iraq will be used to benefit their real owners - the Iraqi people.''
Of course, a barrel of Iraqi oil costs $1.50 or less at the wellhead, and can sell for up to $40. That leaves room for lots of people to take a cut, with plenty left to rebuild a devastated Iraq.
Iraq is often referred to as having the second-largest oil reserves in the world. But there's been virtually no oil exploration for 20-plus years, and many experts believe Iraq has more undiscovered oil than Saudi Arabia. Even without new discoveries, output can easily be tripled or quadrupled from the million or so barrels a day it sold under the UN oil-for-food program.
Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi exile and convicted embezzler the Pentagon backs to rule a liberated Iraq, has stated he would favour U.S. companies when it comes to new exploration leases and infrastructure work. In fact, even before a new government has been installed, the U.S. has - without tender - signed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts with American companies to begin that job.
There is a bit of a paradox here: the U.S. gets very little of its oil from Iraq; its biggest supplier is Canada, followed closely by Saudi Arabia. Iraq provided a tiny percentage of U.S. demand, even before UN sanctions.
But direct acquisition and consumption of the oil was never the issue; control of it is.
Because, beyond the financial benefits to U.S. oil giants (and by extension the U.S. economy), there are major strategic benefits. If Iraqi oil can be ramped up to rival Saudi production, the U.S. - with its hand on the spigot - could virtually dictate world oil prices. That should reduce OPEC's power, forcing other oil-producing states to play nice -- not to mention consumers like the Europeans and Chinese, America's only real rivals for empire.
Still, it's a big leap to the idyllic picture Bush has painted, of a Middle East remade in the democratic, prosperous image of the United States. Unless, of course, the Mideast balance of power shifts so profoundly that virtually every Arab or Muslim leader recognizes the game is up, throws in his cards, and applies for a job helping administer the new world empire.
Here's a hint as to how that might come about.
In early April, four or five days before Baghdad fell, Israeli infrastructure minister Joseph Paritzky mused to the daily Ha'aretz about reopening the Mosul-Haifa pipeline from Iraq's Kirkuk oil fields, closed for obvious political reasons since the creation of Israel in 1948. He also let it slip that talks with Jordan on the project were imminent.
Jordan - through which the rusty pipeline runs -- denied everything, but Turkish firms reported being contacted by Israeli companies about doing subcontract work on it.
Paritzky was quoted as saying Israel could save 20 per cent on its oil bill, since it now has to buy more expensive Russian oil. But that misses the point entirely. After half a century of disuse, the original pipeline no longer exists in any usable form. It would have to be rebuilt from scratch - so its capacity can be whatever the current traffic will bear.
Are Paritzky's words a trial balloon? A Guardian article quoted U.S. officials as confirming that talks about the pipeline were going on last month between Israel, the U.S. and Chalabi. It sure sounds as if some advance planning has gone into this.
The scenario is simple: the U.S.-run Iraqi administration - or the proxy state that follows in a year or two - ''reconstructs'' the Haifa pipeline, which opened in 1934-35 but operated for little more than a decade. The old line to the Mediterranean made perfect economic sense at the time, and the new one - no doubt big-bore and state of the art - would make even more.
Israel could jump-start its moribund economy with cheap Iraqi oil, and with transit fees levied on its export to Europe and abroad.
In return, the U.S. might exact Israeli acceptance of a viable Palestinian state. (If land for peace didn't fly, maybe land for peace and oil will.)
Jordan, which up till now has had cheap Iraqi oil trucked in, would get its supplies directly off the new pipeline running through its territory, in exchange for its military guarding the line from the ever-present threat of sabotage.
The U.S. would need a big permanent military base near Kirkuk to guard the actual oilfield, but would in exchange get ... a big military base convenient to all Mideast capitals!
It was leaked last month that the Pentagon was eyeing such a base, as well as another at Iraqi airfield H1, so-called because it guarded the primary pumping station on the long-disused pipeline. Following the uproar that ensued, Rumsfeld denied there was any such plan.
The Arab ''street'' would of course erupt, but then that's what we peaceniks predicted about the conquest of Iraq itself; it didn't happen, did it? Arab leaders can be expected to adapt to the new reality.
Syria might be bought off by resumption of oil flow through the Kirkuk-Banias pipeline, which the U.S. cut as the war was winding down, on the pretext that Iraqi leaders were escaping into Syria. (Bush says he now believes the Syrians are ''getting the message.'')
There's a side pipeline from Syria to Lebanon, so pressure can also be brought on that country to rein in Hezbollah.
Once the Haifa pipeline opens, Saudi Arabia's earnings on its oil, much of it now tankered through the Suez Canal, would be hostage to market pressures, as leveraged by the Israeli-American axis. Did I mention there's already a functioning pipeline from Kirkuk to Iraq's Persian Gulf port, which could easily be used to pump southern Iraqi oil - even Kuwaiti oil - north toward Haifa?
Saudi Arabia might even be persuaded to revive the Trans-Arabian Pipeline, shut down after Israel occupied the Golan Heights through which it ran. This time, however, the oil would not have to run through Syria -- only to the point in Jordan where it intersects the Mosul pipeline. Then on to Israel for offloading at Haifa.
As for those unco-operative Europeans, they had better take a number and line up their tankers off the Israeli coast if they want any of that cheap Iraqi oil.
Is this all blue-sky speculation? Well, there is historic precedent.
In the mid-1980s, when Saddam was a U.S. ally, Rumsfeld tried to talk him into a Bechtel project to pipe Iraqi oil to Jordan's Red Sea port of Aqaba. Israel has long had a pipeline running north to Haifa from its port of Eilat. The two pipelines would terminate just a few kilometres apart. Linking them would be a simple step. Saddam balked.
But such dreams live on. In the past year - well before the war began -- Bechtel, along with Cheney's old company Halliburton, quietly received multi-million-dollar contracts to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure, including the oil industry, after hostilities end.
It makes you wonder what went on at Cheney's top-secret White House energy-policy conference. It even raises the question of whether a plan to rebuild the Mosul-Haifa pipeline might actually have preceded the decision to invade Iraq.

