The Years Of Writing Dangerously
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Thirteen years ago, as I was starting to experiment with this blogging
thing, I wrote the following: [T]he speed with which an idea in your head
reaches th...
Since the PETA topic came up again in my Joss Stone post below; and since it annoys people (right wingers, unapologetic meat eaters who don't want to think about what they eat, faux feminists, people who don't understand that getting a message across requires getting attention - or those who understand that completely, and don't want the attention given - and the generally easily offended); and since we need an antidote to any post featuring an image of Dick Cheney ... I will point to this article about what PETA was doing in Washington, D.C. as the Senate was passing health care during a record snow storm.
Read this excellent post by White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer on the White House Blog, responding forcefully to the ridiculous chatter of lunatic Dick Cheney and his FOXNews toadies spewing bile about the President in reaction to the Christmas Day bombing attempt on board the international flight to Detroit.
To put it simply: this President is not interested in bellicose rhetoric, he is focused on action. Seven years of bellicose rhetoric failed to reduce the threat from al Qaeda and succeeded in dividing this country. And it seems strangely off-key now, at a time when our country is under attack, for the architect of those policies to be attacking the President.
And this:
President Obama doesn’t need to beat his chest to prove it, and – unlike the last Administration – we are not at war with a tactic (“terrorism”), we at war with something that is tangible: al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies. And we will prosecute that war as long as the American people are endangered.
I was just listening to some Joss Stone and typed her name into The Google, to discover that she recently released a new album. And that she's also a vegetarian. And like my girls, she was "born a vegetarian" and has never eaten meat. Ever. That's cool.
I missed this last week, what with the holiday break and all, but outside of the focus on Copenhagen, there was some realenvironmental progress going on. "Federal regulators under President Barack Obama have sharply shifted course on long-standing policy toward pharmaceutical residues in the nation's drinking water, taking a critical first step toward regulating some of the contaminants while acknowledging they could threaten human health."
An AP story (via OnEarth.org and here) has reported that at least 51 million Americans drink prescription-drug contaminated water, including sex hormones, antibiotics and Prozac. Keep that in mind when your doctor asks you to list the medications you are currently taking.
So a key element to the new strategy: the FDA has declared as a goal to have all unused medications returned (and ultimately incinerated), rather than flushed into the water system. But, that doesn't address everything - unmetabolized drugs enter the water system through waste, too, as well as from other sources. This story and related graphic nicely shows the process. Dealing with this is a huge problem, but the EPA and the FDA are on the right course in classifying pharmaceuticals as contaminants subject to regulation, and beginning programs to identify them and study their impact.
I've been beating the drums about President Obama's pragmatism and cautious approach to governing - traits which I admire, traits which led me to support Barack Obama over two years ago (wow), back when he wasn't given much of any chance to become President. Here's me, a couple of weeks ago, discussing the "progressive" rebellion against "Obamacare":
You may not agree with the President's choices on this, but they were reasonable choices by a man who cares less about ideology and partisanship than about getting something done. The fact that we end up where many signs hint at where the President expected us to end up doesn't mean that he has failed us. Greenwald and the neo-Naderites see betrayal. This is anything but that. It is, most likely, the best health care reform bill that was ever possible out of this Senate and House. You may not like that, and you may think that the President is a failure or a cheat by not somehow, some way, changing the facts on the ground; you may want to believe that Barack Obama is seedy and corrupt by greasing the pole to make reform palatable to some vested interests. But saying those things does not make it so. Handled in the way the so-called progressive camp is now demanding could just as likely (more so, I would argue) mean that today we're looking back at the complete failure of Obama's health care initiative and a gloating, rather than refexively angry, GOP. It's cliche but also a truism that politics is the art of the possible. Regardless, we are where we are, now. Either the bill is worth passing, or it is not. But whatever the case, it's not due to bad faith by a President who has advanced the cause of health care reform beyond anyone's imagination a year ago.
Let me put it differently. The President is, by natural disposition or legislative and Senate experience or by the guidance of a staff and Cabinet filled with former Senators and Congresspeople, focused on process and realism. His approach acknowledges the flawed nature of the system and the dynamics of corporate interests and money and, most likely, back-room dealing. It sucks, it really does. And so Glenn is right, as far as it goes, to say that this whole process "reinforces all of the worst dynamics of Washington." But those dynamics are real, and the disputes about policy are real as well. Jimmy Carter failed as President for, among other reasons, a stubborn refusal to acknowledge and work within those dynamics. What was the result of Carter's national energy policy, for example? Do we want to remember Obama's health care initiative in the same way, as something that would have been a great leap forward, if only?
It seems that now, everyone is now saying the same thing.
I think the thing that surprises me is that anyone ever thought otherwise. Among low-information voters I understand the disconnect: they heard hopey-changiness, haven't really gotten it, and are disappointed. But even some very high-information voters seem to be disappointed the same way, and it's baffling. Obama's entire career has been one of low-key, pragmatic leadership. He's clearly a mainstream liberal, but during the Democratic primaries he was famously the least progressive (by a small margin) of the three major candidates on domestic issues. He did everything he could to avoid taking dangerously inflammatory stands on button social issues. His advisors during the campaign were nearly all members in good standing of the center left. His nickname was "No Drama Obama," and his temperament was plainly cautious, sober, and businesslike.
This was all pretty obvious during the campaign, and everybody understood it perfectly well when Republicans went crazy and started tarring him a radical socialist and a bomb-throwing revolutionary. Remember how we mocked all that stuff? But I guess that deep down, an awful lot of people were hoping that he was just play acting during the campaign, pretending to be a solid citizen while the real Obama was plotting to turn us into Sweden.
Personally, I wish Obama would articulate the liberal agenda more full-throatedly, and I wish he'd take a few more risks and push his own caucus a little harder. I've thought that ever since the 2008 campaign. But the fact that he hasn't hardly comes as a surprise. He's as liberal a president as we've had in 40 years, but he's no starry-eyed idealist. Why would anyone ever have thought differently?
Obama baffles observers, I suspect, because he’s an ideologue and a pragmatist all at once. He’s a doctrinaire liberal who’s always willing to cut a deal and grab for half the loaf. He has the policy preferences of a progressive blogger, but the governing style of a seasoned Beltway wheeler-dealer....
