I think progressives have multiple reasons to be pissed, and it sucks that Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh and the rest of the moderates get to force-feed them shit sandwiches. But there isn’t much that can be done about it.

This is the part where I stop valuing John Cole’s opinions on this issue. Same goes for Drum, Marshall, Yglesias, Klein and the rest of the Reasonable Realists. I’m wiping the political blogs off the read list for now.

I am sick to fucking death of hearing moderate liberal “realists” sigh wistfully, concede that our government is owned top to bottom in every branch by corporate interests, and that this is both horrible policy and horrible politics, but lament that “there isn’t much that can be done about it”. I wanna hear just one fucking insurance company CEO say, “Man, this bill just puts my fucking balls in my throat, this is going to be really rough for us, but that’s what the American People want. There isn’t much that can be done about it.”

There’s a lot that can be done about it, we’re just not doing it. I may not have a vote, shit as a DC resident I don’t even have a Senator to yell at. But I’m not about to be resigned to this, and I’m sure as fuck not going to be lectured by those that are.

[UPDATE]: Just to be clear: yes, I realize that, much like the rest of content that graces this little slice of Internet heaven, this means nothing to anyone, and will have all the impact of throwing lint at the sun. My fists are tiny. I shake them anyway.

Pardon me, I’d like to make a couple points about domestic political current events for a moment, then I’ll stop. It’s not what this blog’s about, but I feel I need to speak about something.

The honorable, admirable, and astute John Cole posted a warning about the Health Care Reform bill working its way through the legislative lower intestine we call The Senate:

So it should be clear. If you are thinking that you can kill this bill and come back with a better one, you are fooling yourself. It is this, or it is nothing for decades, and that is why folks like Rockefeller and Sherrod Brown and Ron Wyden and other folks are sucking it up and still supporting the bill.

Okay, so the message is clear, it’s this or nothing. Now, I certainly understand that nothing is bad news. We’re in dire straits here as far as health care in America goes. But, I’m sorry, it doesn’t mean that I automatically have to support this, whatever this is.

And here’s the thing about what’s left of this: they’ve taken out any chance of a public option or expanding Medicare, but they’ve left in the mandate, the part that says that I’m legally obligated to purchase health insurance. It’s not that I don’t understand the concept of risk pools, and that it only becomes financially viable to insure everyone if everyone, healthy and sick alike, pays into the pool. But here’s my problem with this arrangement.

If I want a cell phone, I will have to enter into a contract with a giant bastard of a corporation that will fuck me in a heartbeat if it means they clear an extra fifty cents. But it is still my choice whether or not I want to have a phone. By the same token, if I want to own a car and operate it on public roads, the law requires me to purchase insurance from, again, a company that wouldn’t hesitate to do me wrong if they thought it was legal and in their best interest to do so. But I don’t have to buy a car if I don’t want to.

But the thrust of a mandate (without providing a publicly administrated alternative) is that I, by virtue of my existence and citizenship, am legally obligated to throw myself into the maw of an industry that’s been proven time and time again to be one of the most immoral, unethical, exploitive, parasitic industries in the corporate world. And, sure, it will make health care accessible to folks that currently can’t afford it… by way of a framework through which the American Taxpayer can subsidize poor and lower-middle class families. Isn’t that snazzy, how it creates a second pipeline from the pockets of those of us that aren’t bankrupt yet into the coffers of private health insurance companies. How awesome is that for a “reform” bill, thanks Democrats!

The answer is obvious, and it’s not to make the Health Insurance Industry work better. Congressman Weiner is absolutely correct on this score, health insurance companies give no value to the system. If we’re going to make healthcare available to everyone, then let’s make it a goddam public utility. And if we need everyone to chip in, then take it out of my check with the rest of the fucking taxes. And if these sorry sons-of-bitches in both parties can’t come around to representing the best interests of the American People because they’re all too dependent on revenue streams from the Health Insurance and Pharmaceutical Industries, then they all deserve to burn.

But the bill that’s coming out of the Senate is no more a “reform” of the Health Insurance Industry than are the “reforms” being crafted by Obama’s Economic Team of Rubinite Wall Street Gangsters. And I’m supposed to be scared of Sarah Fucking Palin? With Democrats like these, who needs Republicans!

I swear to God, if this steaming shitpile of a bill becomes law, I will dedicate all the money, time and effort I can spare into throwing as many different size wrenches as I can into every political machine that helped bring it to pass. If this thing fails, it fails, but I’m not going to support this goddam thing, and I’m sure as hell not going to be a pawl in the Rightward Ratchet. Fuck that.

[UPDATE]: Evidently, Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias wish that lots of us that are potentially going to have to eat this shit sandwich would learn to go along to get along and pass the fucking thing. John Cole & Co.are apoplectic that anyone would decide that this thing has crossed a line over which they can’t get behind it.