After watching Jon Stewart last night expose and eviscerate Jim Cramer for his stock-bubble pimping, the question we all should be asking is:

Why is a comedian, an admitted "fake news show" anchor, the only journalist in America to have seriously questioned the media's role in the self-selving corporate fraud that has cost millions of citizens their homes, their savings, their jobs and their pensions?

Listen to Lou Dobbs, and it's illegal immigrants who are somehow responsible. Listen to Rush Limbaugh, and it's leftists and Democrats. Listen to Fox, and it's people who don't listen to Fox.

Listen to Michael Steele and ... well, it's hard to figure out exactly whom he's blaming, but it sure isn't the people who for at least the past eight years controlled Wall St., the government, and -- above all -- the mainstream media.

Cramer's pathetic defense last night was that his stock-market advice (which millions followed) was merely "entertainment."

So here's the underlying message to take away from Stewart's show: it's not that the MSM were unaware of who the thieves are, or even that they were complicit with the thieves. They ARE the thieves.

Anyone interested in Mideast peace should read this Haaretz article carefully:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1069308.html

I trust the reporters are accurately relating what they are being told -- and what the headline states: that the U.S. will recognize a Palestinian government only if Salam Fayad remains prime minister. Coming the same day Fayad announced he is resigning -- responding to a key Hamas demand -- the report goes far toward sabotaging any Fatah-Hamas unity talks. This while the U.S. and the Quartet purport to be encouraging the idea of a unity government.

The key leak comes from the Clinton entourage at the recent donor conference, which also produced an embarrassing leak to the effect that Clinton did not expect diplomacy with Iran to bear fruit. If this is going to be Clinton's standard M.O. throughout her tenure at State, we might as well write off Obama's overture to the Islamic world right now.

For a full day, that's been one of the headlines over at the Drudge Report. Well, not actually about Canada -- it's about Iran, and it's attributed to Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Mike Mullen.

As you might expect with Drudge, there's no corresponding headline linking to the interview that Mullen's boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, rushed to give out that same day, contradicting Mullen and stating unequivocally  that Iran is nowhere close to making a nuclear weapon. Here's a link: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE5201Y920090301

The Drudge headline even misrepresents what Mullen said; he spoke not of Iran having the "ability" to make a weapon but of having "enough material" for one. And that's technically true -- if it were to reprocess all its 1,000 kilograms of low-enriched uranium into highly enriched uranium, it could build one bomb. Very difficult -- and impossible to conceal -- but feasible.

But guess what? That's true for dozens of countries. Most don't even need to go through the technical hassle of enriching the stuff to weapons grade. Canada, for example, has enough highly enriched uranium already stockpiled to make up to four bombs. (Right now, it uses the stuff to make medical isotopes.)

Leaving aside the nuclear warheads that already exist, there's something like 20 metric tonnes of highly enriched uranium scattered around the world -- in civilian nuclear reactors, hospitals, research facilities. That's enough for about 600 Hiroshima-style bombs, give or take a couple of hundred.

Oh, but don't worry about any of that falling into the wrong hands. Iran's the only real danger! Listen to Drudge, and to Mullen, and to the other crazies who are still hoping to gin up another senseless war.

Steve Clemons posted yesterday at the Cafe on Dennis Ross's odd new appointment at State: as Hillary Clinton's Special Advisor for the Gulf and Southwest Asia. Not as the plenipotentiary envoy to Iran he'd been angling for.

In fact, as I noted in a comment, the announcement of his posting omitted any mention of what precise countries fall into his sphere of activity. Spencer Ackerman noticed the same thing.

It took a day of prodding, but the State Department finally spelled it out:

http://washingtonindependent.com/31472/state-department-nobly-defines-southwest-asia

Now, there are several ways to define Southwest Asia. But this is just about the narrowest conceivable list. No Cyprus, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan or (on the eastern end) Afghanistan. None of the other Stans either. No Israel, Occupied Territories or Egypt. (The latter would only have been included if the title had been Special Advisor for the Middle East.).

Ross does get to advise Clinton on Iran, Iraq and the states of the Arabian peninsula. What she does with that advice is another story. It's reasonable to suspect Ross's nomination met a certain amount of resistance, either within the State Department or at the White House.