Both right and left have had trouble processing Obama’s institutionalism. Conservatives have exaggerated his liberal instincts into radicalism, ignoring the fact that a president who takes advice from Lawrence Summers and Robert Gates probably isn’t a closet Marxist-Leninist. The left has been frustrated, again and again, by the gulf between Obama’s professed principles and the compromises that he’s willing to accept, and some liberals have become convinced that he isn’t one of them at all.
They’re wrong. Absent political constraints, Obama would probably side with the liberal line on almost every issue. It’s just that he’s more acutely conscious of the limits of his powers and less willing to start fights that he might lose than many supporters would prefer. In this regard, he most resembles Ronald Reagan and Edward Kennedy. Both were highly ideological politicians who trained themselves to work within the system. Both preferred cutting deals to walking away from the negotiating table.
The upside of this approach is obvious: It gets things done. Between the stimulus package, the pending health care bill and a new raft of financial regulations, Obama will soon be able to claim more major legislative accomplishments than any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson.
The downside, though, is that sometimes what gets done isn’t worth doing
As much as Mr. Obama presented himself as an outsider during his campaign, a lesson of this battle is that this is a president who would rather work within the system than seek to upend it. He is not the ideologue ready to stage a symbolic fight that could end in defeat; he is a former senator comfortable in dealing with the arcane rules of the Senate and prepared to accept compromise in search of a larger goal. For the most part, Democrats on Capitol Hill have stuck with him....
Still, Mr. Obama’s approach to this battle should not be a surprise to anyone who has followed his career or his campaign for the White House. He served in the United States Senate and in the Illinois Senate. His choice for chief of staff — Mr. Emanuel — was the No. 4 person in the House Democratic leadership, and many of his top West Wing aides came out of staff jobs in the Senate.
Mr. Obama may find it frustrating that it is impossible under Senate rules to get something through without 60 votes, but those are the rules and he is going to play by them. He was not about to go to Connecticut and to whip up the public against Mr. Lieberman, or to press for him to be relieved of his leadership positions in the Senate, as Mr. Green suggested he do.
“The president wasn’t after a Pyrrhic victory — he wasn’t into symbolism,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama. “The president is after solving a problem that has bedeviled a country and countless families for generations.”
All of this has come at a time of strains between Mr. Obama and the left. Mr. Obama has come under fire on several fronts, like health care, escalation of the war in Afghanistan and his failure so far to make good on a campaign pledge to end the ban on open homosexuals in the military.
Mr. Obama has moved to the center on some issues since he became president, particularly on elements of national security. Still, he never presented himself as a doctrinaire liberal, and much of what he is doing as president tracks with what he talked about during the campaign.
Mr. Obama’s call to send more troops to Afghanistan is what he always talked about in the context of outlining his opposition to the war in Iraq. “It’s not like he woke up one morning and said, ‘Let’s go fight a war in Afghanistan,’ ” Mr. Emanuel said. “He talked about it in the campaign.”
And Mr. Obama never exhibited the left’s passion for establishing a public insurance option as part of an overhaul of health care. He rarely talked about it during scores of debates, speeches and interviews during the campaign; instead he focused on expanding coverage, lowering costs and ending health insurance abuses....
And so, as we approach the New Year, I go back to what I said on the eve of Barack Obama's inauguration in January:
On this eve of Barack Obama's inauguration as the 44th President of the United States, I continue coming around to the thought - the idea that led me to support Barack Obama rather than Hillary Clinton or anyone else - that, for the first time in my adult lifetime, America is prepared to start moving forward again, rather than lurching from side to side, or left to right, if you must.
This was my understanding of Barack Obama from the start. A man who could transcend division and focus on the best interests of everyone.
I have spent a year (we put up our first Obama yard sign on MLK Day 2008) cringing whenever someone claimed that Barack Obama was the most liberal candidate for President. Whatever that word means in an ideological or political sense, the word didn't apply to Barack Obama's style or inclination as a way of governance. I don't mean to say he does not hold progressive liberal values. But being defined by an ideology - liberalism - is different from believing in goals that are generally liberal in orientation. Obama, to me, clearly fit into the later category, not the earlier one. He wasn't about taking sides, staking claims to representing one side in a war of opposing views. He doesn't aim for division; he aims for bringing all of us together to better the nation. Healing divisions, acknowledging differences and constructively addressing concerns of everyone, rather than expoiting anger and fears. Those are core American values, and the idea that they could be perceived as "liberal" tells us more about America - well, not America but more precisely those who choose to speak for America - than about Barack Obama (or about liberalism or conservatism, for that matter).
The screaming on the left and right continues unabated - perhaps even louder and more irrational than ever. But in the middle of it all, this President is moving the rest of us forward.
Nate Silver on Hardball, explaining why the current health care reform proposal is progressive and should be passed, despite not being perfect and its failure to address some critically important issues.
Matthews: "They've pulled the rubber band about as far as the rubber band will pull without snapping."
Yglesias points to this 2004 post on the Daily Kos about political ethics and Ralph Nader, without comment. So, I will make the comment for him: the same "progressive" blog that is currently the principal voice of radical left-wing undermining of President Obama (and whose founder and namesake is making the media rounds doing the same) is the blog that pointed out the unethical nature and irresponsibility of Ralph Nader's undermining of Al Gore and the Nader-sponsored hand-over of America to George Bush and the GOP.
This has gotten ridiculous. MoveOn.org should not expect to get any more donations from my family. They raise a million dollars in a couple of days by attacking Joe Lieberman for scuttling health care reform (which is fine), and then they use those funds to call on lawmakers to block the current bill. Where are these people's heads?
Matt Yglesias sums up what has been gnawing at me about Greenwald and enraged Left:
Another place it can lead you is the place where Kevin and I are. You complain about this stuff. And complain and complain and complain. And fight and fight and fight. And at the end of the day when what emerges from the piranhas’ den is better than nothing, you say yes and live to fight another day. I think if you read Andy Stern’s letter you’ll see that’s what he’s saying too.
But the place where I think it can’t lead you is the place where I think a lot of the people on the left want to go. That’s a place where you’re so shocked and horrified by the corruption of the system that you think that if you can persuade two or three left-wing senators to say “no” that suddenly a better legislative product emerges. If you think that’s going to happen, you should spend some time reading Glenn Greenwald posts about how screwed up Washington is.