But here’s Kevin in practically the same breath saying:

The individual mandate was a way of getting support from the insurance industry. The backroom deal with Big Pharma was a way of getting support from the drug industry. The change in Medicare reimbursement rates was a way of getting support from doctors. The gutting of the Medicare commission was a way of getting support from hospitals. Provisions related to biologics, home healthcare, and the prescription drug doughnut hole were a way of getting the support of AARP.

So all these interest groups get huge concessions, that ultimately entrench their power even more deeply while giving Americans a bigger, harder punch in the face, so that they’ll get on board. But I’m supposed to sit on my hands and ignore the fact that the parts of the bill that would have enacted real reform have been decimated, and that what’s left includes a provision to feed me to private insurance companies like so much shark chum, without bothering to so much as inconvenience said companies with a strong, strict regulatory framework. Huh.

Again, fuck that.

[UPDATE AGAIN]: Just so.

Via Dennis Perrin, who remains justifiably skeptical that there’s Hope for Change, a perfectly simple solution:

…the market capitalization—the value of all the outstanding stock—of the publicly traded health insurers is about $150 billion. Add a little premium to sweeten the pot and you could nationalize the lot of them for about $200 billion. The total administrative costs of the U.S. healthcare system, which are greatly inflated by all the paperwork and second-guessing of docs’ decisions generated by the insurance industry, are about $400 billion a year. Those administrative costs are about three times what a Canadian-style single payer system would cost. So that means we’d save about $250 billion a year by eliminating the waste caused by our private insurance system.

In other words, the nationalization could pay for itself in well under a year.

Ding! We have a winner!

Oh, and in case you’re wondering what the hell kind of socialist I am: I’m the kind that thinks health care falls ought to fall into the same category of public service as your local fire department, that’s all. I’d also like to be over and done with the way we do health insurance today, and I can’t understand why anyone is defending such a disgusting, avaricious industry. (You think we don’t already have death panels?)

Indulge me in a brief diversion, a short dip back into the waters of politics, and then we’ll get back to the things that make life grand.

John Cole went ballistic the other morning, and declared the Health Care Reform battle over and lost, stating “…the Democrats have no one to blame but themselves. If the Republicans had majorities like the Democrats have right now…” etc, etc.

I think it misses the point, believing that the fight is constrained to the Capital, and that Democratic lawmakers have the upper hand because they outnumber the Republicans and hold the presidency. I’ll let J.R. Boyd at Lady Poverty lay out the terms of the real fight:

The problems are understood well enough. With regard to health care, a popular administration with a mandate for “change” has ventured too far into the established turf of private commercial concerns. This has rallied much of the business community around the core principle on which it stands: that government exists to advance their concerns, not anybody else’s. Subsequently, the right of investors to capture ever increasing profit has once again been unfurled from our Constitutional masthead as America’s most sacred principle, on which a government acting for any other purpose necessarily tramples.

As usual, the fight is not fair, power consolidated as it is in the private sector. The Republican Party’s well-established infrastructure of irrationality produces far more than its own weight in disinformation and lies, in large part because its corporate sponsors see no need to challenge them in more respectable news forums. Again, ownership has its privileges; among these, the constitutional right to say whatever you want — all day, every day — in whatever media market you control.

The inadequacy of mere liberalism to confront these problems, or even to frame them properly (the political system just reflects the balance of power in the broader society, after all; narratives about Democrats and Republicans wholly miss the point) should be evident from the pitiful solutions it floats, as above. No, the answer is not that President Obama needs to do a better job talking, somehow penetrating the morass of unmitigated horseshit — Obama’s Hitler health care will kill your grandmother! — which freely flows 24/7 with the occasional press conference and civic appeal. Liberalism has installed Obama and the Democrats to get the job done for the rest of us, never realizing that their power does not create itself spontaneously through the strength of their convictions, but in conjunction with the rest of society. Whatever portion of society is best organized writes the laws.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this last part, where people believe “Obama will get it done for the rest of us”. Whatever opinions one has about the intelligence of the folks disrupting townhall meetings across the nation, or the coherence of their objections, one can’t help but notice that this is not a Brooks Brother’s Riot. Those are not Republican staffers out there, furiously, if wrongly, shouting “Keep your government out of my Medicare!”. The people showing up at these things have been stirred to a boil by the odious likes of Glenn Beck, to be sure. But they’re real people, they’re really angry, and when there’s a townhall meeting they show up.

