http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/party_foul_tea_partiers_eat_their_own_in_bitter_in.php?ref=fpb

TPMMuckraker

Party Foul! Tea Partiers Eat Their Own In Bitter Internal Feud

Zachary Roth | November 12, 2009, 5:08PM

The Tea Party movement is being ripped apart by bitter internal rancor, highlighted by a lawsuit against a former leader, vituperative name-calling, and charges of financial mismanagement and corruption.

As we told you this morning, board members for the Tea Party Patriots (TPP) this week filed suit against Amy Kremer, a former TPP leader who fell out with the group over her involvement with a rival Tea Party faction, the Tea Party Express. And on Tuesday, a judge granted a preliminary injunction, ordering Kremer to return control of the TPP websites to the board, and to stop representing herself as a TPP spokeswoman.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the Tea Partiers' internecine strife. Emails obtained by TPMmuckraker detail how a rogue faction of Tea Party Patriots is lashing out at the board for going ahead with the suit against Kremer, and challenging the board's financial management, triggering a state of acrimony that appears serious enough to threaten the upstart movement's ability to continue to mount an effective grassroots challenge to the Obama agenda -- just days after the House passed the health-care-reform bill that the Tea Partiers view as socialism.

In an email to fellow TPPers sent Wednesday, Gerald Merits called the lawsuit "the single most insane act of self destruction I have witnessed since this country elected Obama," and asked "how much donor money is being spent of (sic) suing Amy?"

For the rest of the day, the email list was consumed with charges and counter charges. In response to Merits, Josh Parker, a supporter of the board, wrote: "Amy created a situation where TPP couldn't do anything BUT sue her, then she goes on with her poor me crap. She brings this on herself and all the rest of us."

At the root of the dispute is the acrimony between TPP and the Tea Party Express, a newer group formed by a team of GOP consultants. Many TPPers sees TPE as inauthentic, calling it the "Astoturf Express," and deriding it as a "Republican front organization." But others -- including Merits -- have flirted with TPE, apparently out of frustration with the TPP's sprawling structure and unwieldy decision-making process. On Wednesday, David McKalip, the Florida neurosurgeon and one-time Tea Party Patriot activist, who found himself in hot water after we published an email he sent showing President Obama as a witch doctor -- addressed a Tea Party Express rally in Orlando.

In Wednesday's email exchange, several other TPPers sided with Merits in raising concerns about the lawsuit. And one, Jack Staver, raised a separate charge against the board, suggesting that board members were being insufficiently transparent about the organization's finances.

Wrote Staver:

How much money does TPP have? How much did we make in DC? Where are the financial statements? Do board members get paid and if so who? Who signs the checks? Where does our money go?

Merits echoed that theme. "Why are the financial records not public knowledge?" he asked. "Show me the money!"

Eventually a Tea Party Patriots loyalist couldn't take it anymore. "Why are you intentionally trying to destroy this movement??" he demanded.

Charges of lax book-keeping -- and worse -- appear to be breaking out across the Tea Party movement. In a separate email written Wednesday and obtained by TPMmuckraker, Matt Perdue, the president of a San Antonio Tea Party group, ripped into the group's treasurer, her husband, and their supporters for conducting a "mass redirection campaign," apparently to line their own pockets using Tea Party donations.

"Where has all this money gone?" asks Perdue. "If there is nothing wrong going on, why has there not been one single piece of paper produced to back up why people got checks, some for $3,000, $7,400+, $4,000, $10,400+??? Where is the documentation? Why isn't the cash deposited like it should be? Why did it take more than two weeks to deposit cash from the meetings?"

Meanwhile, other Tea Party factions are trying to distance themselves from the dispute between Kremer and TPP -- and position themselves to benefit. Darla Dawald, the leader of the Patriotic Resistance, a far-right grassroots group, wrote in a message on the TPP email list that her organization has "not supported any lawsuit or fighting ... but I felt obligated to inform our base what is happening so that you could make an educated decision about your support of the Group called the Tea Party Patriots." Dawald has been a key participant in the bus tour organized by the Tea Party Express -- an effort shunned by TPP.

And Eric Odom, the founder of the Tax Day Tea Party events, wrote in his own message that the acrimony "presents a dangerous situation for the movement as a whole," and urged TPPers to return to "defeating the socialist thugs who seek to destroy our country, not fellow patriots who seek to stop them." We reported that Odom this week launched a political action committee designed to channel Tea Party activism toward an electoral goal.

