I know there are lists floating around, but I wanted to condense it down to a short list that can easily be emailed, posted or printed and carried around.

Probably yes (5)

Sen Robert Byrd (D WV)       202-224-3954  http://byrd.senate.gov (sick)
Sen Mark Warner (D VA)      202-224-2023  http://warner.senate.gov
Sen Thomas Carper (D DE)    202-224-2441  http://carper.senate.gov
Sen Jon Tester D MT              202-224-2644  http://tester.senate.gov
Sen Ron Wyden (D OR)        202-224-5244  http://wyden.senate.gov (yes)

Yes, but already counted:

Herb Kohl (D WI)                  202-224-5653  http://kohl.senate.gov (yes)
Amy Klobuchar (D MN)        202-224-3244  http://klobuchar.senate.gov (yes)
Tim Johnson (D SD)               202-224-5842  http://johnson.senate.gov (yes)
Sen Dianne Feinstein (D CA) 202-224-3841  http://feinstein.senate.gov (yes)
Sen Michael Bennet D CO     202-224-5852  http://bennet.senate.gov (yes)
Harry Reid (D NV)       202-224-3542 http://reid.senate.gov/ (yes, but majority leader so call him)

Not sure (10)

Sen Blanche Lincoln D AR    202-224-4843  http://lincoln.senate.gov
Sen Max Baucus D MT          202-224-2651  http://baucus.senate.gov
Sen Bill Nelson D FL             202-224-5274  http://billnelson.senate.gov
Sen E. Ben Nelson (D NE)     202-224-6551  http://bennelson.senate.gov
Sen Kent Conrad (D ND)       202-224-2043 http://conrad.senate.gov
Sen Evan Bayh (D IN)           202-224-5623  http://bayh.senate.gov
Sen Mark Pryor D AR            202-224-2353 http://pryor.senate.gov
Sen Mark Begich D AK         202-224-3004  http://begich.senate.gov
Johnny Isakson (R GA)          202-224-3643  http://isakson.senate.gov
Olympia Snowe (R - ME)       202-224-5344  http://snowe.senate.gov

No (3)

Mary Landrieu (D LA)           202-224-5824 http://landrieu.senate.gov (no)
Susan Collins (R ME)             202-224-2523 http://collins.senate.gov (no)
Joe Lieberman (I CT)              202-224-4041 http://lieberman.senate.gov (no)

Updated: 8/29/2009

Names in bold are Senate finance Committee members.

We start, according to Howard Dean's "Where Congress Stands" tool with 45 votes 44 votes (unless Massachusetts can appoint a replacement for Kennedy). At present it seems that we have 44 + 5 = 49 Yes votes, plus potentially 10 more for 59 "yes" votes. We will need 11 of the 13 "not sure/no" votes to vote for cloture to defeat a filibuster. If Kennedy's seat is filled, we get to 50 very likely yes votes, and an easier path to 60 votes for cloture.

Let me know if there are any updates or errors. I'll cross off people who commit. I include the "no" votes in the hope that we can at least pressure them to vote for cloture.

Zipcodes: 99506 Anchorage AK, 20151 Fairfax VA, 33128 Miami FL, 04576 Southport ME, 72201 Little Rock AR, 59601 Helena MT, 46201 Indianapolis IN, 70112 New Orleans LA, 68901 Hastings NE, 06101 Hartford CT, 58282 Walhalla ND, 30301 Atlanta GA, 55801 Duluth MN, 57401 Aberdeen SD, 53201 Milwaukee WI, 25813 Beaver WV 
 

This is imho the only question that matters now. This fight will take place in September but the outlines are becoming clear. The WH has stated it "wants" a robust public option. Most of us agree that the public option is the best way to cover everyone and save money. It remains popular, and even the CBO said it would save $150 billion. The House can probably deliver a bill with a public option. So we are left with the Senate holding things up. So how do things look there?