Yet still, the comments to Matt's post show that the so-called Progressives still don't get it. Here's a representative selection; sadly, I am not cherry-picking:
Funny Matt, but despite being asked multiple times, you’ve never given any prescriptions for fighting.... What have you done to “fight”? I haven’t seen bupkas from you.
If you're not with us, you're against us!
The problem is, the bill now looks as though it will be worse than nothing.
This is just hopelessly naive and petty. How is it worse? I keep hearing that, but explain why? The mandate is a giveaway to the insurance industry? Fine, but reform can't work without it. If they didn't ask for it, you'd have to do it anyway.
Progressives have a plan: Kill this bill and force reconciliation. You and the moderates have no plan, you only want to pass THIS bill, and you want people to keep voting for Democrats even though you have no viable plan as to how that is supposed to work.
Let me say this slowly so you understand: the plan is to pass health care reform. we've been working on it for most of the year. If this is the bill that is obtainable, we pass it, and move forward to make it better over time. A plan to kill the bill is simply that, a plan to kill the bill. Who has no plan? Who's reality-based, now?
At this point, the only way to get decent government is to replace the DC system. That will require concerted action on the part of thousands against an entrenched plutocracy. Something on the order of the French or Russian revolutions.
You know, last night I thought my irritation may have been excessive. I shouldn't have been concerned.
[T]here is a more realistic solution: a primary challenger to force the incumbent to move left. I know that is a solution Matt often suggests.
So, which Democratic politician will have the courage to primary Obama in 2012?
That worked out really well for the left when Ted Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter in 1980, didn't it?
I’m ready for liberals to use old fashioned politics which in our system means kill the bill.
If you guys want any bill to pass then you better start treating liberals seriously and incorporating their wishes into the bills.
I really hope 3 liberal Senators are brave enough to stand up to these capitulating cowards. They would be my heroes.
Do you even understand what this bill does? Geez, how it is not liberal? The GOP calls it socialism, for G-d's sake. This comment deserves the the same reaction as Ta-Nehisi had about Joe Lieberman's pettiness, so I will quote Ta-Nehisi in response: "This a deeply immoral statement. Joe Lieberman is a divorced Dad refusing to pay for private school, in part, because it might please his ex-wife." Since it's so hard to talk to these so-called progressives like adults, I'll put it into words they can understand: stop being cry-babies.
It’s not better than nothing. My fight for another day – Nader in 2012. Fuck the democrats. They sold us out to the health care fatcats just like they sold us out to Wall Street. If progressives let them get away with this they deserve the goat fucking the democrats seem happy to give them.
And that says it all.
And "progressives" shouldn't mean radicals. Why did you have to corrupt another word? Anyway, let's end this with a voice of sanity from Matt's commenters:
Did the left get crazier recently? Or did I just not notice the crazy because I was focused on the tea bagger brand of crazy?
The far left has gone completely insane. This is the reason why I don't get annual passes to Disney for my kids anymore; they throw tantrums over gifts and would rather be the victims, getting absolutely nothing, than getting most of what they want (and everything they need).
Joe Lieberman is a schmuck. Fine. It is what it is.
But killing the most important progressive piece of legislation and knee-capping the President and anything he will try to achieve in the next 3 years (forget 7 because of your dim-wittedness) just because you don't get 100% of what you hoped for, the willingness to deprive people with pre-existing conditions of health insurance, the insistence on destroying those hated existing insurance companies instead of working with them to advance the cause of health security for those who need it most, it's just ridiculous. There's no rational debate here anymore, just a bunch of loud-mouth spoiled brats who think that they elected Barack Obama and, damn-it, he's going to give them what they want. Or else.
And it's all so stupid. Nate Silver's 20 Questions reflect the idiocy of the so-called progressives, who are willing to jettison this bill in favor of taking a wild shot at passing reform through reconciliation (which is a lousy idea, anyway). Geez, guys, did it ever occur to you that you can pass the darn bill and then, next year or later, try reconciliation to get some of the missing pieces? Or that nobody else - Harry Reid, President Obama, or anyone with half a brain - can actually tip their hat to that until this bill has passed?
I have completely had it with the martyrdom. Get over yourselves.
UPDATE: Josh nails it on the head: "Also cool how well that Nader thing worked out in 2000. That was cool."
If you don't like my discussion, and you really want to understand the dynamics of the emerging health care reform bill, the politics of how we got to where we are, and the misguided opposition of "progressives," go read Nate Silver's 20 Questions, and the responses and his take on them (really, you can skip the set of questions, since they're repeated in the answers).
We now have Glenn Greenwald's reaction to the current state of heath care/insurance reform, and once again the problem is the same. Glenn argues that President Obama is a sell-out who never cared about a progressive reform bill anyway, never fought for one, and is getting exactly what he wanted. And while I agree with much of Glenn's critique of the compromise bill itself, everything else Glenn says strikes me as wrongheaded.
Indeed, we've seen before what the White House can do -- and does do -- when they actually care about pressuring members of Congress to support something they genuinely want passed. When FDL and other liberal blogs led an effort to defeat Obama's war funding bill back in June, the White House became desperate for votes, and here is what they apparently did (though they deny it):
The White House is playing hardball with Democrats who intend to vote against the supplemental war spending bill, threatening freshmen who oppose it that they won't get help with reelection and will be cut off from the White House, Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) said Friday. "We're not going to help you. You'll never hear from us again," Woolsey said the White House is telling freshmen.
That's what the White House can do when they actually care about pressuring someone to vote the way they want. Why didn't they do any of that to the "centrists" who were supposedly obstructing what they wanted on health care? Why didn't they tell Blanche Lincoln -- in a desperate fight for her political life -- that she would "never hear from them again," and would lose DNC and other Democratic institutional support, if she filibustered the public option? Why haven't they threatened to remove Joe Lieberman's cherished Homeland Security Chairmanship if he's been sabotaging the President's agenda? Why hasn't the President been rhetorically pressuring Senators to support the public option and Medicare buy-in, or taking any of the other steps outlined here by Adam Green? There's no guarantee that it would have worked -- Obama is not omnipotent and he can't always control Congressional outcomes -- but the lack of any such efforts is extremely telling about what the White House really wanted here.