As Wednesday wore on, the TPP internal email list degenerated into name-calling, sarcasm, and personal attacks. "Jack, you REALLY look clueless right now," Parker wrote to Staver at one point. Parker also ripped Merits for "your usual pissing and moaning without knowing nothing." And Staver deemed Parker "not worthy of a response."

Some TPPers expressed concern that the acrimony could damage the movement if exposed. "Daily Kos and other left wing interest groups are going to love running with this story," wrote one.

Merits appeared to share that concern. "This will go public if we let it drag on long enough and if you don't think this will have a chilling effect on all Tea Party movements raising funds you are living in a world of fairy dust and gingerbread houses," he wrote. "Read my previous emails. If this goes on long enough, we all go down - NOT just TPP and TPE - ALL OF US."

This from the preceding post:

And Dr Collins sees no problem with where aliens might fit in with the belief that man was created in God's image.

"Every creature reflects the goodness and the creativity of God. Humankind, we certainly would argue that we represent that most fully and most completely," he said.

"But all of creation represents God's creativity. So any extraterrestrial being would certainly represent that creativity as well and may be or may not be more developed than we are."

I've long thought that humans make a fundamental mistake in that they arrogantly assume that the universe is all about us. That is why stupid statements like the above are made. We see God as some super human who created a stupendous universe for us to run around sinning in. And, what's more, we are supposedly made in God's image. All the other creatures on this Earth apparently weren't. Only us. Yeah, right. God must be delighted with that one. Think Hitler.

We weren't even around for most of the Earth's history. The first life appeared 4,000 million years ago. Something resembling us (and supposedly God) appeared on the scene 60 thousand years ago. Why did God take so long you may ask? And just when did we acquire a soul? One would think such questions could be easily answered by the men who point to a book written 2,000 years ago for answers. Of course they can't. So I do wonder why they pontificate at such length with such inane garbage that can be easily disproved by anyone who cares to exercise a few brain cells.

Do they really think we're that stupid? Apparently so. I think I need another drink. 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/13/2742484.htm?section=justin

Alien life is possible: Vatican

By Barney Porter for The World Today

Posted 1 hour 35 minutes ago

The Pope's chief astronomer has conceded other intelligent beings could exist in outer space.

The conclusion has been drawn by scientific experts called in by the Vatican to study the possibility of extraterrestrial life and its implications for the Church.

It has been four centuries since the Catholic Church locked up Galileo for challenging the belief that the Earth was at the centre of the universe.

The Vatican's five-day conference attracted 30 astronomers, physicists and biologists, including non-Catholics.

It was led by Jesuit priest Father Jose Gabriel Funes, an astronomer and director of the Vatican Observatory.

Father Funes says the possibility of alien life raises "many philosophical and theological implications" but that the gathering was mainly focused on the scientific perspective.

One of the organisers was Chris Impey, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona.

He says the aim was to assess the most recent research in the burgeoning field of astrobiology - the study of life in the universe.

"And also getting a sense of when you know the vital breakthrough is going to be made, which is the discovery of life elsewhere," he said.

"Because even though we're looking hard we still only know one planet anywhere with life and that's this one."

Breakthrough coming soon

He says that major breakthrough may be just around the corner.

"If you were going to take a set of bets of the 30 scientists gathered for that meeting, I think most of them would have said on about a time scale of 10 years maybe," he said.

That's a guess from the scientists involved and it could come from either of two directions - it could come from a planetary mission within the solar system that looks at one of the most hospitable places for life nearby which is probably Titan, Europa or Mars.

"Or it could come from telescopic observations of planets that we're finding in increasing numbers around distant stars."

But before one starts looking at the concept through Hollywood eyes, professor Impey has another observation.

"I think there's a big distinction between the finding of microbial life, bacteria or something like that which is actually the most likely form of life to discover initially, and intelligent life - sentient beings with technology, and that's a different strategy," he said.

"So I think on the former, on microbial life it's not likely to challenge the world's major religions - but if we find creatures that rival us or exceed us in intelligence, then I think that's going to be very interesting."

Church's positive response

But perhaps not too interesting, according to Dr Paul Collins, a former priest and now Church historian and Catholic commentator.