According to Howard Dean's website, here are the numbers:
 

Chamber		Yes				No			Don't know
House		198				6			236
Senate		44				39			16
Combined		242				45			252

Nate Silver goes over the remaining possible Senators one by one here.

So it seems that we are stuck relying upon a half a dozen Senators, many from red states, to give us a good bill.

Also, note that the pretense of negotiating with Republicans is finished. Grassley (affectionately known as Grasshole) was talkign about "Death panels" and carrying Glenn Beck's book, and Kyl stated out loud that the GOP will not support any health care bill no matter what. The right has already started attackign the lame co-op idea.  So Baucus' pretense of working with Republicans is revealed to be a sham, and the WH has admitted as much with Rahm's recent remarks.

So here were are. Need 5 or 6 more votes in the Senate. That's all that stands between us and historic achievement.

How do we get there?

p.s. And if we don't and Baucus kills the PO, don't forget to take the BaucusBucks (tm) challenge!

BaucusBucks (tm), the fun game courtesy of Senator Max Baucus, where anyone can play along!!

Here's how it works:
Just try to imagine what you would have spent that $1100 that Max Baucus just picked from your pockets and handed to his friends in the insurance industry.

A weekend excursion? Getting those teeth fixed finally? Replenshing what's left of your 401K? A new distributor for that old jalopy which won't start?

Fun for the whole family!!

What $1100 you ask? Via Nate Silver:

"The CBO estimates that the public option would save about $150 billion over the next ten years -- that's roughly $1,100 for every taxpayer. I'm certainly not thrilled to have to pay an additional $1,100 in taxes because some Blue Dog Democrats want to placate their friends in the insurance industry."

It's as simple as this:

• The public option will save each taxpayer $1100.
• Strip it out, and pay $1100 more.
• Keep it in, save that thousand bucks.

Sound like a good deal? 

So tell us: How would you have spent your BaucusBucks (tm)?

 

BaucusBucks (tm), the fun game courtesy of Senator Max Baucus, where anyone can play along!!

Here's how it works:
Just try to imagine what you would have spent that $1100 that Max Baucus just picked from your pockets and handed to his friends in the insurance industry.

A weekend excursion? Getting those teeth fixed finally? Replenshing what's left of your 401K? A new distributor for that old jalopy which won't start?

Fun for the whole family!!

What $1100 you ask? Via Nate Silver:

"The CBO estimates that the public option would save about $150 billion over the next ten years -- that's roughly $1,100 for every taxpayer. I'm certainly not thrilled to have to pay an additional $1,100 in taxes because some Blue Dog Democrats want to placate their friends in the insurance industry."

It's as simple as this:

• The public option will save each taxpayer $1100.
• Strip it out, and pay $1100 more.
• Keep it in, save that thousand bucks.

Sound like a good deal? 

So tell us: How would you have spent your BaucusBucks (tm)?

While the MSM was lapping up GOP smears about "death panels", no one thought of asking AARP about it. Surely, an organization dedicated to advocating for the elderly would be opposed to anything that might harm their constituents, right?

I found this helpful page, where they warned people about myths and fearmongering:

Myth: Health care reform means the government can make life-and-death decisions for you.

Fact: Health care reform will NOT give the government the power to make life-and-death decisions for anyone regardless of their age. Those decisions will be made by individuals, their doctor and their family.

Fact: No one, including the government or your insurance company, will be given power to make life-and-death decisions for you.

Bottom Line: Health care reform isn't about putting the government in charge of difficult end of life decisions. It's about giving individuals and families the option to talk with their doctors in advance about difficult choices every family faces when loved ones near the end of their lives.

AARP also has a site they are pushing, www.healthactionnow.org. It does a good job of debunking many of the GOP lies and smears. Check it out.

I'm trying to think of how to boil down the argument for health care reform in as few words as possible, in a way that is still convincing and substantive. Something that can be coyp and pasted in, say, a comment board when the wingnuts trot out their usual arguments (I use that word generously for what consists of a variety of grunts, mention of "illeglals", sneering, and talk of "big government") Democrats need to counter their crude messages, which as stupid as they are, are short and easy to remember (and beloved by simpletons in the mainstream media).