And this:
In essence, this reinforces all of the worst dynamics of Washington. The insurance industry gets the biggest bonanza imaginable in the form of tens of millions of coerced new customers without any competition or other price controls. Progressive opinion-makers, as always, signaled that they can and should be ignored (don't worry about us -- we're announcing in advance that we'll support whatever you feed us no matter how little it contains of what we want and will never exercise raw political power to get what we want; make sure those other people are happy but ignore us). Most of this was negotiated and effectuated in complete secrecy, in the sleazy sewers populated by lobbyists, industry insiders, and their wholly-owned pawns in the Congress. And highly unpopular, industry-serving legislation is passed off as "centrist," the noblest Beltway value.
Glenn still doesn't understand the issue of motivation, of the art of the practical versus the perfect, of focusing on doing what needs to be done to get to possible from impossible.
Here's what I said a couple of days ago:
Here's the thing. As I allude to above, President Obama is not doctrinal, he's practical. It is the quality that now, and almost always has, defined the man. He's no radical, and no ideologue. If his policies don't seem to match his words, it's nevertheless key to keep his words in mind, because they remain core, guiding principals. Where Bush was doctrinal - all policy came directly from his specific beliefs, in American exceptionalism independent of actual deeds - Obama sometimes appears to fail to achieve, or even try to achieve, the goals that we expect from his principles.
Some say that's because Obama's a realist, others because he doesn't really believe in what he says. But what Barack Obama believes has been clear for a long time - a conservative (meaning cautious) liberalism, open-minded advancement based on a realistic approach toward improvement. He's not an idealist, and never will be. He uses his political capital carefully, not arrogantly, and not in a way that squanders it in battles he calculates will end up in a loss. That does not mean he betrays principles, just that he wants to achieve those principals in practical and realistic manner.
Greenwald would say that it's nonsense, or blind faith. Glenn is an idealist, and that's great. We need those. President Obama needs those. Idealists keep us honest, when they're honest with themselves. And the President would be best served if he were surrounded by a few more of those.
But idealists gave us Ralph Nader and, as a result, eight years of George W. Bush.
Idealists gave us the neocons and a war to "liberate" Iraq.
Idealism has its limits.
Here, idealism will give us no health care reform, and a Sarah Palin administration.
You may not agree with the President's choices on this, but they were reasonable choices by a man who cares less about ideology and partisanship than about getting something done. The fact that we end up where many signs hint at where the President expected us to end up doesn't mean that he has failed us. Greenwald and the neo-Naderites see betrayal. This is anything but that. It is, most likely, the best health care reform bill that was ever possible out of this Senate and House. You may not like that, and you may think that the President is a failure or a cheat by not somehow, some way, changing the facts on the ground; you may want to believe that Barack Obama is seedy and corrupt by greasing the pole to make reform palatable to some vested interests. But saying those things does not make it so. Handled in the way the so-called progressive camp is now demanding could just as likely (more so, I would argue) mean that today we're looking back at the complete failure of Obama's health care initiative and a gloating, rather than refexively angry, GOP. It's cliche but also a truism that politics is the art of the possible. Regardless, we are where we are, now. Either the bill is worth passing, or it is not. But whatever the case, it's not due to bad faith by a President who has advanced the cause of health care reform beyond anyone's imagination a year ago.
Let me put it differently. The President is, by natural disposition or legislative and Senate experience or by the guidance of a staff and Cabinet filled with former Senators and Congresspeople, focused on process and realism. His approach acknowledges the flawed nature of the system and the dynamics of corporate interests and money and, most likely, back-room dealing. It sucks, it really does. And so Glenn is right, as far as it goes, to say that this whole process "reinforces all of the worst dynamics of Washington." But those dynamics are real, and the disputes about policy are real as well. Jimmy Carter failed as President for, among other reasons, a stubborn refusal to acknowledge and work within those dynamics. What was the result of Carter's national energy policy, for example? Do we want to remember Obama's health care initiative in the same way, as something that would have been a great leap forward, if only?
So here's the reality: if the left - who have now become the problem moreso than the deranged right (because the right just don't matter any longer in this effort from a procedural standpoint, unless we make them matter) - do not undermine this bill, we will have the most significant and important reform of the American health care system since the advent of Medicare. If the left sinks it now, it's not coming back, no matter what Howard Dean and Michael Moore and Daily Kos have to say about it.
It's really pretty simple. It's time to just get it done.
Kevin Drum explains why we should still pass health care reform, even without any public option or Medicare buy-in. Basically Kevin's point is: if not now, when? Given the practical realities of campainging for midterm elections and a reduced Democratic majority in the Senate staring us in the face after those elections, what's the chance that any reform effort can get legs for another decade?
Kevin finds much to like in the remaining reform effort, including a ban on restricting insurance based on preexisting conditions. But I'm not sure about the other items that Kevin delights in: fixing rates within broad classes of people, mandates, subsidies to low income Americans.
Let's take mandates, for instance. Kevin's answer to arguments against mandates: "[H]ow is it different from a tax? And its purpose is sound: it keeps the insurance pool broad and insurance rates down."
Does billing it as a tax make it more palatable? Particularly where it is a tax that goes not toward the provision of government services, but instead to private insurers? The Teabaggers and the Naderites will have a field day railing on about government handouts. Does the reform effort collar insurance provider profits? If not, how does it keep insurance rates down? Do we now believe that monopolies are excellent vehicles for reducing prices? How do you keep rates down without a vibrant marketplace, a marketplace that Joe Lieberman's collusion with the GOP seems to have buried for good?
Moreover, how many are going to be grateful that they have access to insurance when they are in fact being forced to buy anti-competitive private insurance. Instead of having the right to choose what to sacrifice in the past, a subset of Americans will no longer have that choice. And when they're struggling to pay their other bills, are they going to feel really good about health care reform and the extraordinary efforts made on their behalf by some people in Washington? That's what it really means to most people when Kevin talks about keeing the insurance pool broad - to create animosity by forcing people into an imperfect system.
Mandates are essential to force those in "healthy" groups who would otherwise skip insurance - until they are no longer healthy and the insurance companies are forced to take them on - into the system and spread the cost to deal with those people who would have otherwise been excluded due to preexisting conditions but for reform's requirement that they take all comers. In short, we need mandates to eliminate health insurance free riders. Said another way, in any system which cannot reject a person due to preexisting conditions, basic economics means that no "rational consumer" would enter the system until they have a medical need that costs more than the cost of insurance; it's a system that would only have sick people in it. Having a mandate in a truly competitive system, which ensures and enables mobility and liberty and health security, where the mandate prevents free riding that could collapse the system, well, that's worth keeping. Yet the dilemma now is the existence of a a mandate which is perceived as corporate welfare. How do you sell that to a recession-weary America, even if it is the right thing to do?
