Osborne Ink || News that's fairly liberal, but never unbalanced.

This video looks at the last decade of debacles in the context of the century-old progressive movement and the reactionary response to the progressive victory of 2008. It also features the metal sound of Séance Fiction, so turn your speakers up as loud as you dare.

There’s a lot going on this morning. Radio Netherlands is reporting the Supreme Jurist of Iran has ordered his plane prepared in case he must flee the country. Just so we understand, Khamenei never leaves the country — it’s part of the mystique that gives foreign leaders such a thrill in visiting that country.

Khamenei is caught between the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, he needs a political compromise to end the crisis; on the other hand, he’s left himself no political room for compromise. The Greens are increasingly vocal about his removal. While I doubt he’s ready to flee the country like the Shah (we are very nearly on the anniversary of that event), it definitely makes sense that he’d have the plane dusted off and fueled up.

A word of caution before celebrating all this: it’s just possible the military could step in with a bloody coup, but unlikely. If the regime does fall, it will be interesting to see whether guards and pasdaran leaders flee the country as well.

Obama signed an executive order yesterday setting new rules for when government agencies can classify documents. According to NPR, the measure includes some important transparency rules and will declassify hundreds of millions of documents.

Because he’s, you know, just like Bush.

ADDING: He also signed needle exchange into law last week. That’s huge, because it puts science back into drug policy for the first time ever. Needle exchange is proven effective against HIV and provides opportunities to offer treatment to addicts.

So I’m reading about the electronic backtrail of Mr. Abdulmutallab, who attempted to blow up an airplane with a bomb stuffed in his underwear, and found this at the very end:

Still, some of Farouk1986’s writings offer a hopeful tone. He writes about expecting to get over his loneliness when he attends university classes and joins local Islamic groups. He discusses television and soccer, but at one point gets upset after another person posts a sarcastic remark about soccer loyalties.

“I had butterflies going through my stomach reading that,”Farouk1986 wrote. “I acted hypocritically? May Allah forgive me for that. I’m very sorry. Now i feel all bad. Maybe its time to say bye bye to this thread. I’m sorry if i offended anyone. Please all should forgive me.” (Emphasis mine)

Hypersensitivity + isolation + maladaptation to globalization + sexual repression = vulnerability to indoctrination. Abdulmutallab is the poster child for terror recruitment. Which brings me to this item:

(CNN) — The man who allegedly lit an explosive on board a U.S.-bound international flight deserves none of the constitutional protections afforded American citizens, a former top Bush administration official said Monday.

Tom Ridge, who served as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security from 2003 to 2005, made the comments on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”

“I take a look at this individual who has been charged criminally, does that mean he gets his Miranda warnings? The only information we get is if he volunteers it?” Ridge said. “He’s not a citizen of this country. He’s a terrorist, and I don’t think he deserves the full range of protections of our criminal justice system embodied in the Constitution of the United States.”

Abdulmutallab claimed to have been instructed by al-Qaida to detonate the plane over U.S. soil, said a U.S. law enforcement official. But others cautioned that such claims could not be verified immediately. Another official said the U.S. had known for at least two years that that the Mutallab could have had terrorist ties and was on a list that includes people with known or suspected ties to a terrorist organization.

Ridge also said he was “not surprised” about reports that two former detainees in the detention center at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had joined up with the group that claimed responsibility for Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab’s failed terrorist attack.

“It’s a symptom of a larger challenge that this country has, and that’s how do you adjudicate these individuals that we pick up from these places and make a determination if they should be incarcerated for a long time, if not permanently,” he said.

Right! Because harshness works SO WELL. The men in that Yemeni al-Qaeda video claiming responsibility for Abdulmutallab’s attack were released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 after being held in Gitmo for more than five years of useless, stupid torture. Do you think they were maybe radicalized by the experience just a tiny little bit?

Here’s what you do with Abdulmutallab: you put him in a jail cell. A regular, old-fashioned one. you question him. You try him and convict him for the actual crime he has actually committed. Then you leave him to rot in prison for as long as the sentence lasts. When his sentence is finished, you deport him.

You treat him according to the laws, because the laws are what makes us America. You don’t throw out the laws and make up new ones in secret just because you’re afraid. And instead of demonizing him, you see him for what he actually is: a frustrated, lonely young man full of guilt at his good fortune who is now only too happy to talk because he’s the center of attention.

The organization behind the Tea Party Express spends two-thirds of its money on “services” provided by the astroturf moguls behind it. From TPM:

Our Country Deserves Better (OCDB) spent around $1.33 million from July through November, according to FEC filings examined by TPMmuckraker. Of that sum, a total of $870,489 went to Sacramento-based GOP political consulting firm Russo, Marsh, and Associates, or people associated with it.