How about something like this? Please suggest, refine or make your own pitches.

• If you lose your job, say good bye to coverage.
• And if you get really sick, you will lose your job, and then your coverage.
• That sounds like no coverage at all.
• Even worse, your salary if you do have coverage is much lower than it would be if your company wasn't paying ballooning premiums.
  
• And of course the individual market is a huge ripoff, complete with riders and underwriting and huge premiums. It's basically meant for very wealthy and very healthy people. If you have a preexisting illness, forget it.
• That's why these folks end up in the ER for routine stuff and guess who pays for that? Everyone with higher hospital fees and higher premiums.
• Our health care system fails people, and it fails business.

Everybody has seen that chart the GOP put together trying to make the health care reform plans seem like a nightmare of complexity and clashing colors.

Very honest stuff.

But now some are pushing back.

There's this chart, under the heading "Don't f--- with graphic designers", shows the Dem's plan in a more aesthetically pleasing manner:

And even better is this one, showing the current health care system in America (should have used high key colors and a dark menacing gray background for full effect):



Just goes to show that charts are like statistics, and anything can be made to appear elegant or bewlideringly complex.

Update:

Here's a version of the one above of the current US system, but done in the style that John Boehner's offices uses for charts.



Don't forget to email, call, or fax your Senators and Representatives this August on a daily basis and let them know what you think about health insurance reform.

Regarding Eric's post on the Arkansas Republican Party, quoting retired Army officer Curtis Reynolds as saying:

He added: "We need someone to stand up to Barack Obama and his policies. We must protect our culture, our Christian identity."

This is implicitly racist, and I mean with a capital R.

Racism, as an ideology that arose in the past several hundred years, has always a conflation of culture and biology. In fact, that is what makes it racism. Dividing people into groups was never the project.

"Racial science" purported to show culture and behavior were a result of biology, of blood, and thus permanent. That difference in cultures were due to distinct, underlying, fundamental, and indelible differences in our physical nature. (For instance, "Caucasoids" were industrious by nature, and "Mongloids" had choleric blood and were such and such by nature. Suffice it to say that the portryals were always favorable to whites and disparaging of non-whites.)

The excuse of the modern racist that they are talking about "culture", not race, doesn't fly, since race has always been a confusion of the two, ie. a theory of biological rootedness for behavior and culture.

Obama is being treated as less "American" or less "Christian" than a light-skinned person would be, based solely on his appearance. Nobody talked this way about Bill Clinton. They hated his policies but never had to defend their "cutlure" from him (or, I might add, disputed his birth certificate). "Culture" here obviously means White Culture, proving my point.

Similarly, that people like Pat Buchanan (an amazing case of the MSM coddling an old-school bigot) don't *really* believe that non-white people can really become fully "American", even after generations in this country, just shows how they have a hidden theory of biology. That somehow babies are literally born with a certain civic tendency, a work ethic, religious values, etc. all based on their skin color/hair type.It sounds incredibly ludicrous when you spell it out, but works fairly well when left as innuendo.

The point is that "culture" here is being used to mean race. The modern racist talks mostly about "defending culture". But little has changed, since that is what racism has always been about.

http://www.slate.com/id/2223213/
I think he's right that the misinformation/lies by the GOP, along with the usual MSM horse-race stuff (ie. these issues don't matter, it's all about scoring points) and alarmism on the left (TPM being a good example -- the entirety of last weekend had a huge headline "Is Obama wavering on deadline?") -- they all miss the point that the numbers do, or at least can, easily add up:

The health insurance exclusion is regressive, since people making more money tend to receive the most generous health benefits. On the other hand, eliminating the exclusion entirely would increase the tax liability of people earning less than $50,000, as a percentage of income, much more than it would people earning more than $200,000, assuming both groups received health insurance through their employers. A reasonable compromise, therefore, would be to maintain the exclusion for people earning below a certain amount (say, $50,000) and reduce it for people earning more. In the March 17 New Republic ("Tax My Health Benefits, Please"), Cohn noted that a tax scheme along these lines, proposed by Jonathan Gruber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, would raise "more than $700 billion over ten years." If included in health reform, such a plan would net the feds a $100 billion surplus during the next decade. As a side benefit, it would exert some pressure on health insurers to lower premiums.

