The politics outside is frightful

Takin' a break from the blogs. Not readin', not writin' for a while.

It's possible that in my absence "progressives" will grow groupthinkingly dumb, hypocritical, and mean and will fail to provide any meaningful alternative to Reagan-Bush-Bush "conservatism." I guess that's a chance I'll have to take.

"Public option": the mother of all teachable moments

What Bruce Dixon said:

Like the Obama campaign itself, the public option was never more than a brand. It was a container designed to fit our hopes and dreams just well enough and just long enough to close the deal, an empty wrapper, with little or no candy inside.

Then for good measure, as Bruce notes, they take the wrapper away.

From what I've seen on even relatively sane blogs, few seem to be able to recognize and hang onto the moral of this story, that "public option" was a tool — an empty wrapper — for preventing real health-care reform, whether it was in the final legislation or not. Further, the process by which it became the One True HCR Agenda must be understood and changed, lest we pass this way again and again.

Even at Corrente, I've seen a number of posts and comments that characterize Obama's and Congress's not enacting "public option" as if it were a notable point of failure in HCR, when the fail (of course) occurred when real reform was so blithely taken off the table... with nary a peep from the folks with the big megaphones. Sure, one might well note that Obama and Congress didn't even enact "public option." But without precision on our part, we can easily ratify the idea that the lost placebo, the unserved frim-fram sauce is something to be mourned.

The lack of consistent, reliable criticism of that presumably dead policy may allow its resurrection.

Kip Sullivan:

I do think we have to be very clear about the circumstances in which those of us who oppose the Senate bill would retract our opposition. And I hope to high heaven one of those circumstances is not the restoration of the sad little PO in the House bill. I get down on my knees every day and thank God that the PO was stripped out of the Senate bill. The only role the PO has played since June has been to give well-meaning progressives all over America the cover they needed to support legislation that throws hundreds of billions of dollars per decade at the insurance industry, the nation’s most powerful opponent of single-payer.

There are two lessons that I hope people will take out of the health-care reform fiasco:

1. Don't follow leaders. Swell guys and gals pushing crap policy get us... *surprise!* crap policy. Your political and blogospheric heroes might be fooled, they might be chickenshit, or they might have selfish motives. And if they avidly pushed crap policy, insist on truth before reconciliation, before resetting their cred counters back to the max.


2. Watch the parking meters. Crap policy is *surprise!* crap policy. If we know that "public option" is a bunch of hooey on Monday, its failure to pass is just as meaningless on Wednesday.

If I had a dollar for every time an otherwise sensible person got temporary amnesia and reverted to describing "public option" as a real goal or a missed opportunity, I'd be able to buy enough Senators to get us real health-care reform. Hint: a politician who goes around trumpeting the idea that Americans, who pay 2-to-3 times what other countries pay (and get less coverage and worse outcomes), love their insurance companies just may not deserve your policy proxy. But many give it, oh how they give it! Someone who spent the entire Year of Healthcare Reform calling single-payer advocates kabuki players before demanding that single-payer support be funneled through her own organization just may not deserve it, either. Of course, I'm not one of the Serious people, so I could be wrong about that.

Part of the power of clusterfucks, the power of shock doctrining, is the scattering of our bearings.

It's like Oscar Grace says in Body Heat:

We've got more of everything bad since the wave started. It's the crisis atmosphere. People dress different, feel different, sweat more. They wake up cranky and they never recover.... Things are just a little askew. Pretty soon people think the old rules aren't in effect. They start breaking them. Figure no one'll care, cause it's emergency time... time out.

While some exploit such a time, others succumb in subtler ways. Losing narratives, because there's only so much bullshit and pressure one can handle, so much being made to feel uncivil and purist and petty for demanding rationality and fairness.

Sometimes, it's just too hard to hang onto basic facts and essential observations.

Let's cut a corner here or there — like, say, looking the other way when your readers and peers are coronating a president who flagrantly disregards your espoused interests and values.

That's how they wear you down. Convincing you that maintaining clarity and intellectual consistency is for monomaniacs, for losers.

Maybe we could use a few more monomaniacs and losers, if this is what winning looks like.

Note: h/t to Chris Floyd for the subterranian homesick riff.

Paging Mr. Santayana!

This typist, in comments to Chris Bowers:

June 17, 2009:

Chris, with all due respect, you have the wrong frame. The powers that be want you to be begging for a public option, any public option (or for those who need a little caffeine in their weak-tea, a so-called "strong public option").

