Sunday News and Views: The Week That Changed Everything?

Warren Hern of Boulder, CO: Is he the last abortionist?

Good Morning Conflucians!!!

It has been quite a week in U.S. politics. So far, it doesn’t seem to have registered with the DC Dems that everything has changed. We can only hope that they will slowly wake up to the new realities in time to prevent the Republicans from completely taking over Congress and the White House in the 2010 and 2012 elections.

With all the upheaval over the Scott Brown’s defeat of Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts special election for the Senate seat vacated by Ted Kennedy, we at TC barely took note of the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade on Friday. Maybe that is because quite a few of us believe that Roe will soon either be overturned completely or that abortion will effectively become unavailable to many women because of the anti-abortion language in the health insurance bill.

Politico talked to some pro-choice activists who are feeling very negative about Roe’s chances in the light of this week’s SCOTUS decision that allows corporations to make unlimited contributions to political candidates.

The Supreme Court’s ruling Thursday overturning a ban on corporate political spending that had been in place for more than a century has left abortion-rights supporters jittery that the justices could be similarly prepared to upend the landmark Roe v. Wade decision the court handed down 37 years ago this week.

“Yesterday’s Roberts court decision, which exhibited a stunning disregard for settled law of decades’ standing, is terrifying to those of us who care deeply about the constitutional protections the court put in place for women’s access to abortion,” said Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “We are deeply concerned. … Yesterday’s decision shows the court will reach out to take an opportunity to wholesale reverse a precedent the hard right has never liked.”

“It is worrisome beyond the direct impact of yesterday’s ruling on election law,” said, Jessica Arons, the director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress. “It’s certainly cause for concern.”

At the Guardian UK, there is a very disturbing interview with “The Last Abortionist.”

Warren Hern is no ordinary doctor. He has lived under siege for 25 years, and seen eight of his colleagues assassinated. Even some of his own patients want him dead. John H Richardson meets the last late-term abortionist in America

Here is a sample of what Hern had to say to Richardson:

“People don’t get it,” he says. “After eight murders, 17 attempted murders, 406 death threats, 179 assaults, and four kidnappings, people are still in denial. They say, ‘Well, this was just some wingnut guy who just decided to go blow up somebody.’ Wrong. This was a cold-blooded, brutal, political assassination that is the logical consequence of 35 years of hate speech and incitement to violence by people from the highest levels of American society, including but in no way limited to George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, Bill O’Reilly, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Reagan may not have been a fascist, but he was a tool of the fascists. Bush was most certainly a tool of the fascists. They use this issue to get power. They seem civilised, but underneath you have this seething mass of rabid anger and hatred of freedom that is really frightening, and they support people like the guy who shot George – they’re all pretending to be upset, issuing statements about how much they deplore violence, but it’s just bullshit. This is exactly what they wanted to happen.”

In the wake of Republican Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts, the White House is beefing up its political operation, bringing back campaign operatives to bolster Obama’s permanent campaign. No word yet on whether any of these operatives give a flying f*ck about actually producing some policy changes that might attract votes from out here in the real world.

Meanwhile, a new Washington Post poll shows that voter anger in Massachusetts was in fact largely related to unhappiness with the bad health care “reform” bills currently being squabbled over by the House and Senate.

Sixty-three percent of Massachusetts special-election voters say the country is seriously off track, and Brown captured two-thirds of these voters on Tuesday. In November 2008, Obama won decisively among the more than 80 percent of Massachusetts voters seeing the country as off-course.

Nearly two-thirds of Brown’s supporters say their vote was intended at least in part to express opposition to the Democratic agenda in Washington, but few say the senator-elect should simply work to stop it. Three-quarters of those who voted for Brown say they would like him to work with Democrats to get Republican ideas into legislation in general; nearly half say so specifically about health-care legislation.

Time Magazine’s Karen Tumulty writes that the poll closely reflected the voter anger she observed when she covered the story on the ground in Massachusetts earlier this week. Villager Tumulty was stunned to learn that voters actually had been following the ins and outs of negotiations over the legislation.

The deal now known as the “Cornhusker Kickback” may have been one of the biggest blunders in modern political history. Normally, you’d be surprised if people in Massachusetts even know who the Senator from Nebraska is. But the number of people I talked to who brought up Ben Nelson’s name, unprompted, was striking. I’m also told, by some who were doing phonebanking, that they got an earful about it over and over.