The House bill, as passed last week by the ways and means and education and labor committees, would cost about $1 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office's most recent calculation. But this doesn't take into account the bill's sliding surtax on incomes above $350,000, which (according to the joint committee on taxation) would raise an offsetting $544 billion during the same period. (As liberal think tank Citizens for Tax Justice points out, $544 billion is a lot less than what this crowd got during the last 10 years from George W. Bush's tax cuts.) Other taxes in the bill and projected savings in Medicare and Medicaid further reduce the House bill's cost to $239 billion over 10 years. Congressional Quarterly gasps that this is "larger than the [deficit] run by the government for all of fiscal 2007."

But it comes to about $24 billion annually, a manageable amount that could be eliminated by adding in a much more modest scale-back of the health insurance exclusion than the one envisioned by Gruber. Further savings could be achieved if Congress were to adopt the Obama administration's proposal to create a Fed-like Medicare Advisory Council that could set rates for Medicare providers while being somewhat shielded from congressional meddling.

One last thing, on the public option. Why can't any of the pundits point out that the opponents of the public option are contradicting themselves?

• If the plan is "too expensive", we should control costs, right?
• But the GOP/Blue Dogs don't actually want to do that because that would hurt health/insurance industry profits.
  

So which is it? Too expensive, or not expensive enough??

And as for the budget hawk argument about deficits, I would jsut say that they are ignoring the fact that health care cots left unchecked will bankrupt this country in short order.

If any of these fake "budget hawks" actually cared about reducing tax payer burden, we would institute cost controls on drugs and service for the public plan. Problem solved. That is, if you actually intended to solve the problem.

Lack of regulation is the core problem with health care in America.

A recent Washington Post story described how chemical industry and can manufacturers and their customers (including Coca Cola) were trying to find a way to, let me be blunt, scare the public and bribe politicians, so that they can continue to reap profits while slowly poisoning the nation and its children. Ideas included getting a pregnant woman to claim she was happy to have Bishpenol A (BPA) effect her unborn child's development in unknown ways, just as long as Coca Cola has a great bottom line.

Despite a growing body of evidence that it is dangerous, the Bush FDA ruled it was not clear, based solely on two industry funded studies, which dispute the majority of science on BPA:

Over the past decade, a growing body of scientific studies has linked the chemical to breast cancer, testicular cancer, diabetes, hyperactivity, obesity, low sperm count, miscarriage and other reproductive problems in laboratory animals. More recent studies using human data have linked BPA to heart disease and diabetes. And it has been found to interfere with the effects of chemotherapy in breast cancer patients.

Researchers have found that BPA leaches from containers into food and beverages, even at cold temperatures. A study by the Harvard School of Public Health published earlier this month found that subjects who drank liquids from plastic bottles containing BPA had a 69 percent increase in the BPA in their urine.

Despite more than 100 published studies by government scientists and university laboratories that have raised health concerns about the chemical, the Food and Drug Administration has deemed it safe largely because of two studies, both funded by a chemical industry trade group.

Let's hear it for mommy bloggers, who have been sounding the alarm bells on this and other toxic chemicals that are being pushed on unsuspecting consumers, especially in egregious, and frankly sickening fashion, such as using potentially harmful chemicals in baby bottles and baby food containers. Also, organic food stores that have been offering BPA-free bottles to consumers deserve credit as well. They've clearly countered the scaremongering about a BPA-free world: If we can easily buy BPA-free bottles at Whole Foods, why is Gerber so afraid??