Look, I understand the practical reality here. Health care costs already include the costs for the uninsured. Providers mark up the cost of services for the insured to account for their "losses" on those who do not pay. This reform essentially shifts the mandate away from the provider - who must provide emergency room care for indigent patients - and onto the insurer. And, the argument goes, the uninsured tend to require more expensive care because they do not take advantage of preventive care. (And preventive care means, generally, more pharmaceuticals. Conveniently for Big Pharma, the White House agreed to oppose efforts to allow the government to bargain for lower drug costs or to allow drug importation from Canada.)
But these are all hidden costs and subsidies in the health care marketplace.
This health care reform will make those subsidies explicit, and explicitly financed out of the insurance premiums paid by individuals and their employers. People are going to resent it when their insurance rates go up, as they will regardless of reform. It's just that now, Congress and the White House will be held responsible.
All of which is why it is horribly sad that we cannot have an honest, rational discussion about these issues. Kevin Drum is most likely right - we are much better with this reform than without it. The issue now is, how do you convey that to people when their instincts and the fear mongers are telling them otherwise?
I want to be done commenting about Lieberman. But Ta-Nehisi, citing HuffPo, posted something today which is not altogether surprising, which is pretty sad, because it doesn't speak all to well about the quality of the man Joe Lieberman. I'll let you read most of it yourself, but it lays out for all to see that Joe is just acting out of spite - if those lefties liked the Medicare buy-in, it had to be bad. As Coates summarizes Lieberman's character:
Joe Lieberman is a divorced Dad refusing to pay for private school, in part, because it might please his ex-wife.
Apparently there is shock - shock! - that Joe Lieberman is once again torpedoing the Senate health care bill. Who could have imagined that he wouldn't want a provision that allows people aged 55 to 64 to buy in to Medicare - giving them an option other than Connecticut-based big insurance? Who could have imagined that he wouldn't have been negotiating in good faith?
UPDATE: The blogosphere is now all over this, pointing out, among other things, that the Medicare buy-in plan was strongly supported by Joe Lieberman no less recently than September. Now it's cause for a filibuster. How about we get it in Lieberman's own words:
And the saddest part - the Democrats are going to have to cave if they're going to get any bill at all.
At this point, I'm struggling with the idea of whether health insurance reform makes sense anymore. Truth be told, my wife will tell you that I've been struggling with it for some time, but the politics of failure, and the damage it would do to the President if it fails entirely, has held me back. But the bill that we're headed toward doesn't possess most of the feature set that made health insurance reform - health security - important to me. And the long term cost to individuals, in the form of a mandate without any competition in the form of a true public option, giving insurance companies free rein to overcharge policyholders, could have more negative political impact than a failure to enact the bill.
At the end of the day, I still support the effort, because three steps forward and two steps back still puts us a step ahead of where we were. The principle that everyone is entitled to health care is important, and if this reform can begin to rein in costs, despite its payoffs across the industry spectrum, it will be valuable without the other provisions. And whatever passes out of this Congress isn't the end of the line, but failure to pass something very well may be. But the political risks of bad implementation - a not unlikely outcome - are tremendous in this flawed proposal which will most likely now become reality. And all of this is qualified by the fact that I am just not sure I understand what is left in what remains of health care/insurance reform, or why we cannot get a straight answer about that.
And so my practical and political unease remains.
And one final point. No matter where this ends, it's not Joe Lieberman who will be blamed after he has finished screwing the American people in order to institutionalize and guaranty the long term profitability of Aetna and The Hartford.
Jeffrey Goldberg has posted an interview with Jonathan Safran Foer, the author of Eating Animals, on the morality of vegetarianism. Well worth the read.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, Brigitte Bardot is campaigning for the European Union to institute a Vegetarian Day in order to help combat global warming (this link not for the kids).
Naturally, that's cause for the self-annointed moral guideposts over at Free Republic to let us know just what we should think about those vegetarians. Let's take a look.
Another thing that is negative about vegetarianism is the self-righteous, fascist superiority of vegetarians and (shudder) vegans. To them, we “flesh eaters” are morally inferior and deserve any evil thing that happens to us.
Veggie killers are just as nuts as any other leftie with their broad brush, one-size-fits-all philosophies.
Fascist vegetarians. Because Hitler was a vegetarian!
And we can't stand those broad-brush painting vegetarian liberal nuts.
Damn broads.
Thanks for admitting it. Most vegans and vegetarians are self-righteous prigs.
Now when the right wing nuts generalize, no problem.
Pass me the steak please!
See, now that's the proper level of discourse. Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time.
Tasty, tasty meat. Mmmmmmm...mmmmmmmm...mmmmmm.
Oui, oui!
In I Timothy 4:3 The Bible states that in latter times not eating meat shall be pushed upon people. Now just how did the writter know this unless he was inspired by God. Who would have thought it?
1Ti 4:1 ¶ Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;
1Ti 4:2 Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;
1Ti 4:3 Forbidding to marry, [and commanding] to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.
1Ti 4:4 For every creature of God [is] good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:
1Ti 4:5 For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.
Forbidding to marry? I thought the biggest problem we faced was that evil liberals wanted more people to marry. OK, I admit it, I don't even know what the above means. How could I, as a godless vegetarian?
The Hasids, who have long had a huge enclave in the now-artist-haven neighborhood, had complained that the Bedford Avenue bike paths posed both a safety and religious hazard.
Scantily clad hipster cyclists attracted to the Brooklyn neighborhood made it difficult, the Hasids said, to obey religious laws forbidding them from staring at members of the opposite sex in various states of undress. These riders also were disobeying the traffic laws, they complained.
Good thing car drivers never disobey traffic laws, or they'd have to get rid of the roads entirely, right?
What's a hipster, anyway?
This is, believe it or not, incredibly troubling for the Hasidim in the South Williamsburg neighborhood, who have apparently been objecting to the bike lanes since the city began putting them in.
So what did the Hasids do to address the problem of the biking hipsters? Relying on the democratic process like any good American, they asked the city to remove the bike lanes, that's how. And, since the mayoral election was approaching, Michael Bloomberg said ok.
Because the Hasids were not going to vote for Bloomberg otherwise?