Will you be doing a post-mortem on...

1. How you, Jane Hamsher, and others got drawn into the "public option" camp, and how to keep yourselves from helping propagate such questionable policy choices in the future?

2. How "public option" became the One True Agenda for health-care reform throughout the cohort of top bloggers, big activist groups, and left-leaning media figures? How did Hacker's paper (and the incredibly shrinking versions of its proposals) / HCAN's agenda become the only game in town?

3. Why you all turned a deaf ear to Obama and Congress's failure to live up to their promises and obligations to conduct an open and transparent process that considers all options? In retrospect does that seem to have been a good idea?

4. Why you all assiduously avoided giving oxygen to stories about single-payer activism -- even doctors, nurses, and ordinary citizens getting arrested to promote substantive health-care reform (which surely would have moved the Overton Window in a beneficial direction)? And why you refused to dignify those who questioned the "public option" agenda? In retrospect does that seem to have been a good idea?

IIRC, Captain E.J. Smith's second regret was not avoiding icebergs

Chris Bowers:

2. We should have pushed to expand Medicare availability, rather than create a new public option. As popular as the public option was in polls, Medicare is even more popular. It is also simpler to explain, and does more to build toward universal coverage through Medicare in the future.

I wish I'd thought of that!

Failure to launch

Isn't the whole point of a kabukijerk the happy ending?

Oh, yeah. That's the kabuki part. There's the, uh, rub.

The hysteresis effect

This l'il trope keeps coming back to me:

Poor people get the short end of the stick, and then you take away the lousy short end, too, just to rub it in.

That's the beauty part of our politics: first they distract everyone with the fool's gold promise of "public option," and then they don't even give you the fricken iron pyrite.

* * *

Note: About the title.

Update: Great minds think alike. Bruce Dixon titles a post " Universal Health Care? We Keep the Candy, But You Can Have the Wrapper. No. Wait. Give Us the Wrapper Too."

Requiem for a phantom

A comment subject-line at Open Left:

Chris: Is there any way to include the public option via reconciliation after this bill passes?

Sadly, such questions persist. Ordinarily sensible bloggers across the leftysphere are ruing the demise of "the" "public option" -- as if it were ever anything other than a cipher of a policy that served as a roach motel for progressive energies.

Spoiler alert: "Public Option" was George and Martha's son in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf."

As Glenn Greenwald said, it was designed to "placate" progressives. And it did, it did!

I don't doubt that Chris Bowers meant well by pushing for it, and he certainly worked very, very hard on it.

Yet, the simple and obvious fact is that "public option" never meant any fixed set of policies, and hence even the most basic questions about it were met with crickets or raised middle-fingers.

Of late, some leading bloggers have even argued that we need to pass something, anything called "public option" because we need a symbol of victory, in lieu of an actual victory.

I'm not sure why enthusiasm for the "public option" placebo necessitated letting slide Obama's, Baucus's, Daschle's, and company's lies about conducting an open and transparent process that considered all options. But the two were somehow inextricably linked. Perhaps it was because "PO" couldn't stand up to being juxtaposed with a meaningful plan that would have garnered attention had the Dems' corrupt process been exposed... and had the buried stories about gutsy citizen action on behalf of single-payer been "given oxygen."

A striking feature of the "PO" strategy was marginalizing and abusing single-payer advocates, who have been painted as pony-seeking purists (and worse) for even wanting a fair hearing for the proven virtues of that approach, if only to establish a meaningful set of goals and Overton Window momentum ahead of whatever compromise might have been in the cards.

It will be convenient to blame this legislative meltdown on Joe Lieberman or Rahm Emanuel or Olympia Snowe. But the journey of a thousand miles starts with facing in the right goddamn direction, and progressives didn't do that.

As John Wooden said, "don't mistake activity for achievement." It's a lesson that "movement" progressives sorely need to learn... and almost certainly won't.

The (presumed) death of "public option" leads to belated moments of clarity

This is your brain NOT on frim-fram sauce.

Once the assumption is made that the symbolic fetish object known as "public option" is off the table, suddenly the critical faculties come back (after a fashion).

One starts asking fundamental questions, instead of dodging them at all costs.

Still, Darcy, nobody likes a purist....

