Announcing 2L4O.com

If you're too liberal for Obama, please check it out!

Don't say it so, Joe

Joe Bageant has a gift for writing bracing populist essays. But his tin ear on gender mars more than a few of his posts.

Especially if the psycho is rich, powerful, and saluted by media networks wherever he/she goes, and has not the faintest clue that he/she is a psycho to begin with.

The "or she" refers to Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin or any of the other power crazed warped out bitches who've slit enough throats to make made it into that gladiatorial arena inside the beltway. White males by no means have a franchise on naked political blood lust.

How does couching a fair point — that gender doesn't immunize one from the corrupting incentives and influences of politics — in misogynistic terms bolster his case?

Can you imagine him having the poor taste to use racist frames to prove the not-just-white part of his equation? Thankfully, no.

John and (an ironically silent) Yoko just may have had a point.

In retrospect, I wish I'd raised the issue of Obama's lack of transparency on health-care reform

At Open Left, David Sirota breaks a shocking story: Obama broke his promises for an open and transparent process for debating health-care reform.

President Obama made an explicitly clear promise to hold negotiations over national health care legislation not only in public, but on C-SPAN. And this wasn't a minor promise - he made the promise as an instrument to attack his Democratic primary opponent Hillary Clinton, insisting that because Clinton refused to open up negotiations to such transparency in the past, Clinton was a legislative failure.

President Obama has now broken his promise, first by cutting secret deals with the drug industry, and now by endorsing a plan from congressional leaders to hold final legislative negotiations behind closed doors. These are the facts, and they are not in dispute - even though the White House insultingly pretends they are.

What is in dispute - rather incredibly - is whether or not this should be seen as A) acceptable and B) newsworthy. And those members of D.C.'s Church of the Savvy who are arguing that the promise-breaking is acceptable and not newsworthy are deftly presenting their conservative, Establishment-coddling propaganda in the most effective way: As allegedly "progressive" and/or "objective" arguments.

If only I'd mentioned the little-reported lies about a transparent process here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here (directly to Sirota) and here and here and here and here and here and here (and not to mention here and here) when there was still time for the big blogs, activist groups, and "progressive" media figures to blow the whistle on this.

Like they say, hindsight is 20/20. Still, how could I have missed such an essential development!

At least President Obama, apparently, has nothing to regret.

The "teabaggers" are different from you and me

Chris Bowers:

[T]he teabaggers are taking a pass on action that could actually stop "socialism," and opting instead for ineffective, symbolic, identity-based actions: they don't care about actual issues or legislation.

Digby (via):

[A]s a matter of policy I don't know that the public option actually means much anymore. But as a matter of politics, it's very important. Powerful people, from outside and inside the Party are desperate that the liberals are not seen to win this battle. It changes the balance of power in ways that extend far beyond the health care debate and they know it.