He says a belief in extraterrestrial life does not necessarily contradict any basic tenets of the Catholic religion.

"I would think that our response would be a positive one," he said.

"I'm not infallible on this of course, but the reality is that I don't think it does contradict anything within Catholicism.

"Essentially what the Christian faith generally is saying and certainly Catholicism specifically is saying is that God is the ultimate source of life, the ultimate source of reality."

The views of the Catholic Church have shifted radically since the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600 for speculating other worlds could be inhabited.

The Vatican Observatory has been at the forefront of efforts to bridge the gap between religion and science and today senior clergy openly endorse scientific ideas such as the big bang theory and evolution.

And Dr Collins sees no problem with where aliens might fit in with the belief that man was created in God's image.

"Every creature reflects the goodness and the creativity of God. Humankind, we certainly would argue that we represent that most fully and most completely," he said.

"But all of creation represents God's creativity. So any extraterrestrial being would certainly represent that creativity as well and may be or may not be more developed than we are."

SELF PORTRAIT THURSDAY!
11.12.09

Yes, finally back.
But all I do is work now, so I don't really have time to make myself look presentable.

This explains why I look so furry and frumpy. I probably haven't shaved in a month.
(My facial hair grows slowly.)

SELF PORTRAIT THURSDAY! 11.12.09

Good news:

Yesterday Ben and I were asked by our old roommate Talena if we could watch Osa the chihuahua this weekend while there is construction done in her new apartment! =)

To celebrate, I'm including some videos of Ben and I spending time with Osa.

This is Ben making Osa sing:

It's fun to make her howl because she purses her lips.
AND she starts to hack/cough like she's a smoker.

But my NUMBER ONE FAVORITE THING to do is this:

I'm still waiting for the day she leaps up and bites me in the face.
But I think she's too sweet for that.

I think I'm more of a dog person now.
I had a bad cat experience at my last apartment with Gordo. He was too needy. Shed too much.  Ate too much, ate when nervous, ate until he vomited. It all made me not want to leave my room.

Dogs are so much better, I think.

In other good news, Ben J. was featured on Daily Candy yesterday!
It is an AMAZING write-up.
I am v. proud.

P.S.
I might do a self portrait later...

http://www.crikey.com.au/

5 . Rundle: a win to Obama, but the Senate battle awaits

Guy Rundle writes:

President Obama has won a first, though hardly decisive, victory in the health care campaign, with the passage of HR 3200, the Affordable Health Care Act 2009, through the US House of Representatives.

Passage of the bill is the first stage in reforming the US non-health care system. Importantly, it contains the all-important "public option" -- a state-owned health insurer which can offer coverage at lower rates than the private carriers, thus forcing their exorbitant premiums down.

Other provisions within the 2000-page bill include a ban on excluding people with pre-existing conditions from health insurance, new controls on provider (ie doctor and hospital) charges, huge funds for integrating and computerising health care records across the country, and much more.

The bill seeks to limit the ballooning cost of health care by making cutbacks in "Medicare" -- the open-ended 65+ public care which half of the "Obamahitler" protestors are covered under -- and bringing in some controls on the ludicrous amounts big Pharma can charge the government for drugs.

However the bill only just squeaked through the House, with a majority of 5.39 Democrats voted against it, and only 1 Republican -- a Vietnamese-American from Louisiana, pretty much the unhealthiest state in the Union -- voted for it.

While getting any sort of a majority is seen as a triumph for speaker Nancy Pelosi -- the vote occurred on Saturday night after a week of near round-the-clock arm twisting -- there were serious misgivings about some of the deals that had to be made.

One in particular, which excluded abortion from public insurance or from any subsidies to private insurance, was an exceptionally bitter pill. Since non-emergency abortion is scarcely available under public provision currently, the amendment does not make coverage any worse, but it now makes termination an even more "special" case than hitherto.

Others are whackier still -- an amendment (supported by Republican Orrin Hatch and previously by the late Ted Kennedy, for negotiating purposes) that allows public funding for spiritual healing -- ie Christian Science intercessionary prayer at $20 a pop.

Mad stuff, but the bill is through, and as Mark Steyn notes -- ruefully -- that's the important thing. To get something passed in the House is further than Bill and Hillary Clinton's 1993 bill got.

