For some reason this morning, I found my attention drawn to Washington D.C. more than to Indiana. So, here are a few things:

Looks like Greg Sargent has himself a meme going, having dubbed Senator Lugar and like minded Senators WINOs which is short for Waverers in Name Only. This, of course, plays on the acronym RINO, an epithet I first saw over at Free Republic for those Republicans who were not pure of heart: Republicans in Name Only. In the case at hand, the WINO caucus includes Senators Susan Collins, Jack Warner, John Sununu, Norm Coleman, Dick Lugar, Pete Domenici and George Voinovich. These are Republicans who more or less acknowledge that the Bush administration’s plan for Iraq has failed but who will not cast a vote or take concrete action to alter the Bush administration’s course.

I’m not going to claim that the Democratic plan is the perfect one. But, in politics, the perfect is the enemy of the good. In any event, to me the main solution is for the Congress to do what it can to wrest control of this debacle from the President. We know that Bush is an incompetent, yet stubborn, failure who will not change course through any amount of persuasion. He has to be compelled. Normally, I’d say that waging war by committee is a recipe for disaster, but it seems worth a shot given how bad President Bush is at the job. Maybe Congress can do better.

In the years of Republican domination, the Democrats took a lot of crap for occasionally blocking or slowing down a Republican measure or two. The Carpetbagger Report has an entry entitled The ‘Grand Obstructionist Party’ which states that there have been 13 cloture votes in the first half of the first session of the Democratically controlled Senate. In comparison, during the last two years of the Republican controlled Senate there were a total of four.

For literally years, Republicans, with a 55-seat majority, cried like young children if Dems even considered a procedural hurdle. They said voters would punish obstructionists. They said it was borderline unconstitutional. They said to stand in the way of majority rule was to undermine a basic principle of our democratic system.

And wouldn’t you know it; the shameless hypocrites didn’t mean a word of it.

Why hasn’t the Democratic Congress had greater success passing legislation in its first six months? Because 239 separate pieces of legislation have passed the House, only to find Senate Republicans “objecting to just about every major piece of legislation” that Harry Reid has tried to bring to the floor.

George W. Bush said that serving any jail time at all would be “too harsh” a punishment for Scooter Libby’s conviction of obstructing justice and committing perjury with respect to an investigation into the burning of a covert CIA Agent’s identity.

Meanwhile, our trading partners in the far east are taking a more aggressive approach to government accountability, at least in one case. Joseph Kahn, writing for the International Herald Tribune, has an article entitled China executes the former head of its food and drug agency.

China executed its former top food and drug regulator on Tuesday for taking bribes to approve untested medicine, as the Beijing leadership scrambled to show that it was serious about improving the safety of Chinese products. . . . China executed its former top food and drug regulator on Tuesday for taking bribes to approve untested medicine, as the Beijing leadership scrambled to show that it was serious about improving the safety of Chinese products.

The story goes on to note that, even by Chinese standards, the punishment was unusually harsh and unusually swift. Recent international publicity concerning unsafe Chinese products probably influenced the process. Recent incidents include tainted dog food, deaths in Panama from tainted cough syrup, and lead paint in Thomas the Tank Engine toys.

Victoria Colliver, writing a column for the San Francisco Chronicle has an article entitled We spend far more, but our health care is falling behind : Australia, Canada, Germany, Britain, New Zealand spend less, serve better. The column is critical of Michael Moore’s new movie, “Sicko” but essentially concedes that the central point is not in doubt. Which, as far as I’m concerned, is fine. Moore is an advocate, not a documentarian. Where he is wrong, advocates for other positions are free to point out the errors. More commonly, where he is incomplete, advocates for other positions are free to fill in the blanks.

But, Moore’s movie brings to mind an anecdote I’ve heard attributed to LBJ, telling his campaign manager to call his opponent a pig fucker. The campaign manager says, “you know that’s not true.” To which LBJ said, “yeah, I just want to make him deny it.” The problem with opponents of Sicko, or more accurately, proponents of the current health care system, there seems to be more than a hint of bestiality with the way things are running right now. The U.S. ranks 37th out of 190 nations in health care services. That puts us ahead of Slovenia but behind Costa Rica. We made our way to the vaunted 37th spot by spending a higher percentage of our gross domestic product on health than any other country. We spend an average of $6,102 per person in public and private funds compared with France, the leader in providing health care to its citizens, which spends only $3,159 per capita. Like I’ve said before, we’re paying for universal health care, we’re just not getting it.

We need to follow the money to see where our dollars are getting wasted. I suspect a large percentage goes to paying for insurance company bureaucracies where the profit motive has created an incentive to take in premium dollars and avoid paying out on claims.

So, folks should feel free to point out Michael Moore’s errors, but they should be prepared to explain why it’s a good idea for us to keep spending twice as much as France on health care and not get nearly the return on our investment.

[tags]health care[/tags]

Zach Wendling at, In the Agora, has a post entitled Why, Again. Mr. Wendling has found a way to explain the inexplicable. Why does the Bush administration do what it does?

They are a highly dedicated and creative troupe of improvisational Surrealist performance artists*. Rather than following some ideological agenda, every aspect of this White House seeks to top the previously held conceptions with ever more outlandish behaviour and policy decisions.

Let’s imagine how this works. The premise: a highly-unpopular President with no political capital is looking for a way to rescue some sort of legacy for his administration. There are many pedestrian themes one could play on to bring this scenario to resolution, but Team Bush came up with the most unexpected: go after the remaining 28% of his supporters and try his best to alienate them. Brilliant!

Bravo, Mr. Wendling. Bravo!

Sen. Dick Lugar gave a speech in which he said that the President’s Iraq strategy was not working.

“In my judgment, the costs and risks of continuing down the current path outweigh the potential benefits that might be achieved,” Lugar, R-Ind., said in a Senate floor speech. “Persisting indefinitely with the surge strategy will delay policy adjustments that have a better chance of protecting our vital interests over the long term.”

Lugar’s statement, in my estimation, is not a big deal. Sen. Lugar has often made accurate statements about Iraq and our policies there. Either shortly before or shortly after the war in Iraq started, he noted that we did not have a good plan for the occupation. However, the occasional critical words aside, I believe Sen. Lugar has given the Bush administration everything it has ever wanted for Iraq. He has given the administration the votes it has wanted and the money it has wanted.

However, [Lugar spokesman Andy] Fisher said the speech does not mean Lugar would switch his vote on the war or embrace Democratic measures setting a deadline for troop withdrawals.

In January, Lugar voted against a resolution opposing the troop buildup, contending that the nonbinding measure would have no practical effect. In spring, he voted against a Democratic bill that would have triggered troop withdrawals by Oct. 1 with the goal of completing the pull out in six months.

Words and persuasion mean nothing to the Bush administration. If you lack power or the will to use it, this administration simply is not going to listen.