Now is the time for Obama to reverse the Bush pro-poisoning position and to get rid of the industry-friendly hacks in the FDA. We need to adopt a more prudent and 'precautionary' approach, along the lines of Japan and Europe, that if the science is "unclear", or if overwhelming evidence is being disputed by industry-funded crap pseudo-science, then we should remove it and not wait decades to find out that the substance has been toxic all along, such as was done with lead in gas, asbestos, PCBs, and more recently phthalates and BPA.

For those interested, here are some tips from another WP article last year to avoid exposure. Well, actually, to minimize exposure, since this BPA crap is everywhere:

* Look for BPA-free toys, baby bottles and containers. There's been a recent explosion of such products, which may often carry a higher price tag.

* Reduce your use of canned food; eat fresh or frozen foods instead. Bisphenol A has been found in the lining of canned food tins.

* If you use hard polycarbonate plastics (Nalgene bottles, baby bottles, sippy cups), do not heat them or use them for warm or hot liquids. Heating plastics to high temperatures may promote the leaching of chemicals out of containers and into the food or liquid they hold. Freezing plastics poses no such risk.

* Instead of polycarbonate and PVC plastics, consider using alternatives such as polyethylene plastic -- also labeled as PETE or recycling code #1, #2 (HDPE) and #4 (LDPE). Polypropylene (recycling code #5, or PP) is also considered a safe choice. Recycling code #7 may mean the product contains BPA.

* Do not wash polycarbonate plastic containers in the dishwasher with harsh detergents.

 
Suggested reading on the chemical industry's pseudoscience campaign:
The Real Story Behind Bisphenol A
How a handful of consultants used Big Tobacco's tactics to sow doubt about science and hold off regulation of BPA, a chemical in hundreds of products that could be harming an entire generation.

In a piece over the weekend, "Sounds Great, But What Does He Really Mean", Alec MacGillis writes:

Across the political spectrum, though, there is grumbling over the label. After the election, former Bush adviser Pete Wehner wrote that the word does not show where Obama would take a stand. "When gale-force political winds hit, pragmatists, because they do not have deep-seated convictions, rarely hold shape," he wrote. "A pragmatist avoids hard choices. A great leader makes them."

On the left, the Nation's Chris Hayes argued that Obama supporters were embracing pragmatism after incorrectly concluding that Bush had struggled not because he had the wrong ideology, but because he had an ideology, period. "Obama may [say] he's interested in 'what works,' " Hayes wrote, "but what constitutes 'working' . . . is impossible to detach from some worldview and set of principles."

....

"It's possible to be ruthlessly pragmatic in terms of how you get to an objective," Reich said, "but the phrase is nonsensical in terms of picking an objective."

That leaves us searching for the intent and belief beneath each "pragmatic" approach so far.

The dichotomy* suggested that pragmatism is about means while principles is about goals is a false one:

In the real world, goals collide. There are few transcendant goals that rise above all other interests. Economic growth might come at the cost of the environment, yet jobs at the cost of a healthy, sustainable world is also a problem. A practical problem-solver would seek the greater good, balancing interests, and not side with one goal to the total exclusion of another in a dogmatic, absolutist fashion (eg. "To hell with global warming, we need to create jobs!")

A fair and responsible leader knows that s/he has to look out for ALL of our interests, not just a few special interests, who push their goals and ignore consequences for everyone else. Special interests and absolutist ideologues have wrecked this country with their strident, uncompromising approach to grab the maximum advantage for themselves to the detriment of the greater good of society. Any compromise, no matter how sensible and modest, has been fought tooth and nail, all in the name of "principles", which others might call dogma.

Also, the article makes some silly claims. Such as that pragmatism results in different approaches for different issues. On commenter remarks:

Websters Dictionary--Pragmatisim: dealing with events in the light of practical lessons or applications relating to state affairs. Gillis--- Obama pragmatism: "very different things in different arenas, it turns out." Well DUH!!!!

While the Bush years exemplifies the folly of saying, we will use a core set of principles to approach everything -- we see how well that worked out -- it is not just that his principles were wrong. It is that that approach is wrong. This isn't to say that we don't make moral judgments. But that experience and evidence matters and effectiveness matter as well. In other words, a little less righteousness, a little more data.