What Mike Gravel and Chris Hedges said

Peaceniks, of course, are unserious:

“Don’t be hoodwinked by Obama going to Dover [Air Force Base] to watch the caskets or going to Arlington to salute the graves, with his snappy salute,” Gravel says. “Adolf Hitler lionized soldiers dying. This is the old idea that it is honorable to die. It is not honorable to die in vain. People died in vain in Vietnam. They are dying in vain in Iraq and Afghanistan. And more people will die in vain because of the leadership of Barack Obama.”

Of course they will.

Close to zero people in this country are capable of recognizing what boundlessly ugly poisoned pap this 2007 utterance of Obama's about American troops was:

“Their sacrifices are never wasted."

Every soldier's death, then, is a good death. Yeah, whatever. It's just the lives of our young men and women and of the people we send them to kill. Vacant and fundamentally heartless platitudes are good enough for 'em, it's constantly made clear.

It's just as well, from our perspective, that there probably is no god. Because s/he couldn't possibly have mercy for a nation that cares not a whit about such thoughtlessness, a smarmy and cynical belief that its soldiers are literally impossible to misuse, that the rightness of their killing and dying is beyond question, and beyond regret.

Chris Floyd on Tony Blair and Barack Obama: masters of war

MLK and Gandhi, without all that sissy shit:

After claiming to be the personal embodiment of King and Gandhi's philosophy of non-violent action, Obama gives the game away with this line: "I face the world as it is." Those other two guys, they were just dreamers, they were unrealistic, they were unserious; they didn't "face the world as it is," they weren't savvy and pragmatic, like me. I have to go to war because I'm a head of state "sworn to protect and defend my nation."

Remember when it was the biggest joke in the world that Sarah Palin didn't know what the "Bush Doctrine" was?

Now Obama's claiming it as his own... and everyone else's!

"I — like any head of state — reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation."

Go read Chris's whole post, which includes a blistering and deeply deserved takedown of that absurd and horrifying quote (which, in the context of the not-so-necessary Af-Pak and Iraq wars, clearly includes unilateral preemption), and much more about both Obama's and Blair's oh-so-charismatic warmongering.

A man. A plan. A canard.

How does a plan for which no one* would ever confirm the # of eligible people achieve the dramatic results that Hacker describes?

Oh, yeah, we're supposed to keep fantasizing about the original "public-option" concept while climbing into bed with a symbolic victory. Whatever gets you through the night... even if it means squandering a generational opportunity for real reform.
___

* Other than President Obama who said less than 5% of Americans would get it -- and who called it a "sliver" of his plan -- and David Swanson who pegged it at about 2%

The know-nothing party

From MoveOn.org's latest e-mail:

Almost no one knows what's in the deal yet—the only thing we do know is that it kills the heart of reform, the public option.

Did we ever know what was in "the heart of reform"?

Irony-be-damned, the missive continues:

It's time for progressives to stop bargaining with themselves.

What a concept!

Same toxicity, great new taste!

With policies that are undifferentiable from Bush's, why is this (emphasis added) a good thing?

I supported Barack Obama. I still do. If I had to vote tomorrow between Obama and Tim Pawlenty, or Sarah Palin, it wouldn’t be a choice that required a whole lot of thought. He’s done some good things. He’s restored some confidence in the United States among foreign leaders.

Well, at least continuing to support him doesn't require a whole lot of thought. That's a plus.

Ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive... all the way over the cliff

SocProf reviews Never Saw It Coming: Cultural Challenges to Envisioning The Worst by Karen Cerulo.

Cerulo describes some essential mechanics of the Age of the Anti-Cassandra, reasons why no one that anybody listens to seems capable of anticipating even the likeliest of negative outcomes.

One who has watched the "public option" fiasco, this year's headlong march into a roach motel of non-policy, can't help but nod agreement at her description of how groups with "fraternal" cultures blind themselves to down-side risks:

In fraternities, criticism is generally smothered through the exercise of power; it is routinely stifled by demands of community loyalty. And in those rare moments when criticism is expressed, it is done in accord with the strictest guidelines.

Cerulo also describes cultural and organizational forms that are more attuned to duly considering potential negative outcomes, reality-based communities like doctors and computer professionals, who headed off potential SARS and Y2K disasters.

Ironically, in our culture, such stories are recalled as needless caution and negativity. When Cassandras are listened to, the payoff is anti-climax. Bo-ring!