Not to be outdone, the hipsters employed several tactics. Like riding around the neighborhood in flesh-colored body suits. Or so it appears. I don't really know if this picture has any relation to the Hasid-hipster bike lane brouhaha, but heck, it's pretty darn funny if it does. So we're going with it. And from a Hasidic perspective, can it be any worse than a girl in shorts?
Lately, however, the hipsters have tried something new - covertly (ok, not so much) repainting the lanes.
You know what's coming. That's right, following in the vigilante spirit of the day, the Hasids went all Judah Maccabee and made a citizen's arrest:
Two cycling advocates were apprehended by the Shomrim Patrol, a Hasidic neighborhood watch group, as they repainted a section of bike lane at 3:30 a.m. yesterday, but when cops arrived, no one was arrested and no summonses were issued, police said.
So I guess that's a draw. But the battle rages on.
It's a good thing, then, that South Williamsburg has Baruch Herzfeld. That's Baruch to the left. Seriously. And he's the owner of a local bicycle shop - go figure! - who's trying to broker peace in the great Hasidic-Hipster Bike War. As important a quality as you can have in a mediator, Baruch is known for being balanced. On the bike. As for dispute resolution - well, maybe not so much (not that there's anything wrong with that).
But Baruch Herzfeld, who has tried to bridge the gap between hipsters and Hasids with a bike-rental program, said safety is not the issue so much as xenophobia.
"They don't want the hipsters in their neighborhood," he said. "It's like in Howard Beach back in the day when they didn't want black people in the neighborhood."
I want to flag this piece by Greenwald. Glenn is right, in large part, and, as I have said before, the President and Congress need to have their feet held to the fire and hear the voices of change as loudly as they hear the nasty voices of those who still look to Cheney and Limbaugh and Beck and Palin. We need to continue to push Washington toward repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act, to bring heat on the foot-dragging on closing Guantanamo, to hold the torturers and their commanders accountable.
But Glenn's piety makes me uncomfortable, too. Not because I am a hypocrite or an Obamaphile, but because motivation matters. Those who are reacting against the "Angry Left" and its supposed abandonment of President Obama are not just the mirror image of the Bush right. They're people who haven't forgotten their abandonment by the Nader "left" and the hand-over of America to the hard right. Nor should they.
Because, even while he drags his feet, President Obama still speaks to the principles that matter to us. Maybe our confidence in his words is misplaced, but he's all we've got.
But it's not just that. Sometimes President Obama fails to live up to his words. Guantanamo remains a sore point. We still have extraordinary rendition. So, Obama is clearly struggling with his ideals, trying to find a practical (Greenwald would say cowardly, perhaps) answer that is insufficiently liberal for the left wing.
Here's the thing. As I allude to above, President Obama is not doctrinal, he's practical. It is the quality that now, and almost always has, defined the man. He's no radical, and no ideologue. If his policies don't seem to match his words, it's nevertheless key to keep his words in mind, because they remain core, guiding principals. Where Bush was doctrinal - all policy came directly from his specific beliefs, in American exceptionalism independent of actual deeds - Obama sometimes appears to fail to achieve, or even try to achieve, the goals that we expect from his principles.
Some say that's because Obama's a realist, others because he doesn't really believe in what he says. But what Barack Obama believes has been clear for a long time - a conservative (meaning cautious) liberalism, open-minded advancement based on a realistic approach toward improvement. He's not an idealist, and never will be. He uses his political capital carefully, not arrogantly, and not in a way that squanders it in battles he calculates will end up in a loss. That does not mean he betrays principles, just that he wants to achieve those principals in practical and realistic manner.
Greenwald would say that it's nonsense, or blind faith. Glenn is an idealist, and that's great. We need those. President Obama needs those. Idealists keep us honest, when they're honest with themselves. And the President would be best served if he were surrounded by a few more of those.
But idealists gave us Ralph Nader and, as a result, eight years of George W. Bush.
Idealists gave us the neocons and a war to "liberate" Iraq.
I know it's incredibly parochial and selfish and I shouldn't ask, but it's the first thing that came to all of our minds (look, it really does matter to us), so...will Chelsea convert? Oh, and mazel tov.
Not quite another poetry reading, but William Shatner challenges GOP puppetmaster Rush Limbaugh's claim of equivalence between health care and a beach house.
And no, I don't know what's up with that chair/sofa.
I recently finished reading The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and Fire that Saved America, and we've been watching Ken Burns' PBS documentary, The National Parks: America's Best Idea. I plan to write more about these at some point, but one thing you learn from both, if you are paying attention, is the conservative case for conservation. Sullivan posts today on why preserving the environment and the physical world for future generations - "to husband the natural world, not rape it and throw it away" - should be a conservative value. But that word doesn't mean what it should anymore, so maybe it's just better to not politicize it and say that conservation should be an American value.
Sarah Palin is at a book signing in Orlando this evening. The crazies started camping out last night so they could worship her. Here's a sample of her fans from the other day in Ohio (who sounded pretty similar in the News 13 interviews this morning here in Orlando).
More up-and-downism on the Palin circuit.
Meanwhile, but not intellectually too far away, the GOP, through Committeeman Jim Bopp, Jr. (who - big shock! - is also general counsel to the National Right to Life), released its ten conservative purity principles yesterday:
(1) Smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill (2) Market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare; (3) Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation; (4) Workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check (5) Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants; (6) Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges; (7) Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat (8) Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act; (9) Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and (10) The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.
OK, stop laughing now, and let Sullivan take it down point by point.
In the lead-up to Thanksgiving - "Turkey Day" to most - Gary Steiner writes a New York Times Op-Ed questioning the humanity of the way humans routinely kill other living creatures for their enjoyment. The ethics of eating meat are, for those who choose to think about it at all, captured in the ideas of eating "certified humane meat" and "free range" eggs, and the countless other ways in which people rationalize their decisions to serve animals on a plate by convinving themselves that the animals, at least before slaughter, were not mistreated, by making the way the animals were raised appear "compassionate."
What does compassion mean in the context of slitting an animals throat so that it can bleed to death? If you haven't learned by now to be wary of the adjective "compassionate," we've got a lot more taking to do. For now, let's just take note that a major selling point for Whole Foods' "animal compassionate" meat (which is twice as expensive as mass-market meat) and Chipotle's "humanely raised pork" (interestingly, it's the pork that was humanely raised, not the pig), is that it tastes better.