There even may be a generational aspect to this, which MacGillis is missing. People younger than the Baby Boomers may be fatigued by the Culture Wars that characterized that generation over the past several decades. Perhaps it is time for a new approach -- methodical empirical problem-solving.

*It's interesting to note that false dichotomies were one of the critiques of philosophy by pragmatists:
Dewey, in The Quest For Certainty, criticized what he called "the philosophical fallacy": philosophers often take categories (such as the mental and the physical) for granted because they don't realize that these are merely nominal concepts that were invented to help solve specific problems. 

Bruce Reed hits the nail on the head in Slate with his article "Binge, don't purge: With Specter's switch, Democrats should heed the lesson the GOP forgot: An open mind is a terrible thing to waste.".

Democrats should take that lesson to heart. This morning, prominent bloggers Chris Bowers and Markos Moulitsas greeted Specter with considerably less than a Hallmark welcome. Bowers complained that the switch "doesn't help progressives at all" and called Specter "the Democrat Most Deserving of a Primary Challenge." He failed to note the obvious irony in pushing Democrats to adopt the very strategy conservative ideologues had used to send Specter running into our arms: a concerted campaign to purge nonideologues who dare to buck orthodoxy or express occasional dissent. [my emphasis]

...

Two years ago, pro-choice advocates tried to persuade Harry Reid and Democratic Senate Campaign Committee Chair Chuck Schumer not to endorse Casey, a pro-life Democrat. Reid and Schumer told them Casey would be the strongest candidate to oust Republican incumbent Rick Santorum. They were right: In a state John Kerry won by just 51 percent to 49 percent, Casey walloped Santorum by more than 17 points.

...

If voters are forced to choose between a party of narrow minds and a party willing to listen to different points of view, they will make the same judgment as Arlen Specter: Open minds beat closed ones every time.

There's a good lesson here for liberals:

We should embrace pluralism and diversity, even as we uphold our core values, such as individual dignity and social responsilibity.We can agree to disagree, and the dialogue of diverse views makes us stronger, not weaker. 

The purists think that strength comes in sameness, from getting rid of those that disagree. I don't. America proves otherwise, and the current big Tent of the Democratic party does too. And liberalism is in fact about respect for viewpoints, unlike the much more authoritarian GOP. We disagree most of the time. That's a good thing.

In today's Washington Post, Michael Scheuer trots out the usual argument about the "ticking timebomb scenario":

In surprisingly good English, the captive quietly answers: 'Yes, all thanks to God, I do know when the mujaheddin will, with God's permission, detonate a nuclear weapon in the United States, and I also know how many and in which cities." Startled, the CIA interrogators quickly demand more detail. Smiling his trademark shy smile, the captive says nothing. Reporting the interrogation's results to the White House, the CIA director can only shrug when the president asks: "What can we do to make Osama bin Laden talk?"

Let's pretend that this 0.0001% scenario -- which has never occured -- happens and that the US captures a top Al Qaeda member who has fresh info on a pending attack.

1.We wouldn't know that there was a pending attack. Scheuer's scenario is a joke: OBL would not say a word until it was over. A child could poke holes in this. Without being handed gifts of crucial intel by captives, we would be guessing. We might be wrong, and would likely (99% of the time) be torturing someone who doesn't know of a pending attack.

2. Even if we know, the enemy would simply lie. If tortured, they would lead you on a wild goose chase to the wrong location, the wrong city, and the bomb would go off anyway somewhere you hadn't evacuated. Indeed, if OBL tells us that within one hour, NYC will be destroyed, we would have to worry that this is misinformation meant for us not to evacuate DC. The incentive for the terrorist to lie and achieve success in their plot is immense. They are willing to die.

So, even though the terrorist would simply lie to us, the pro-torture camp is willing to destroy the ideals of our nation because of this one immature, paranoid fantasy. 

But wait, there's more! 