In contrast, George W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani became national heroes for standing in the rubble that "no one could have anticipated."

All the incentives in our happy-go-lucky culture seem to accrue to shock doctrinaires, disaster capitalists, and didn't-see-it-coming fratboys. And why not? What could possibly go wrong?

It's (still) the populism, stupid

Noam Chomsky:

So take right now, for example, there is a right-wing populist uprising. It's very common, even on the left, to just ridicule them, but that's not the right reaction. If you look at those people and listen to them on talk radio, these are people with real grievances. I listen to talk radio a lot and it's kind of interesting. If you can sort of suspend your knowledge of the world and just enter into the world of the people who are calling in, you can understand them. I've never seen a study, but my sense is that these are people who feel really aggrieved. These people think, "I've done everything right all my life, I'm a god-fearing Christian, I'm white, I'm male, I've worked hard, and I carry a gun. I do everything I'm supposed to do. And I'm getting shafted." And in fact they are getting shafted. For 30 years their wages have stagnated or declined, the social conditions have worsened, the children are going crazy, there are no schools, there's nothing, so somebody must be doing something to them, and they want to know who it is. Well Rush Limbaugh has answered - it's the rich liberals who own the banks and run the government, and of course run the media, and they don't care about you—they just want to give everything away to illegal immigrants and gays and communists and so on.

Well, you know, the reaction we should be having to them is not ridicule, but rather self-criticism. Why aren't we organizing them? I mean, we are the ones that ought to be organizing them, not Rush Limbaugh.

Arthur Silber:

Over the last several months, at the same time the "health care reform" debate has continued, there has been a great deal of activity by the "Tea Party" movement and much discussion about it. Yet in terms of the issues I have identified, precisely those issues which I regard as of special importance and as holding the still unrealized potential for a "citizens' movement" in our own time, one rarely encounters a careful and measured examination of the concerns and forces that drive the Tea Party protesters. Of particular significance is the lack of attention to how the concerns and motives of the Tea Partiers could easily connect to certain aims of those who consider themselves Democrats or liberals (or progressives).

Yours truly:

If "progressives" can do little better than playing the cultural-superiority card vs. the ignorant Bubbas who are too unhip to know racy associations for the word "teabag" — rather than defending and promoting the economic policies that are proven to be the best answer to recessions and depressions — we're just begging the Republicans to become populist heroes.

Blue party, red face

As I just posted in comments at Tennessee Guerilla Women...

The other day when I went to vote in the primary for the Senator to replace Ted Kennedy, the guy at the polling place looked me up on the registration list and said "Democrat." For the first time, I was embarrassed to be described that way.

* * *

BTW, Congrats to Martha Coakley! I hope she'll prove a whole lot better than most of her peers, in the likely event she wins the election in January.

FYI, I voted for Capuano. I enjoyed that he was not just liberal in the debates, but obnoxiously liberal, and that he's taken lefty votes in Congress when they were nationally quite unpopular. His initial comments on the Stupak amendment gave me pause, and if that flash of party-line willingness to sell out half his constituents — to defend a crap policy not one of the Dem candidates would call out as crap — cost him the gig, I can't complain. It certainly made it a tough vote for me. I've seen Ms. Coakley speak in person, and I see some potential there for her to be a cut-above. Here's, as they say, hoping!

In the meantime, I'll keep struggling with whether I'm doing the right thing to vote for either of these parties, since no matter what, the song remains the same. I'm all ears for alternative ideas.

Say, that is a good question!

In e-mail from Chris Bowers:

Ever wonder why it is so hard to elect good candidates and pass good legislation?

Thanks for asking, Chris!

I think it might be, in part, because of a lack of candor on the part of our "progressive" opinion leaders and their lockstep unanimity in favor of meaningless policy designed to meet the strictures of political insiders.

Oh, upon reading the rest of the e-mail, it turns out he was just shilling phone services to the Open Left mailing list. Still, it is a most intriguing question....

Clusterfuck you can believe in

The vacuum created by a vapid agenda and zero criticism for a process in which Dems lied to high heaven about being open and transparent and considering all options is leading to essential policy being decided in a panicky clusterfuck for the ages.

Shit and sausage everywhere, and not a health inspector in sight.

Something's going to be slapped on the plate NOW NOW NOW, with the barest deliberation and even less — surprise! — transparency.

Recalls to me the old ads, "is this any way to run an airline?"