OCDB, which built the Tea Party Express, is essentially a Russo, Marsh creation, as we’ve detailed. The PAC’s site was registered in July 2008 by Sal Russo, the firm’s founder. That site also lists Russo as the PAC’s “chief strategist.” Tea Party Express fundraising emails, sent by OCDB and obtained by TPMmuckraker, come from another Russo, Marsh employee, Joe Wierzbicki.

With Dick Armey making $200 an hour at FreedomWorks, it’s plain the whole teabagging fad was a scheme to keep Republican operators in clover. Which is why it has taken control of the party, and also why the rabble they roused now complains that “their” movement has been hijacked.

In truth, it was never their movement. It was an artificial creation, a Frankenstein monster. The object was to keep the Republican party alive and relevant. To pay for it, the GOP gave their contributors a solemn oath to stop the most progressive president since FDR or LBJ (which is a setting a fairly low bar). This new, greener America would not happen.

Not that they are always against recycling. In the 1950s, the John Birch Society declared the Civil Rights movement a communist plot to turn the southeastern United States into a new, black country. Change the color to brown, the direction southwest, and you have the present day rhetoric of latter-day John Birchers among the “minutemen” movement. Change the color to green, and you have Teh Watermelon Principle™: “enviroweenies are green on the outside and red on the inside!”

Birchers also said President Eisenhower and Martin Luther King were communists, and that water fluoridation was a communist mind-control conspiracy. If that, too, sounds familiar, it’s because the same wacky fantasia has been recycled for a new era — and even by the exact same people.

John Birch Society co-founder Fred Koch also created the second largest family business in America. His sons have inherited both his business and his politics; the Koch Family Foundation supports dozens of right-wing “charitable” organizations. In turn, these intermediaries fund FreedomWorks and Americans For Prosperity, the fake-grassroots (“astroturf”) organizers of the tea party “movement.”

Another is the Objectivist Society, a cult grown up around the science fiction novels of atheist, abortion advocate, and social Darwinist Ayn Rand. In February 2009, Objectivist and CNBC commentator Rick Santelli made a bizarre, on-the-air rant from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Santelli had gotten the “tea party” idea from Illinois Libertarians and a young man named Eric Odom.

Now an official GOP tool, at the time Odom had most recently worked for the Sam Adams Alliance. Take note of his job responsibilities:

Shortly before online activist Eric Odom helped kick-start the Tea Party movement, he was new media director for Sam Adams Alliance. This put him in charge of (among other things) setting up websites, coordinating Facebook groups, managing Twitter accounts and other social networking tasks. Odom’s first known acts as a Tea Partier were to set up the OfficialChicagoTeaParty.com site and Facebook pages within hours of Rick Santelli’s February rant, then spreading word through Twitter, initially utilizing #TCOT, a Twitter list and hashtag for Top Conservatives on Twitter.

Odom waited until Santelli’s rant before unveiling the first of dozens of Koch-funded, Objectivist-schwag peddling websites praising Santelli and declaring the existence of a movement. He didn’t even bother to remove the astroturf fingerprints:

Most website creators are excited when a new website goes live, especially if it is related to a cause that they are passionate about, but Odom didn’t post his new website to his Twitter feed until 10:35 PM. He was coy with his followers, imploring them to “wait for Santelli” three times, saying his people were in discussions with Santelli, before posting, “#Dontgo Movement is putting together a Chicago Tea Party Planning Committee http://officialchicagoteaparty.com #optwtp.”

Odom did make sure to promote the new Tea Party Facebook page, “Make sure you join this Facebook group. It has the RIGHT orgs running it.” Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity (an organization funded, at least in part, by the infamous Koch family of Koch Industries) is listed as the Creator.

Throughout the year, FreedomWorks and AFP used those websites to spread talking points and strategies of town hall disruption. In need of both media coverage and a unifying theme, the tea party project moved to Faux Noise. September 2009 marked the first time a cable “news” network has ever sponsored a Washington protest.

Glenn Beck, the Fox News point man for teabagging, is a fan of John Bircher screeds and frequently brings Birchers on as guests. Beck works for Roger Ailes, a longtime Republican campaign operative responsible for some of the most disgusting racist attack ads ever made. Ironically, the network owner is far closer to actual Chinese communists than Obama is to the imaginary ones on Beck’s chalkboard.

Anyone who would serve such a beast has earned names of scorn and ridicule.

Know who else wants to kill the bill? The GOP. They’re so anxious to do it that they’ll spend the next few years campaigning on it:

In an email to the Huffington Post, Alex Conant, a former RNC press secretary and an adviser to possible 2012 candidate Tim Pawlenty, said that while Republicans will push their own health care reform agenda in upcoming elections, they also plan to run on a promise to nullify what Democrats are poised to pass.