Steiner makes the obvious, but generally (and intentionally, since it is so obvious) overlooked point that the opportunity for cruelty doesn't end when an animal gets prepped for butchering, that the act of killing a living creature is itself a form of abuse, regardless of the care and gentility in which the animal is fattened up before making it to the broiler. Eliminating factory farms and the commodification of animals, while laudible, isn't the end of the story. But frequently, humanity's concern for animal welfare ends when we have to choose between an animal's right to live and our right to a porterhouse. Better the steakhouses shouldn't suffer.
We have been trained by a history of thinking of which we are scarcely aware to view non-human animals as resources we are entitled to employ in whatever ways we see fit in order to satisfy our needs and desires. Yes, there are animal welfare laws. But these laws have been formulated by, and are enforced by, people who proceed from the proposition that animals are fundamentally inferior to human beings. At best, these laws make living conditions for animals marginally better than they would be otherwise — right up to the point when we send them to the slaughterhouse.
I don't claim perfection on these issues. Ethics is always, at some level, about balancing competing interests. I'm not vegan. I continue to eat eggs and dairy - though my daugher is rightly pushing me to avoid any cheese with rennet - yet I'm fully aware of the inherent ethical problems with them. What happens, for instance, to the cattle given birth by a milk cow in order to keep her lactating? It's a tough issue, and I'm not sure that ignoring the consequences is legitimate. Worse, how can I justify my leather car seats. The answer? I simply cannot, and I probably should do better.
Still, the minimum demand for making ethical choices is the consideration of all factors. To fail to take account of the way food animals are bred, imprisoned, fed, drugged, or killed is not ethical decisionmaking. And its result can hardly be considered humane - characterized by kindness, mercy, or compassion - in any true sense of the word:
Humane differs from the ordinary use of merciful in that it expresses active endeavors to find and relieve suffering, and especially to prevent it, while merciful expresses the disposition to spare one the suffering which might be inflicted.
Moreover, the ethical arguments set aside the also important issues of sustainability and the environmental disaster that is meat production. But that's for another time.
It sure seems that the "most honest man" in the Senate is preternaturally incapable of straightforward honesty. Can we just call Joe Lieberman "Fair and Balanced?"
I grew up seeing Syms commercials down in South Florida, so when I lived in New York City, my college roommate - who considered himself the most educated consumer - insisted that I go to Syms when I needed a new suit. I ended up buying two "summer suits," a blue one and a tan one. I still had them in my closet until a few months ago, but hadn't worn them in a very long time.
Sy Syms passed away yesterday. More than a clothing retailer, Sy was apparently a pretty good guy:
Sy Syms spent many years contributing to diverse charities, including Boys Town of Jerusalem; the television program Frontline; the Public Broadcasting Company; and Boston University. He was a member of Congregation Emanu-El, and a trustee of the Inner City Scholarship Fund of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York. He endowed the Syms School of Business at Yeshiva University.
In his ongoing obsession with taking down Sarah Palin - a noble endeavor if ever there were one, though there does come a point, long ago passed by Sully, that it approaches the absurd - Sullivan finally makes the right point about America's Maverick Hero John McCain, what Palin says about him and what it all says about the American media and responsibility and real honor:
This is worth keeping in mind through all this. The only reason we even know about Sarah Palin is John McCain.
He picked her so carelessly, and his thought process was so cynical, that he should stand in the dock of public opinion before Palin does. Her vanity led her to say yes to his crazy offer. But he gave her that chance. And in the end, she is his responsibility.
And that's why in fact the pushback has been almost milquetoast. How do Steve Schmidt and John McCain reveal the truth about Palin when that truth only further proves their fantastic incompetence, nihilism and unseriousness with respect to government? And what's truly telling about Washington is that a man like McCain, who perpetrated this nonsense and even now refuses to take an ounce of responsibility for it, is nonetheless invited on countless talk shows and treated like the hero he always was. And no one demands he account for this train-wreck outside his tested cant about Palin "exciting the base."
If he had any sense of responsibility, he would resign. And if the Washington media had any sense of responsibility, it would never invite him on TV again without demanding he take responsibility for what he nearly did to the national security of this country. No one who put this person near the nuclear button should have a future in public life.
But this is Washington. And they protect their own.
Al Gore was heckled by global warming denialists and teabaggers on Friday night during a speech in Boca Raton last week. The classy heckling by the head-in-the-sand crowd continues in the comments to the article. Here's a sample:
First, polls of climate scientists are meaningless.
[P]olls of scientists don't make it "fact." That colleges teach it doesn't make it "fact."
But polls of the general population denying global warming? Well, those matter.
Polls are starting to show that only the extremely ignorant and/or the far left radicals still subscribe to the myth of global warming. Some even tried to change the name to "climate change" when the facts proved their theories wrong. Now as the rational citizens are becoming aware of Gore scam, they are showing their displeasure. Good on em!
OK, now I am getting a bit confused. Apparently, global warming does exist, but scientists actually know that it is caused by the sun, not pollution. It's just a scam to get new taxes - which get paid to Al Gore, of course.
"Global Warming" is only a scheme to initiate new taxes against the American people for their "carbon foot print." Most climatologists have scientific facts that suggest that the warming of the earth is caused by the Sun. Our planet isn't the only planet in the solar system that is heating up. The rest of the planets in the solar system are heating up as well. Those so called "scientists" that say global warming is real and is caused by pollution are paid off so that they provide fake facts that global warming is real. Our earth's global warming issue does not stem from pollution, but it stems from the natural actions of our Sun. Don't believe everything your politicians say. Think outside of the box. By the way, Gore will get a cut of the profits once these "global warming" taxes are initiated.
Oh, whatever, who cares about consistency, Al Gore's a jerk!
His movies and books are created to keep Al Gores in power. He's a schmuck.
I hope that wasn't one of my people who wrote that; it's bad enough that the writer is bragging about being from Winter Park. Still, it makes sense that there are many Al Gores, since he is - excuse me, they are - the inventors of the internets. One man cannot do it all.
Anyway, Gore's a clown!
Sorrry Al, but your side show circus act isn't fooling anyone any more.
The serious David Broder is at it again, this time on President Obama's "dithering" (thanks for taking your cue from Dick Cheney, Mr. Broder) on a "decision" for Afghanistan troops:
It is evident from the length of this deliberative process and from the flood of leaks that have emerged from Kabul and Washington that the perfect course of action does not exist. Given that reality, the urgent necessity is to make a decision -- whether or not it is right.