At this point, I'd suggest they fly this monstrosity into the Potomac and hope it will take out as few innocent people as possible.

I respect your right to believe in dumb shit. Please respect my right to call it dumb shit.

Dr. Violet Socks on how to keep discussions of religion friendly and respectful:

The thing is, it’s really important to cultivate an atmosphere where people are free to mock religion mercilessly. See, you thought that sentence was going to end differently, didn’t you? You thought I was going to stress the importance of respecting each other’s religious beliefs, no matter how bizarre. And it is important, unquestionably, to respect everyone’s right to believe whatever they wish. Freedom of religion, freedom of worship, freedom of thought. But I maintain that reverence for religion in general is frankly dangerous. Dig it: religious beliefs are some of the most pernicious things on earth. It is amazing the shit people think they’re entitled to do when God is talking in their ear. As Voltaire said, “As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.”

So let’s all be friendly and respect each other’s right to believe in Jewish zombies or flying prophets or talking snakes or whatever, and also respect each other’s right to laugh like a nut at all that crazy bullshit. Square?

As I've often said, I hate the sin of religion... but not the sinner.

"Sacredness," religious or otherwise, is perhaps the deadliest sin of all.

That which is held beyond rational thought and criticism is, unsurprisingly, a touchstone for irrationality. How could it not be?

So, three holiday cheers for Violet for asserting our right not just to practice — or not practice — religion as we so choose, but our right to talk candidly about it, as well.

The lord taketh away

It was 29 years today that a soldier of God assassinated John Lennon, one of the greatest songwriters and ardent peace activists we've ever had the pleasure to know.

John (Winston) Ono Lennon eventually came to declare that he didn't believe in Beatles, and I've grown to understand and respect what he meant when he said "I just believe in me, Yoko and me, and that's reality."

But I hope he'd forgive me: I still believe in Beatles, and the power of idealism and art. And he and the rest of the lads gave that to me.

"Progressive" citizens united, not timid, in cheering violence against Sarah Palin

[Welcome, readers from Arthur Silber's "Once Upon a Time..." blog and Dr. Violet Socks's Reclusive Leftist!]

Reports that a man threw two tomatoes toward, but missing (one hit a police officer), Sarah Palin at a book signing were received enthusiastically at Huffington Post (and a twitter feed it posted) and Democratic Underground.

Here are the first five mini-pages of tweets via HuffPo:

Mr_Pettapucci: @joeNBC what's wrong with throwing tomatoes at palin??

Andy_Frost: LMFAO @ the guy that threw tomatoes at Sarah Palin. He is my hero now.

mydaddysgyrl: lol somebody threw 2 tomatoes at Sarah Palin hahahaha rotflmao. His silly ass misssed and hit a police officer. (currenly facing charges) ha

kflanagan: RT .@tllanes: Someone needs to pie-face #Palin! That, or water gun to that painted face. #tcot #spwbt #tomatoes / She'd melt with the water

LorenAOlsonMD: Why didn't I think of that! Oh, I've been using words as tomatoes. RT@TheAdvocateMag Tomato Thrown at Sarah Palin

tllanes: Someone needs to pie-face #Palin! That, or water gun to that painted face. #tcot #spwbt #tomatoes

HBK112: Somebody threw tomatoes at Palin? Hahahahahaha!

bipsydipwater: haha palin, you're so awful dudes want to throw tomatoes at you.

cpkane: So sarah palin gets tomatoes thrown at her... immature, yes, but this can be an exception... :)

themochaclub: RT @SuperbBooks: Man Throws Tomatoes At Palin Book Signing - WITN: Telegraph.co.ukMan Throws Tomatoes At Palin Book SigningWITNHundreds ...

broster45: Sarah Palin got tomatoes thrown at her! lol...tooo bad they missed though :(

LynnWiggle: Haha palin got tomatoes thrown at her. Finally! The guy missed her tho, so sad.

The only apparent rationale for cheering a physical assault on Palin is that she's a witch (whom water would melt), and she's "so awful dudes want to throw tomatoes at" her.

That's a perfect distillation of the current "progressive" mindset. We should cheer hate — and even violence — against her... because others hate and cheer violence against her and her "painted face."

I guess she had it coming. How dare a woman in this country get elected governor, run for vice-president, and write a book!