• Opportunity costs: How many valuable man-hours was wasted following up lies, and what is the opportunity cost of missed real leads? 
  
• How do you know it's really a terrorist? Innocent people could be tortured. Scheuer cleverly uses someone who is obviously a terrorist. But in real life, we might not know. The injustice of torturing someone who doesn't know anything or is the wrong person is grave.
  
• Our soldiers will be tortured. Get ready for American soldiers being waterboarded, and the video probably being uploaded to the internet. Worse still, we won't be able to complain and the world will feel little sympathy.
• We lose the moral highground and 'soft power' which buys us cooperation and respect around the world. Being respected means fewer people are motivated to attack us, and people are more likely to inform on people who might.
• (And this last one might not convince hardcore torture fans, but allow me to get on my soapbox.) We forget what we are fighting for and who we are as a nation. We once prosecuted Axis powers for their cruelty and abuses. How sad that some want us to adopt their methods. I thought the reason we fought Nazis and Communists was because they were evil, and not just because they were rivals. People fought and died for our freedoms and for our civilization and ideals.
  

Now how much would you pay for the "benefits" of letting yourself be duped by terrorists??

I also note that Wikipedia has an entry on this fallacy (perhaps some intrepid WaPo editor could have Googled it?)

Some human rights organisations, professional and academic experts, and military and intelligence leaders, have absolutely rejected the idea that torture is ever legal or acceptable, even in a so-called ticking bomb situation.^{[1] [4]} They have expressed grave concern about the way the dramatic force and artificially simple moral answers the ticking bomb thought-experiment seems to offer, have manipulated and distorted the legal and moral perceptions, reasoning and judgment of both the general population and military and law enforcement officials. .....They believe that simplistic responses to the scenario may lead well-intentioned societies down a slippery slope to legalised and systematic torture. They point out that no evidence of any real-life situation meeting all the criteria to constitute a pure ticking bomb scenario has ever been presented to the public, and that such a situation is highly unlikely.

The distorting and misleading nature of the scenario is in part due to the fact that it is most often presented in a manner that keeps many of its assumptions hidden. Once exposed, it becomes clear that the scenario is either wildly unrealistic or that any exception to the prohibition of torture would be much more widespread than the proponent of the scenario originally suggested. The scenario thereby manipulates moral and ethical judgment by obscuring the true moral cost of tolerating any act of torture.... 

For instance, it is asked whether torture would be limited to suspects, or whether one could torture the family and friends of a suspect to make him compliant. According to John Yoo (the former Department of Justice official who wrote memos justifying President Bush's policies on torture) this would be legally permissible, including crushing the testicles of the person's child to obtain information.^[6] If we imagine that officials might attempt to justify torture of people whose phone numbers happened to be in a suspect's mobile phone or agenda-book, in their desperation to find useful information, the range of possible victims of "ticking bomb" torture becomes much wider.

Another point is the notorious unreliability of the information gathered, e.g. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi.

Pretty grim stuff -- torturing children of terror suspects. But according to the "ticking timebomb" spinmeister's logic, it is probably only a matter of time before the US is torturing children -- hey, if it saves New York City? If it's Osama Bin Laden's child and would get him to "talk", why not? How about it, Scheuer? Are you going to own the full implications of your argument?

Clearly, the only real "ticking timebomb" is this failed argument, which leads us down a dangerous and disturbing path.

The only question remaining is simply why is our media culture so intellectually inept that they can't poke holes in this very flawed argument, and perpetuate a fallacy that has been debunked so thoroughly?
 
(Also see also Mark Danner's opposing view in the same paper.)

Please let me know what you think. If you enjoyed this article, please recommend it. Thanks. Crossposted to Daily Kos

Malkin and other righties were 'outraged' yesterday at the DHS report on domestic and rightwing extremists. Never mind that it was a year in the making (75% of that would presumably have been under Bush, a Republican last time I checked).