Voters I talked to also brought up the deal with labor. How come, they wanted to know, that everyone has to pay this “Cadillac Tax” on high-cost insurance plans except for the unions, who get a five-year exemption? People are so disgusted by the process, I think, that they have ceased to believe that there is anything in this bill for them.

In my day-after-the-election interview with Scott Brown, he put his finger on it as well [names added for clarity]:

Tumulty: As you listen to people talk about the health care bill, what is your sense of what they object to? Is it what is in the bill, or the process of putting it together?

Brown: Let me ask you a question. What’s in the bill?

Tumulty: Well, I’ve been covering it for a year, so I kind of know.

Brown: What’s in the bill now? What’s the final version of the bill? No one really knows what’s in the bill because every time we turn around, there is a new backroom deal with a carve-out. I’ve read the bills too.

Newly detoxed Obamabot Bob Herbert suddenly can’t figure out why all the other O-bots haven’t sobered up too: They Still Don’t Get It

How loud do the alarms have to get? There is an economic emergency in the country with millions upon millions of Americans riddled with fear and anxiety as they struggle with long-term joblessness, home foreclosures, personal bankruptcies and dwindling opportunities for themselves and their children.

The door is being slammed on the American dream and the politicians, including the president and his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill, seem not just helpless to deal with the crisis, but completely out of touch with the hardships that have fallen on so many.

While the nation was suffering through the worst economy since the Depression, the Democrats wasted a year squabbling like unruly toddlers over health insurance legislation. No one in his or her right mind could have believed that a workable, efficient, cost-effective system could come out of the monstrously ugly plan that finally emerged from the Senate after long months of shady alliances, disgraceful back-room deals, outlandish payoffs and abject capitulation to the insurance companies and giant pharmaceutical outfits.

The public interest? Forget about it.

We’re glad you woke up, Bob, but where we you when we needed you to see through this corrupt crowd–back during the primaries when it would have actually, you know, made a difference?

Back in DC, they definitely don’t get it, even though former Obama cheerleader Herbert finally does. The White House has apparently tasked David Axelrod with making more noise signifying nothing. Axelrod says that Obama is “feeling feisty.”

President Obama is moving swiftly to try to recover from his worst week in the White House, speeding up his schedule for engaging in the 2010 political races and planning to use his State of the Union address on Wednesday to show the public a feisty side, White House senior adviser David Axelrod said in a telephone interview with POLITICO.

He vowed, however, that there will be “no reinventing” of the president, even though “Washington loves a shakeup or human sacrifice.”

“There’s no need to,” Axelrod said. “We’re governing through difficult times. There’s a sense of impatience and frustration about the state of the economy, but also about the nature of how Washington works. That was true in 2008, and it’s true now. The president is as determined to deal with those things now as he was then.”

The Feisty Prez?

Feisty? That sounds pretty weak in light of the multiple emergencies we are experiencing. This crew is every bit as stubborn and arrogant as the guys who worked for Bush II. As for all those campaign promises, another one just bit the dust:

Obama Misses Own Deadline to Close Gitmo

Closing Guantanamo: A Deadline Missed

The administration announced that close to 50 detainees will be held indefinitely at Guantano, even though they have never been charged with any crime and some were turned over to the U.S. in order to get reward money.

Indefinite Guantanamo detention plans condemned

Finally, for a change of pace, here is something to tickle your Sunday funnybone: a new rant from David Michael Green: How to Squander the Presidency in One Year Here’s a taste:

One year ago today, there was real question as to what could possibly be the future of the Republican Party in America. That’s changed a bit now.

And, speaking of ‘change’, the one kind that Barack Obama did actually deliver this year was not that which most voters had in mind after listening to him use the word incessantly, all throughout 2008. Obama and his colleagues have now managed to bring the future of the Democratic Party into question, just a year after it won two smashing victories in a row.

Personally, I’m not real bothered by that. Today’s Democrats are, almost without exception, embarrassing hacks who deserved to get stomped a long time ago.

What really upsets me, however, is what these fools have allowed to be done to the name of progressivism, and to the country.

Barack Obama has now, in just a year’s time, become the single most inept president perhaps in all of American history, and certainly in my lifetime. Never has so much political advantage been pissed away so rapidly, and what’s more in the context of so much national urgency and crisis. It’s astonishing, really, to contemplate how much has been lost in a single year.

What are you reading this morning? Please post links to your recommended stories in the comments.

HAVE A RELAXING SUNDAY CONFLUCIANS!!!!!