Comments from the first few of over 80 pages at HuffPo itself include:

Sarah, Sarah, Sarah: It ain't always about you. He was aiming at the cop. end of story. haha

Jeremy's got a bad aim! There will is no excuse for violence, but it never hit the witch and darn it it was funny!

Oh damn he missed ?....How unfortunat­e.....LOL

I guess he liked his shoes too much to throw them.

You say tomato, I say shoe!!

Where is PUMA Ann to tell us that tomatoes have a sexual overtone and that they were thrown in an effort to prove sexism is alive and well with Bible Spice?

I have not problem with his motives, just his aim. He just did what we all dream of doing.

Well, I dream that the tomatoes are really, really rotten- it sounds like he may have used fresh ones.

What a waste of a perfectly good tomato!

I think throwing words is more effective, besides with the price of tomatoes these days a perfectly good bacon, tomato and cheese sandwich has gone to waste, Sarah is not worth it.

Outright criticism of the act was extremely rare, and sometimes counterpointed with weird reasons to hate her, such as her choice of the name Trig.

Hey "progressives"! Here's a thought. Once you're done with the vital work of throwing objects at women, perhaps you might consider, y'know, pushing the candidates who are actually in office, the majority of whom are Democrats, to adopt policies substantially different from the ones the out-of-office Palin espouses. Like maybe ending a war or two, or de-corporatizing health-care. Just a thought....

UPDATE:

See also this thread that I started on DU.

So far, I'd say that it speaks for itself.

From the Department of They Got Mirrors Where You're From?

Digby:

God help anyone who presumes to ignore the approved social pecking order.

Relax, don't do it

I'm a bit perplexed by the weird thrashing behaviors at Open Left and Firedoglake.

Chill out, dudes and dudettes!

I'm sure almost no one will hold any of you A-list bloggers accountable for your leadership roles in the health-care "reform" debacle!

C'mon, is there any accountability anywhere in this American life? It's time to move on, look forward not backward, and STFU. It always is, isn't it?

Sleep well, knowing you did the right thing by prioritizing your organizational clout and insider savvy over actual policy goals.

Your infrastructure is bigger than the rest of ours, and that's what counts on the playground. Any 8-year-old knows that.

Misogyny kills

A remembrance.

Where are two shoes that click to my clack?

Susie's got embeds of the whole "Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol."

Grab a bowl of razzleberry dressing, and enjoy an under-appreciated classic!

No one could have anticipated

Belated shrill at Open Left:

The health care reform debacle is beginning to stink to high heaven, whether or not some rotted carcass labeled "reform" ever gets passed.

"Beginning"?

Single Payee

The good news: Firedoglake is now pushing for single payer!

The bad news: people who have fought for single payer this past year, in the face of constant abuse and marginalization at the hands of the likes of Jane Hamsher, are getting kicked to the curb.

The ugly news: the only way to be considered a legitimate activist is to contribute to Jane Hamsher's fundraisers.

Read the linked comments thread, and you'll see what I mean. Well, you might not see it, if like most folks you're addicted to established tribal pecking orders of who's a saint and who's a sinner.

I mean, it's not like Jane and her sycophants and peers actively squandered this year's generational opportunity to reform health-care access. She didn't call single-payer advocacy "kabuki" or install a shill from HCAN't on her blog, did she? Not our Jane!

While she was busy achieving and enforcing unanimity for The Fuck You Act, Lambert "sewed disention and pissed everyone off."

A couple of typos in that, sure. But hypocrisy is hard, especially at this scale, so cut her a little slack, will you?

C'mon, could you keep a straight face when — after arrogantly insisting all year that a blatantly vaporous plan like "public option" was the only thing anyone should support — calling the people who (oops!) advocated for the right policy in the face of your own hyper-organized opposition pigheaded? That shit ain't easy.

Besides, she's so noble and modest that she didn't even take credit for this signal achievement on the way to the current bill:

The problems in the current health care debate became apparent early on, when single payer advocates were excluded from participation.

Gawd, it really sticks in the craw that people like Lambert "sewed disention" against that dynamic, and it totally makes sense that after being obnoxiously correct while she was inspiringly wrong, he should be banned from FDL just as it rightly claims the authority (and overhead fees) for what's left of this historically historic health-care reform wave.

If there's one thing we hate in the progressive blogosphere, it's people who stand up to wayward power in the name of good policy, so I hope you're ashamed, Mr. Strether, I hope you're very ashamed.