“Republicans see last week’s health care vote as a top issue in the 2010 campaign,” wrote Conant. “As for the repeal, Republicans have a truck full of ideas on how to expand access, improve quality, and lower costs. I’m sure there will be some focus on repealing provisions of the Democrats’ plan, but the most pressing issue will likely be addressing health care costs and lowering the financial toll this bill will have on taxpayers. Republicans will certainly campaign on repealing $500 billion of tax increases for a bloated government-run health care.”

Leaving aside the hilarious suggestion that Republicans have any ideas besides pulling large numbers from their assholes and using the words “government” and “tax” in the same sentence, one has to wonder why the Republicans would be so anxious to undo this massive sellout to our corporate-fascist oligarchs. I mean, that was Teh Evil Plan™ that Rahm and Obama cooked up, right?

Republicans are denouncing this “sellout” as “government-run” health care because it kind of is. The bill essentially turns health insurance providers into public utilities. But that is not good enough because the public option isn’t in the bill now, even though we can pass one later. We should use reconciliation to push through a messy bill with a half-life now rather than pass a fair bill now and change it later.

I note the Democrats see fixing the bill this as a signature issue for future elections. While it might seem counterintuitive, it is nonetheless true because the GOP will be working for repeal. Progressives have every reason to want to see this bill succeed, even if it isn’t the most singularly progressive bill in American history.

WASHINGTON — A new government report on medical costs paints a stark picture for President Barack Obama, who is expected to call for a health care overhaul in a speech Tuesday night to a joint session of Congress.

Even before lawmakers start debating how care is delivered to the American people, the report shows the economy is making the job of reform harder.

Health care costs will top $8,000 per person this year, consuming an ever-bigger slice of a shrinking economic pie, says the report by the Department of Health and Human Services, due out today.

As the recession cuts into tax receipts, the giant hospital trust fund run by the federal Medicare program for the elderly is running out of cash more rapidly, and could become insolvent as early as 2016, the report said. That’s three years sooner than previously forecast.

At the same time, the government’s already large share of the nation’s health care bill will keep growing.

Programs such as Medicaid, the federal program that aids low-income people, are expanding to take up some of the slack as more people lose job-based coverage. And baby boomers will soon start reaching 65 and signing up for Medicare. Those trends together mean that taxpayers will be responsible for more than half of the nation’s health care bill by 2016 — just seven years from now.

Usually, there are just two shots in a developing news story. CNN viewers watched the guy in the bomb-proof suit walk up an Airbus jetway about five thousand times the other day while speculation interviews took up airtime.

But there has been a lot less repetition in their coverage of the protests in Iran. As the night crew talks on the topic with amazing depth for latter-day cable news, dozens of videos play over their shoulders.

Warning: this is graphic video of two men being rescued from hanging, and the resulting firefight.

This one shows Iranian police trying very hard not to start a confrontation while protesters rally them over to their side:

Khamenei is in the horns of a dilemma. He must find a compromise, but his absolutist position won’t allow compromise. Unless, of course, Ahmadinejad goes too far, in which case it is possible for the Supreme Jurist to throw him under the bus.

Ahmadinejad may, in fact, go too far. A nephew of the opposition leader-who-is-not-a-leader was killed this weekend along with four other demonstrators. The cult of martyrdom has renewed the same cycle of revolution it followed in 1979: a funeral (Montazeri’s) has led to a protest, protesters have been killed, and now there will be more funerals and more demonstrations with more protesters killed, leading to further demonstrations.

The Basijis are being overwhelmed. Police units are unwilling to attack crowds. Ultimately, Iran’s Green Revolution may come down to whether the guards and pasdaran forces are willing to open fire on crowds; if it comes to that, Ahmadinejad may find himself on a plane to Mexico like Pahlavi.

But what I found so fascinating was the CNN host’s statement that asked, “why are we not reporting from Iran? because we’re not allowed there.” Ahmadinejad has thrown out the reporters, but it hasn’t stopped the world’s video feed.

Harry Reid wouldn’t commit to a public option this summer. By the time he was ready to put forth a bill for consideration, he’d included one.

We’re farther along than we’ve ever been. I don’t want to start over, I want to move on.

China is betting long on green, but also disturbing strategic planners in the way Germans and French played brinksman with coal and iron once upon a time, and Russia does with gas and oil. The irony is that these green metals have been mined in the most polluting of ways:

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a draft plan last April to halt all exports of heavy rare earths, partly on environmental grounds and partly to force other countries to buy manufactured products from China. When the plan was reported on Sept. 1, Western governments and companies strongly objected and Ms. Wang announced on Sept. 3 that China would not halt exports and would revise its overall plan. But the ministry subsequently cut the annual export quota for all rare earths by 12 percent, the fourth steep cut in as many years.

Here’s hoping China exercises quotas wisely. It would be a terrible irony to have a war over green tech.