Please visit Guaranteed Healthcare and write about your healthcare and insurance horror stories.

This morning Paul Krugman writes about health care in the New York Times.

He asks: Can it happen here?

That he must pose such a question is chilling.

That we as a nation continue to have a discussion which revolves around the concept of whether a human being in pain is entitled to be relieved of his suffering is horrifying.

Paul Krugman, writing in Friday’s New York Times, crafts a cautionary tale about the current political landscape.

[T]he debate on energy policy has helped me find the words for something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Republicans, once hailed as the “party of ideas,” have become the party of stupid.

Now, I don’t mean that G.O.P. politicians are, on average, any dumber than their Democratic counterparts. And I certainly don’t mean to question the often frightening smarts of Republican political operatives.

What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”

Ever since the primaries I have not read Paul Krugman as much as I used to.  But his latest column is a must-read.  Krugman explains that Republicans, who once hailed themselves as the "party of ideas," have become the "party of stupid," and he shows, quite depressingly, how their celebration of stupidity could help them keep the White House this year and prevent landslide losses in Congress. If we want to figure out how to defeat the GOP big time in November, Krugman offers some helpful food for thought.

The mortgage crisis still has a ways to go before we even begin to feel its full effects. Not the sort of thing you want to realize when you consider how much bloodletting's been going on already, but them's the facts, ma'am. The subprime meltdown was just the beginning. Deterioration in Alt-A mortgages (which fueled so many Americans buying more house than they could afford, but not nearly as much as they felt they deserved) will hit a wider swath of people, and push many traditionally "creditworthy" folks over the brink.

And unfortunately for them, and the wider economic outlook, these folks will be hit in an environment of shrinking home values, higher interest rates, and tighter credit standards. Which means that far fewer will be able to sell their homes, most will be unable to refinance ballooning mortgage payments into a more manageable loan, and more foreclosures and short sales will add more fuel to the fire. It's all going to spiral downward with wider and wider ripples. Sucks. As Atrios often puts it, "We're all subprime now."

More below the fold, and cross-posted, as always, at The Thorn Papers. Y'all come by now.

Forgive me if someone else has posted this but: Speaking at an early afternoon panel at Netroots Nation in Austin, Texas, today, Paul Krugman predicted, with seeming confidence, an Obama victory in November --but added that "within three months of taking office, no, less than three months" the media would be out to get him, remniscent of the high point of anti-Bill Clinton bashing.

Krugman was responding to a questioner who had stated that the media was "in the pocket" of  the "government."  Krugman pointed out that this was hardly the case when Clinton was in the White House and would be proven again when Obama took over.   "Get  ready for it," he warned.

There isn't much left to announce for our agenda in Austin, but we've at last been able to finalize this, and it's big.  Because when you think about Netroots victories, and "more and better Democrats," they get no better than this:

An integral part of the our movement's growth and sustainability is encouraging activists to take the next step and run for office. We at Netroots Nation aim to recognize Netroots candidates at all levels and shine a spotlight on those who organize and mobilize progressives locally.

So we welcome one of the Netroots' very own success stories, Congresswoman Donna Edwards, who will join us in Austin for a Saturday evening keynote.

With strong Netroots support, the lawyer and longtime community activist defeated 15-year incumbent Albert Wynn in the 2008 Democratic primary, and, following his resignation, won a special election to fill the remainder of his term.

As the first African-American woman to represent Maryland in Congress, she's led the way in pushing progressive values on key issues like net neutrality and the Iraq war, condemning it before it even started. So we're especially proud to recognize her tenacity and leadership during the past year.

And she's equally happy to talk with you -- the Netroots community that was so instrumental in helping to spread her message of change.

Oh, can I add telecom immunity to the list of issues on which Donna Edwards is awesome?

Registration will be closing soon.  So if you want to see Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, Paul Krugman, Harold Ford, Van Jones, Larry Lessig, Digby, John Dean, Richard Clarke, Darcy Burner, Mark Begich, Rick Noriega, Dahlia Lithwick, Ashwin Madia and Donna Edwards, and so many more ... if you want the opportunity to listen to these leaders and thinkers and have them listen to you, then you need to be in Austin next week.  It will be an unforgettable four days.

Register now, and join us at Netroots Nation 2008.

During the campaign, there was a constant theme of backers of Obama being cult-like in their support for their chosen candidate.  

It even reached the talking points of the Paul Krugman's of the world.

I was one of those "cult members" that so many spoke of.  

But today I had an epiphany that made me see the light and the errors of my ways.

Being a newly indoctrined convert I must spread the good news...  

Sisters and Brothers please join me after the jump so we can fellowship amongst each other...

Much as Karl Rove is desperate to spin Wes Clark's honest assessment into campaign fodder for the hapless Republican candidate John McCain. Much as the traditional media has taken the bait like Pavlovian lap dogs, there are wiser heads, including Paul Krugman of the New York Times and Marc S Ellenbogen, UPI International who are standing up to state flatly that Wes Clark told the unvarnished truth about a Republican candidate who is so weak that neither he nor his party can bear it.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has finally produced a column worth reading in the current election cycle.  In his opinion piece entitled "Rove's Third Term", Mr. Krugman has finally converted to the reality that electing a Democratic President is more important than his belief that Hillary would be the best candidate.