Well, there's one other thing we hate in the progressive blogosphere: ordinary citizens thinking their voices, values, and ideas matter.

You can’t take a day player and start demanding a movie star’s salary, because nobody will take you seriously.

Thankfully, we have leading lights with real star power in this bold, new age of netroots progressivism, and they're big enough to piss on the little people not just when the policies they advocate are being ignored, but when they're being belatedly embraced, as well.

UPDATE:

I have to give a standing ovation for Jane's invoking of the construction "This particular element in our community...." Is there a Godwin's Law codicil about comparisons to McCarthyism? Just in case, I'll leave it to the reader to consider the healthiness of an elite culture that frames out-classes in such terms.

Before and during the flood

A rather memorable performance by Final Fantasy, led by Owen Pallett. I saw FF (as a duo, but sans the rain) last week, opening for the inimitable Mountain Goats.

As of this moment...

The Facebook group, I SUPPORT MY PRESIDENT has 212,480 fans.

The all-caps really captures the nuance of the thing.

Thought for the day

"Realism" has a well-known conservative bias.

* * *

Oh, and do read Avedon's post (to which the linked comment is attached) that rejects Krugman's "realism" on health "reform."

War with or without end, amen

[T]he President has authorized the rapid deployment of 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan, with a firm commitment to begin bringing our troops home in 2011.

-- Bulk e-mail from Vice-President Joe Biden

"I do not believe we have locked ourselves into leaving," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said during a Senate committee hearing Wednesday. "But what we have done ... is to signal very clearly to all audiences that the United States is not interested in occupying Afghanistan."

-- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

I see, we're occupying Afghanistan, but our heart's not in it. Do you think when Judgment Day comes along, they'll take that into account?

At least we have Schrödinger's Exit Plan firmly in place. Or not.

The more things don't change, the less they change

Those of us who are, or have been, habitual Democrats have a choice.

We either keep stomaching a party that proudly shuns populism, or we don't.

We either insist on a party (the Dems or somebody else) that's genuinely progressive — heck, liberal — or we don't.

The reason I've been strongly critical of the big blogs' advocacy for "public option" (beyond the direct policy implications) is that I think it's the wrong kind of politics for progressives to play. It's too subtle, too insidery, too fatally compromised, and too easily compromisable further still.

This nation and its citizens are in a deeply precarious state. Obama did us all a massive disservice by squandering a change year, wallpapering over the need for a massive, leftward rethinking of policies with his Village-pleasing comfort food.

In light of our problems, the sort of activism popularized in the blogosphere is woefully incremental.

I'm not criticizing anyone (other than, perhaps, the fellow who got the Changer-in-Chief gig) for not single-handedly changing everything, or even anything.

But what we can change is our ambition, the size of our dreams.

And we must renew the vigorousness of our candor, because if our opinion leaders can and will sell us an Obama as "deeply progressive," we've completely lost sight of True Left.

To get to a world where our — and everybody else's — children live as well as or better than we have requires much bigger dreaming and much stronger medicine than what we've collectively been offering.

Tragically, to ignore that obvious truth is what's known as "pragmatism." Since pragmatism is what gets us the politics we've suffered under since Reagan, is it perhaps time try to something else?


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NOTE: Inspired by this post by Natasha Chart.

Bridget loves...

Now that Meredith Baxter has come out, I can't help wondering how many of my other childhood crushes are happiest in the arms of a woman.

That means you, Diana Rigg, Julie Newmar, and Sean Connery!

I forget. Was it Kool-Aid that's "good to the last drop"?

Michael Moore:

I honestly think Barack Obama is a good and decent man. He has a good heart. I believe he's a man of peace. ... I don't think there's any evil or dark place in his heart that's where this is coming from. I just think that he's listened to the generals. He's taken bad advice."

No one could have anticipated

Kevin Moore:

Raise your hand if you are surprised that Obama has decided to escalate the war in Afghanistan. If your hand is up, smack yourself with it.

Click through to see a nifty cartoon on the same topic.

The blogs must be crazy

Look here, Ernie, straighten me out here. I've got some bad liquor or something.

I'm finding myself believing that these are actual excerpts from a Chris Bowers post today called, really... and earnestly, "Changing the goalposts on healthcare reform."