Now however, there's the Senate. Pelosi had about 38 Democrats she could lose (with a 77-seat House majority), and some of them were released from the whip, so that their Big Insurance backers can be assured they got their moneys worth, but the Senate is on a knife-edge.

Ted Kennedy hasn't been replaced yet, and slimy Joe Lieberman, who usually votes with the Dems on social issues, has indicated he won't support a bill with a public option in it. He won't even support "cloture", the vote that prevents a filibuster, and allows the bill to go to a simple majority vote.

That leaves the Democrats with, at most, 58-41, against a filibuster, and needing a 60-40 split. Their best bet is to convince Maine's moderate Republican senator Olympia Snowe over, and one or two others from godknowswhere.

But that presumes a 100% Democratic whip, and that looks unlikely, with a half-dozen "blue dog" Democrats having already vowed to vote against a public option.

Should they be able to persuade the Blue Dogs to vote for cloture, and then against the bill, the bill will come to a majority vote and pass around 53-46, and the Blue Dogs' blushes will be spared.

But if they can't get them to yes on that, the Democratic leadership has another option, which is to make them perform an actual filibuster.

Currently, all you have to do to filibuster -- ie to prevent the bill from coming to a majority vote -- is for 41 senators to indicate that they would filibuster it if required.

That removed the need for senators to stay on their feet reading from cookbooks, Dickens, etc, with a series of explicit rules governing their behaviour (no leaning on surfaces, no physical support by other senators, no toilet breaks).

The automatic filibuster dramatically changed the nature of American governance, but by stealth -- the Senate became a de facto supermajority chamber, an inherently conservatising option.

However, at any time, by a simple majority vote, the automatic filibuster can be removed -- and the minority opposition would have to talk the bill out to the end of the current Senate session.

The advantage of this is that the US public would see the filibuster for what it is (the word comes from a dutch word for pirate or 'freebooter'), a mad obstruction tactic being executed by people desperate to hold back change.

Will the Dems go there? Or will they observe what has become a sort of collective Senate alignment against the House - that it is in the interest of all Senators to keep the automatic filibuster, and hence their vastly increased power within the bicamera.

The look-out is that they won't even let the bill come to the floor before the Senate breaks for 'the holidays', as the Christmas season is very multiculturally called. This will allow the Democratic leadership to craft a complex "trigger option" -- one where there is no public option immediately and lowcost health care is provided by non-profit insurance co-operatives effectively, big insurers pool resources to offer more basic coverage at cheaper prices, on a sliding scale that ensures near universal coverage of some description.

The problem with co-ops is that they would have no power to affect the prices health insurers set for their regular premiums so individuals and businesses continue to pay a mozza for cover. Worse, as Alexander Cockburn pointed out in Counterpunch, this would be combined with a mandating system, similar to car insurance, where you would be required to have health insurance -- effectively the state would be holding the gun while Big Insurance picks your pocket. Only in America.

The trigger option would allow for a rollout of a public option if, after three-five years, average premiums had not come down to set levels. Since they wouldn't, this is a public option by stealth. It would allow Republican Senators Snowe and Collins from Maine to support it, and one or two others, while able to save face with their constituents and soft-money corporate donors.

Should that fail, there is a final option, which is to abandon HR 3200, and roll it into the 2010 budget bill as a series of provisions -- it is then subject to a "reconciliation" vote, which is a straight majority in both houses, and guaranteed to pass. The White House could then argue that the will of the people was expressed in the HR 3200 and the Senate obstructed it -- reconciliation is then in the spirit of the original vote. Indeed, that may be the overall game plan.

Whatever the case, HR3200 is an enormous victory, the first serious universal health care bill to get through a House of Congress ever. The Senate will be tough, if not insurmountable, but this has months to run. Quite aside from the manifold improvements any sort of serious bill will offer in American life, it will give Obama a victory he can go back to his base with, and fire them up anew for the Herculean labour of making change in America.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/rupert-cornwell/rupert-cornwell-why-cant-the-us-learn-to-love-its-government-1816868.html

Rupert Cornwell: Why can't the US learn to love its government?

Out of America: Suspicion of rulers dates to the founding of the nation – and even Obama is unlikely to change that

The passions the measure has generated among its Republican opponents have been remarkable. One Republican Congresswoman has declared that health reform was a greater threat to America than Osama bin Laden and global terrorism, while John Boehner, the party's leader in the House, urged the protesters to join Republicans in "defending our freedom".