His column assails the crap argument that Gen. Wesley Clark's comments were in any way an attack on Sen. McCain's honorable service to our country.

Read on for snippets and analysis...

(Cross posted at the Drexel Dems Blog)

One of the most harmful methods of the uncritical press these last few years (decades?) is the propensity for framing stories as "he said/she said" and thus relieving the "journalist" of his or her obligation to examine the veracity of either sides claims.  Bush and McCain don't lie; Democrats just argue that they lie.  I believe that this aspect of modern political journalism, this artificial objectivity, has been a crucial component of the success of George W. Bush and the Republicans.

Today via Google News Alerts I found this piece from the Boston Globe that is a small example of the problem.

To those who have over the past two days written on, or read about, the findings released on Tuesday by WorldPublicOpinion.org, which revealed that Americans were among the most accepting citizens of the practice of torture for suspected terrorists, my sincere apologies.

For you, there may be nothing to see here, and you are forgiven for clicking the back arrow.

As for me, my thoughts on this poll flitted about my brain last night like moths to a porch light. They would not settle their buzzing until I borrowed time from my sleep to record them.

You know you live in a decadent country when basic facts of life are greeted with jeers and calls for excommunication from the realm like Paul Krugman is getting pilloried for his recent NYT piece on oil price inflation. Here's the deal folks, oil is priced in dollars and to bail out the U.S. banking system America's central bank is flooding the market with record amounts of dollars. What happens when too many dollars chase too few barrels of oil? Well, believe it or not, the price of oil goes up. Now this is not a political statement. This is a statement of fact. Speculators in the oil market (and the agriculture market) are a mere subset of the irresponsible credit expansion crazy people who run the Fed. And yes, the world has hit 'peak oil.' All three of the biggest oil fields in the world are now in decline. Demand for oil is rising toward 100mn. barrels a day, while production has peaked at around 86 mn. barrels a day. Too much money chasing too few barrels means the price goes up. And the Chinese are happy to pay. Seems simple enough...

I have watched with disappointment for months as Paul Krugman, one of my favorite writers, has used his column to question and undermine Sen. Obama's historic candidacy.

Paul Krugman has always been a committed progressive, and one of the true consistent voices questioning the Bush administration even when his approval ratings were stratospheric.

And while I understand Mr. Krugman has had to bare the disappointment of seeing his preferred candidate go down to defeat twice (I believe he supported Sen. Edwards before he dropped out, switching his allegiance to Sen. Clinton) I felt he was egregious in his attacks on the prospective nominee.

In retrospect however, whatever hurt feelings there may be, Paul Krugman has been a light which has helped to guide the progressive movement, and his concerns have all been to ensure we got a President every bit as progressive as we needed.

For this he deserves nothing less than our humble praise, even if it is time for him to come around to seeing what we do in Sen. Obama.

Surprise, surprise:  Naomi Klein writes a piece for The Nation complaining that Obama has spoken in support of capitalism.  Hillary backer Paul Krugman, who didn't originally dislike Obama but has been attacking Obama's campaign since they dared to backtalk him on health care (and who has been rumored for months now to have been promised a plum post if Hillary became president), is still nursing his grudge and shows it in a gloating nyahh-nyahh-told-ya-so reply to Klein.

The funny thing is that neither Klein nor Krugman are exactly 100% in the right on this.  Follow me across the jump for (cue Paul Harvey voice) The Rest Of The Story.

Naomi Klein is complaining that the Most Holy Obamasiah has begun to reveal his true colors now that he has the nomination.

After the two-month long protest in South Korea over its President Lee Myung Bak's decision to allow the importation of U.S. beefs including those from cows over 30 months old at the time of slaughter, the U.S. media are beginning to report that questions of U.S. beefs still remain because U.S. beef safety inspections are not properly done.  Dr. Paul Krugman's June 13, 2008, column, Bad Cow Disease, criticizes with some shocking details that reckless Milton Friedman style free-market economic deregulation damaged the safety and credibility of American food products and a clumsy U.S. diplomacy angered South Koreans during this controversy.  This diary will explain the current situation in South Korea that are not reported by U.S. media.

Today's blog post on Krugman's NYT site shows an old Oliphant cartoon that mocks Hillary Clinton and calls it Sexism. Along with stating that "so-called" progressives are sexist for allowing it to happen

You can see it for yourself here: Krugman's Blog

I often hear left-wingers complain about how right-wingers want to privatize social security and lower taxes on the rich, or I hear right-wingers complain about how left-wingers want to allow women to have abortions and allow gays to get married.  But what both of these groups are complaining about is not right-wingers or left-wingers, but libertarians.  Libertarians are people who want individuals to have more freedom and the government to have less, and that's an ideology that trancends left or right, because libertarian values are both left-wing (gay rights, pro-choice) or right-wing (lower taxes, privatization).  
 The opposite of libertarianism is authoritarianism and that too is both left-wing (let's force people to get health care, let's deny people the right to own a gun) or right-wing (let's deny people the right to burn a flag, let's make it against the law to speak out against the government).