Is Chris accusing someone else of moving the goalposts? Nope. He's admitting doing it, himself:

... I have redefined my position on what victory means for this legislation.... I am not going to defend myself by claiming that I have been consistent during this entire process. I admit that I have changed during this debate.

I think he should have kept that to himself. I'm sure no one had noticed.

He follows up with a shocking admission that he doesn't seem to understand is a shocking admission. And, for bonus points, the first sentence is a Freudian slip for the ages (emphasis added):

My thinking on the matter started to change when Representative Alan Grayson started talking about the number of people who die each year from health insurance. Even though I, and other members of my family, had gone through sometimes lengthy periods without health insurance, it was still not an angle I had considered previously. Saving those lives is a very powerful, ethical argument to me.

The naïveté in those last two sentences is so jawdropping, I couldn't begin to snark them.

He's one of the blogosphere's ringleaders on health-care reform, and the plight of the uninsured was something he hadn't considered previously? Is he being ironic? WTF?

But the irony is just beginning. Did someone hack into "public option" central? Because here's how Mr. Bowers feels about the health "reform" endeavor:

Funneling huge amounts of customers and public money to for-profit health insurance companies is offensive to me ideologically. The continued lack of influence Congressional Progressives have over public policy is also extremely frustrating.

I feel his pain. Don't you?

There's more about how we can still declare victory (whodathunkit?), but I'm checking into detox until this bad medicine that's making me think I actually read this stuff wears off.

Without comment

A DU poster reconsiders his initial qualms about Obama's speech:

President Obama was sincere when he said he was reluctant to commit more resources, but sees it as the only real viable option, looking at the big picture and thinking of the future. I'm a fairly smart guy, but I'm honest enough to admit that Barack Obama is smarter than I am, and has access to information sources that I don't, as well.

I don't support wars, on principle, but I hope to God that President Obama is making the right choice here, and this war is winnable. At least now we have more clearly defined exit conditions.

Tomorrow never knows

See also a rather different sort of post with a rather similar title.

Of course, today does know, so don't keep all your money in a big brown bag inside a zoo. This is a good day sunshine to send donations to both Arthur Silber and Chris Floyd. Do it now, before I make more incredibly badly constructed Beatles references. Baby, they're not rich men. Help(!) them keep blogging like they did the night before. They're fixing a hole where the rain gets in, don't run and hide your heads! (Cue the scream at the end of the intro to "Revolution")

"A Deadly Liar and Manipulator"

Arthur on Obama's State of the Empire speech:

Before discussing the aspect of Obama's speech that most concerns me -- and that, I respectfully submit, should deeply concern you -- let me note that Obama made very clear that he purportedly intends to extricate us from Central Asia by involving us in increasingly complex ways in the affairs of both Afghanistan and Pakistan. If you think that is a glaringly obvious contradiction, you're entirely correct. How exactly do you leave that region of the world more quickly by involving yourself in ever more complicated and numerous ways? The answer is that you don't.

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Obama has put us all on notice: if we disagree with his policies, if we condemn the endless series of aggressive wars waged by the U.S., we are imperiling the strength and security of the United States itself. If we dare to criticize him or the actions of the U.S. government, we are displaying "rancor and cynicism and partisanship" that will "split asunder" the absolutely necessary national "unity." If we challenge Obama on any point of importance, we are "poisoning" the "national discourse."

In other words: disagreement on any matter of moment is not only dangerous, but illegitimate and even immoral.

Begone with ya, go read!

Why I quickly lost interest in Obama's Afghanistan War speech

It was much better in the original "Texan."

Now that we've officially got our own War President...

... should we update our peace-sign shirts to say "Footprint of the American Chicken"?

Are we supposed to start saying racist stuff about Muslims?

And should we shame anyone who doesn't approve of the expanding war by jeering about how they "don't support our troops"?

If anyone has Republican friends, maybe you can see if they can give us some pointers on how this works.

Medium Lobster is a dish best served cold

High, black-humored snark on Obie's war.

I'm sorry, I'll read that again

Chris Bowers:

There will be a transfer of public money from unemployment compensation to health insurance subsidies, which is a good thing and worth fighting for.

It's the old adage: robbing Peter to pay Aetna.

Something old, something new...

I've just updated the blogroll. OK.

The second step is a doozy

How to become a Villager:

1. Achieve a degree of status and access
2. Mistake status and access with righteousness

The first step isn't necessarily that easy, but the latter is like falling off a log.