Are those of us, supposedly in the majority, supposedly with clear perspectives on health care reform, ready to show up at those same meetings to counter the folks on the fringe? Do we care as much about the political process as they do? And shouldn’t we be the ones with the pitchforks and torches, given the state of affairs? Shouldn’t we be showing up by the hundreds, or at least by the dozens, at the studios of CNN, FOX, and CNBC hurling our own spittle-flecked curses at the people who’ve made it impossible to even have an adult conversation about health care reform (to say nothing of the myriad other serious problems that need tackling in short order)?

Or are we just not up to it? I fear that’s the case, that informed folks with common sense have seen what We The People are up against, and have already given up. I hope not, because I’m certain corporate America is one-hundred percent up to it, and I’d hate to think we ceded the fight so early on.

The president issued an order yesterday to stop the military tribunals at Guantanimo. This stood out for me.

Following Monday’s hearings, the Office of the Military Commissions held a press conference with several 9/11 family members, who had reportedly been selected by lottery to travel to the base to attend the hearings. Visibly angry, and holding up large photographs of their relatives who died on 9/11, they appealed to President Obama to keep Guantánamo open.

“Today we were in the presence of true evil,” said Donald Arias, who lost his brother Adam in the attack on the World Trade Center. “Mr. Obama needs to reexamine his decision and keep these tribunals going.”

Joe Holland, who lost his son in the World Trade Center, trembled with rage as he took the podium.

“My name is Joe Holland and I lost my son in 9/11,” he said. “When I said I was coming down here, people asked me what they could do. I said, ‘Write a letter to Obama saying that this place should stay open.’”

When journalists asked Holland about the possibility of trying the 9/11 suspects in federal court, he replied, “No, right here, at Guantánamo,” then excused himself from the podium as he fought back tears.

Report after report concludes that most of the people we held at Guantanamo were never affiliated with Al Qaida, weren’t picked up on any battlefield, and were being held for little or no reason, which means we were destroying lives and families across the globe in response to 9/11. I mean, put aside from the odd Taliban foot soldier who was conscripted, never understood what was happening to him, but finds himself imprisoned a world away from his family with no hope of escaping the Kafkaesque nightmare we’ve created. Perhaps you can’t stir up sympathy for anyone that picked up a gun for the Taliban. Fine. What about the fucking Uyghurs, that everyone, everyone, understood weren’t even peripherally involved? What about the fact that 18 Uyghurs were held in isolation for years and years in Cuba? Why isn’t Donald Arias concerned about that, and how can he be certain that he’s in the presence of “true evil” knowing any of that?

Some of the detainees were undoubtedly involved in planning or executing attacks against the U.S., but since we stepped over every bright line of human rights during their interrogations, bringing them to a fair, legitimate trial will be impossible. Maintaining the moral integrity and legitimacy of our judicial process is a prerequisite to bringing the perpetrators of 9/11, as well as terrorists we may apprehend in the future, to justice. But Joe Holland apparently doesn’t think this is important, or at least, doesn’t think it’s important in cases involving people even remotely suspected of involvement in the attack that killed his son.

And that, folks, is why victims of violent crime should never, ever be able to weigh in on how justice is best served. You can’t blame these people for being in pain, or for the depth and breadth of their grief. If I lost any member of my family to violence, I imagine I would be similarly consumed by heartbreak, rage, and vengeance. I am, after all, human.

By the same token, you can’t expect these folks to think rationally about what’s fair and just. I’m not saying that these families, or victims of violence generally, can’t overcome fear and anger to see clearly, but it shouldn’t be surprising if they can’t, and we certainly shouldn’t be asking their advice on how to proceed. It’s a circus sideshow, and the military folks that brought them down to Cuba to stir them up in front of the press ought to be deeply ashamed of themselves.

The makings of another shit sandwich, left by George W. Bush, for all of us to figure out how to eat. Thanks for that, George, and bon apetit America.

My favorite moment during yesterday’s festivities came while watching the swearing-in and post-swearing-in speech, I realized I was needlessly bracing myself for cringes that weren’t going to happen. There were no ‘Nookyuller’ moments, nothing about putting food on my family, and I realized that I could relax a bit. Then, a little while later, I realized (again) that President Obama is not simply an adequate speaker that won’t embarrass us with his grammar and pronunciation, but that he’s an excellent speaker that leaves one feeling better than they did before he delivered the speech. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve enjoyed seeing a presidential speech delivered, that was really nice.

And you know, I thought my farewell feelings for Bush would have been angrier, but they weren’t. I just can’t attribute as much evil to the guy as I can to someone like, for example, Kissinger. There’s a lot of people in Washington that are sharp, informed, and experienced enough to know what kind of evil they’re unleashing on the country and the world, after 8 years I’m not convinced that George W. Bush is one of them.