But what's interesting here are the ironic parallels to the debate over Islamic extremists a few years ago:

• Post-911, conservatives castigated 'moderate Muslims' for not loudly denouncing the radicals preaching hate in their midst, and said that their silence encouraged the extremists implicitly.
• Conservative bloggers who, a few years ago, were trolling around MEMRI for examples of Islamist "hate speech", now claim that their YouTube snippets are "taken out of context".
  
• Today (as well as in the past, such as the 1990s militia movement), we have conservatives who do not loudly denounce the copkillers, the mass shooters, the racist hate groups, the anti-government militia types, in their own midst and among their listeners.
• Instead, we get something like what we heard from Palestinians and other Arab Muslims after 9/11: "Of course it's too bad that all those people were killed. But they do have a point!"
• And we have the same dynamic of radical speech leading to radical actions, with plausable deniability: Glenn Beck can claim that he wasn't advocating the shooting of police when he told listeners about 'FEMA concentration camps' and other conspiracies, like that 'Obama is coming for your guns'. ("Because he will slowly but surely take away your gun or take away your ability to shoot a gun, carry a gun. He will make them more expensive; he'll tax them out of existence. He will because he has said he would. He will tax you gun or take your gun away one way or another. ")
  
• Michelle Bachmann can claim that "armed and dangerous" was figurative. Just like radical clerics preaching hate didn't actually blow up anything.When that Saudi cleric, or better yet, Ahmadinejad, says that Israel should be "wiped off the map", I guess that's a figure of speech as well.
  
• So my question to these domestic terrorist sympathizers -- Beck, Bachmann, Malkin, Savage, Hannity -- is exactly which part of the Pittsburg shooter or church killer's views do you disagree with?  These domestic terrorists claim to be followers and fans of your views. So where do you part ways? Do you just disagree with their means, or are they correct in advocating "killing liberals" and the "government taking their guns" and so forth?

I think we need to ask this question of the people who seem to mostly agree with the views of domestic terrorists. Their views of the government seem not that far apart from a Jim Adkisson or a Timothy McVeigh. Are we hearing the same old excuses? "Of course I am against violence, BUT ...." (There's always the "but") And then they proceed to blame the government for causing the killers to have to kill.

So rightwing pundits, do you think that the domestic terrorists who agree with your views "have a point"? What's the difference between rightwing pundits and their radicalized followers, and fundmentalist Islamist preachers and their radicalized followers? 

I saw this topic on a local DC tv station's website, and it kind of made me think -- does the deliberate paranoia the rightwing creates for political purposes lead to real violence? In the Pittsburgh shooting where three police were killed, apparently the killer thought that Obama wanted to take his gun. Now where would he get an idea like that?

http://cfc.wjla.com/forums/viewmessages.cfm?Forum=47&Topic=58174

3/21:  Michele Bachmann says in a radio broadcast that she wants people "armed and dangerous"

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/23/bachmann-armed-and-dangerous/

Gunman Kills 4 in Oakland, Calif.

http://californiabeat.wordpress.com/2009/03/21/lone-gunman-kills-3-oakland-policemen-leaves-one-in-grave-condition-in-brazen-daylight-shooting-spree/

3/29:  8 shot and killed at a nursing home

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/03/29/nursing.home.shooting/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

4/3:  14 Shot and Killed in Binghamton, NY

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/04/04/binghamton.shooting/index.html?iref=topnews

4/4:  5 Shot Dead in Pittsburgh, PA

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30043893/

Now, some of these shootings are unrelated of course, but what if one of them is not? We regard Bachmann as a clown-like figure of fun, but there might actually be some unstable people who take her nonsense seriously. This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened either. The 1990s anti-government bile that the rightwing was spewing came back to haunt them in the form of Timothy McVeigh terrorism.

What's remarkable today is how no one, least of all the media, has the courage to denounce Bachmann's incendiary, and terroristic, remarks. You can't make a joke about a bomb in an airport, but Bachmann encourages paranoid violence against the government in an era when we have deadly shootings one after another -- and gets away with it. To quote another rightwing blowhard, "Where's the outrage?"