A neutral observer would not know whether to laugh or cry at this so-called "Super Bowl of Freedom", featuring inter alia a giant banner describing the proposals as "National Socialist Healthcare, Dachau, Germany, 1945". Yes, the tea-party movement, currently touring the country, contains more than its share of cranks and nutters. But the fringes, too, can express political truths. This particular truth is that Americans just can't bring themselves to love government.

When President Barack Obama came to power, the stage seemed set for government activism unmatched in decades. The parallels with the early 1930s were palpable. Talk of a second Great Depression was everywhere, economists were urging a "new New Deal", Franklin Roosevelt was suddenly back in fashion. Nine months on, however, the urgency seems to have vanished. And why this cooling of reformist ardour? True, the economy has improved (though not by much, as evidenced by the news that unemployment last month rose to 10.2 per cent, the highest level in a quarter of a century.) The huge deficits being run up by Washington are also legitimate cause for concern. A more important reason though is America's ancestral suspicion of government.

The governors' elections in New Jersey and Virginia last week, in which Mr Obama's Democrats were soundly defeated, were largely local affairs. But in so far as they sent a message to the party that controls the White House and both chambers of Congress, the message was plain: slow down, the voters said, don't force change down the people's throats. With a young and charismatic President who won power by promising change, it's easy to forget that the US is a conservative country. Mr Obama triumphed in 2008 not by harnessing a vast tide of liberalism, but by persuading the wavering centre that he was a better bet than another four years of discredited Republican policies. In Virginia and New Jersey, exit polls showed, the centrists (moderates, independents, call them what you will) changed their minds and decided to put on the brakes.

A fascinating Gallup survey last month found that despite the Democrats' victories in 2006 and 2008, fully 40 per cent of Americans, more than ever, describe themselves as conservative, while 36 per cent call themselves moderates. Only 20 per cent are avowed liberals. It's not a question of government having failed the country. It's just that Americans aren't comfortable with the beast when its role, as now, threatens to expand – even when the deficiencies of the unfettered free market have never been more glaring.

Mr Obama secured his record-breaking $787bn stimulus package last February, albeit with virtually no Republican support. But that might be it. Yes, the House will probably pass a version of healthcare reform, but the measure could yet founder in the Senate, where party discipline is weaker, and a 60 per cent majority is required to pass anything of significance. If it does fail, it will basically be for fear that the reform amounts to a "government takeover of healthcare". The most contentious part of the bill is the "public option" – whereby a publicly financed scheme would be set up to provide some competition to rapacious private insurers. But that option now hardly dares speak its name. Leading Democrats prefer to speak of a "consumer option".

And health care is but one of three massive public policy issues on the table, beside a green energy programme to combat climate change, and regulation of the financial markets, aimed at preventing a repeat of last year's crisis. But there's no guarantee any of them will get through. For Europeans, all three would be no-brainers: assured health coverage for all (or rather almost all), steps to reduce both pollution and imports of costly foreign oil, and curbs on the excesses of Wall Street. Not so in the US – because each implies a substantial increase in the role of government.

And it has been ever thus. Suspicion of government is as old as the Republic. The movement that turned up on Capitol Hill again last week takes its name, of course, from the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Americans like to see their War of Independence as a revolution against government – back then the far-away government in London that taxed the colonies without allowing them representation – and the habit has never died.

These days, one thing unites every presidential candidate: a readiness to denounce the federal government in Washington and all its works. That the candidate in question might have made a long and comfortable career in that den of corruption and iniquity makes not a scrap of difference. Usually – as now – the sentiment works to the advantage of Republicans, but not always. Sometimes, the beneficiary can be a genuine outsider like the eccentric Texan businessman Ross Perot, who in 1992 came closer to winning the White House than any independent in 80 years. Sometimes it takes on the hyperbolic aspect of the tea-party crowd, and last summer's raucous town-hall protests against health reform. And on occasion it spills over into tragedy, into the raw hatred of Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the federal government building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people.

No one is more aware of how distrust of government is part of America's collective political DNA than Mr Obama. Whether he can tame it is another matter.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/health/policy/08health.html?th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1257678374-pU9Zt054Kuxyn0nfc813hw

Sweeping Health Care Plan Passes House