Cheney, by contrast, I expected to be sent back to wherever he came from via a circled pentagram drawn with magic powder on the floor of a red-walled room in the White House’s deepest basement room. Ya know what I mean? Like the kind of room where the door is made with 8″ oak timbers, and has a small window with thick, wrought iron bars and a message carved into it in Latin?

But now that they’re gone, I wish them a pleasant retirement and beseech them both to resist any temptations to come out of it. For anything. Neither of them should probably do any vacationing near The Hague, for that matter.

So, the first real ride of this glorious new America, a seemingly routine commute in to work this morning, was in the 20 degree range, but the wind was light and the sun shone brightly. After I made egg sammiches for the family, Rebbie and I rode together to drop Ruby off at school, which was a rare treat, and then I headed in to work solo. I did add a quarter mile to the trip finding out why North Capitol was completely closed off south of Washington Hospital Center in both directions. Evidently there was a fire on the west side of North Capitol, just south of Adams, that required a bunch of pumpers and a lot of water. And you know what happens when you spray the street with a few acre-inches of water in the early morning hours of a 20 degree day? You guessed it, a sheet of ice between a quarter-inch and an inch thick for about 3-4 blocks, but with formations like you’d expect to see close to a recent lava flow. So if your north-south or south-north commute this morning seemed way, way worse than usual, don’t blame the out-of-towners.

After that, the ride was wonderful. Not just wonderful like, zippy and without confrontation. Wonderful like, just this side of Sister Maria running and singing across Austrian mountain meadows. You see, last weekend I replaced my old drop bars with Nitto Noodle Bars, and my first impression after riding them for more than two test blocks is that these bars are alive with the Sound of Music. They’re nice and wide, and the top section is swept back a bit, about as much as my wrists need to feel perfectly natural. The ramps behind the brake levers are almost flat and super comfy, and the drops are dreamy. Every place on them is a usable hand position, and all the ones I’ve found so far have been really comfy. Seems like something I should review after I’ve had more time with it, more on that later.

All in all, I gotta say, it’s been a great weekend, great couple days, and it’s so good to wake up in Obama’s America. I’m not a fanboy or anything, but at some point early in Bush’s second term, I kinda started believing deep down that it was never going to end, and that this day would never come. It’s here, and it brought Noodle Bars with it. Rad.

How were your Inaugural Festivities?

The issues surrounding Israel’s recent attacks in Gaza are swirling and complex, and I don’t know if anyone can even say the words “Israel” and “Gaza” in the same sentence these days without inspiring spittle-flecked invective from both sides of the perceptual chasm.

My own view is that both sides hate each other more than they love their own children, and that this will continue until that’s no longer the case. I’m also not happy that my money’s purchasing weapons that will ultimately keep the fire burning bright and hot. I also realize that, as an American, despite the fact that I was as opposed to the strategy and tactics of the GWOT as anyone could be, I have zero moral authority or credibility when it comes to counseling other nations to resist the temptation to lash out with violent, irrational military responses to attacks by a handful of extremists.

I also despise the language people use to talk about military action. The terms “fighting”, “kick ass”, “defend (one’s) self”, and even “strength” are terms appropriately used when discussing a bar brawl, where two violent actors punch and kick each other until one or both have had enough. They have no place in honest conversations and arguments in which children are blown up or immolated by modern weapons of war, and I find the practice (especially by Americans) disgusting.

One thing that I do know, though, is that Max Blumenthal is a fucking bad-ass.

(h/t Dennis Perrin)

You’ve got a big decision to make tomorrow, citizen.

There’s a lot to think about as we approach this historic election. There’s more than one dire problem to solve, more than a few turds hurtling towards the blades of a big, angry fan, more to be resolved with higher stakes than ever before.

We’re mired in geopolitical conflict, and the way home is difficult to find, harder to navigate. We’re hooked on an energy source that’s dirty, expensive, and often comes at the cost of supporting some nefarious organizations. Our economy is shaky, fragile, and everyone’s looking over their shoulder for the axe to fall. Health care is skyrocketing, and getting sick often means bankruptcy. Bridges are falling into rivers, cities are falling apart, our manufacturing base is much diminished, and the guy you’re trying to order that Bacon Cheeseburger from doesn’t seem to speak much English.

What will be in store for America as we enter the next chapter in our history? Which candidate is better equipped to handle these challenges? What’re we gonna do?!

I know that when I ponder issues of these magnitudes, I try to imagine how the best of our presidents would tackle them. I contemplate Washington’s moral rectitude, Jefferson’s master statesmanship, Teddy’s cunning diplomacy, FDR’s inspiring leadership. Ultimately, the path of my meditation will lead to Lincoln, whose counsel is always the same.

You’ve got a big decision to make tomorrow, Superstar.