Just to be clear here: a wrong decision, according to Broder, is better than no "decision." Apparently, it is impossible for The Dean to understand that not making a decision is a decision in itself, and that that perhaps all of the alternatives to current policy are substantially worse than where we are now at. Or that not making a tragic mistake with the lives of American troops is of some value. Consequences don't matter. Our soldiers are just numbers, and Afghanis, not even that.
This is a very difficult one for him. And it isn’t just a one-time decision. This is the decision that will have consequences for the better part of his administration. So Mr. President, don’t get pushed by the left to do nothing; don’t get pushed by the right to do everything. You take your time and you figure it out. You’re the commander-in-chief and this is what you were elected for.
Kevin Drum and Brad Plumer are wondering why conservatives are obsessed with nuclear power.
Of the handful of Republicans who think global warming is a serious problem--like [Senator Lamar] Alexander--most refuse to address it unless nuclear power gets a starring role.
Their conclusions - that the right believes that if the left is against it, it must be pro-America to be in favor of nuclear power; and, it's a way to act like the left isn't really serious about the problem of global warming - and the right really is (cognitive dissonance, for sure) - since the left is opposed to such an important and serious solution.
And I suppose that's right, as far as it goes. But I think there's more to it than that.
The extremists on the right don't believe in consequences from their mistakes. If you believe in it, the result will be as you hope. It's the fantasy that underlies the neocon agenda, among others. "Real" America is always morally in the right, and as a result, we will automatically succeed in, among other things, liberating Iraq and Afghanistan (well, as long as a Republican is at the helm, because Democrats like Barack Obama aren't really Americans, anyway), just like we toppled the Soviet Union. (And torture isn't torture as long as real Americans are doing it.) In the same way, there can be no negative consequences to nuclear power. Nuclear waste, risks of meltdowns, and risks from terrorist targeting are not real risks. All we need to do is get the roadblocks out of the way. Positive results will flow from naturally from their presumably "right" decisions. God bless America.
Moreover, on the extreme religious right, divine intervention will keep them safe from any risk.
And finally, those on slightly more stable footing (we can pretend that means John McCain, or at least the media-centered version of John McCain) just use the nuclear card cynically. They know nuclear (fission) power will never be a major component of our quest for energy independence and the fight against global warming, but it's still a cudgel to wield against the Dems. Which gets us back to Kevin's and Brad's reasoning above.
Matt points out more classiness from the GOP base - this time, racism directed at Republican Congressman Joseph Cao, the lone House Republican to vote for the health security reform bill.
And Sully highlights some of the anti-Semitism on the teabagger right.
The House passed its version of health care reform moments ago. (And no, the GOP didn't show any class in losing this one, choosing to express their disappointment by shouting down all of the members of the Democratic Women's Caucus.)
Andrew Sullivan continues to be peeved at President Obama and Democrats for their lack of action on issues of true equality for gays, instead focusing on what he perceives as pointless hate crimes laws. Much of his critique focus on the Human Rights Campaign, and what he sees as a perverse alliance with Democrats who claim to want change but don't really want to do anything to recognize equality.
Andrew isn't entirely wrong on this. But I think his critique with respect to President Obama and much of the Democratic party gets it all a bit backward. This may be a reflection of my own bias, but I don't think the issue is the President or Democratic leadership. Not that they are taking the right approach - they're clearly not, and they need to learn to be more aggressive in repealing DOMA and DADT and moving our society toward greater equality. (Just imagine if the President had pushed aggressively on repeal of DOMA and DADT, rather than health care. He couldn't have created more ire on the right, but he'd almost certainly have had success by now, and fulfilled an important goal.)
But, as I said, Sullivan has his causation backwards. The fundamental problem is the recognition of HRC as the "gay establishment" by those who don't know any better. That is, the problem is those who are in the position in the gay establishment to tell the President and elected Democrats what the right approach is, those who have played the political game and are now in positions of influence to set the gay rights agenda. Two related dynamics are at play. First, Democrats want the support of the HRC, and so they approach the issues of gay rights in a manner that appeals to the HRC and its hapless, overly cautious, manner. Second, they've been told that the HRC is the legitimate representative of gays, and they accordingly believe that the HRC's viewpoint is correct and its approach reasonable. If you're a elected Democrat and you are being told that aggressively addressing gay rights issues is risky, counterproductive and could lose you votes, and you're being told that in smoky rooms with HRC big-wigs, well, what do you expect? HRC may think that their approach is currying favor with the Administration, but what they're really doing is influencing their approach.
It's basically the same dynamic that has been playing out in the Jewish community and Congress with respect to Israel. For as long as we can remember, AIPAC has been the pro-Israel lobby. I went to Washington as a teenager almost 30 years ago with several other of my Hebrew school classmates to learn about issues affecting Jews; we met for a half-hour with our local Congressman, who was Jewish, and spent the rest of the trip with AIPAC. Still today, despite the backlash (and in some ways because of it - Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer provide an invaluable foil for AIPAC to mobilize against), AIPAC continues to pack its meetings, both nationally and locally, and fills the coffers. The funds come, in no small part, from pro-peace Jewish liberals who support a two state solution, are deeply troubled by settlements, and were horrified by some of the events in the Gaza offensive, yet who nevertheless finance AIPAC as a proxy for their love for Israel. AIPAC can somewhat legitimately claim to speak for most Jews because, other than those who are really paying attention, most Jews think AIPAC represents their views. If you're pro-Israel and you can financially afford it, you are expected to go to the annual AIPAC dinner in your town, and most do. When I expressed anger at my local Republican Jewish Coalition members back in 2004 for the RJC's dishonest attacks on John Kerry and Howard Dean on Israel issues - as the RJC misrepresented statements of both to imply that they were soft on Palestinians and would endanger Israel's safety - I was informed that if I cared so much about Israel, I should become active with AIPAC. Which of course gets it all wrong, but that's not what we're here to talk about at this moment. Is J Street the answer to breaking the perception that AIPAC represents the viewpoint of all Jews? Maybe, maybe not - to do so, J Street probably needs to find its own coherent message in a positive way that will allow it to be an effective voice in favor of a strong and safe Israel living in some form of peace (or lack of war) with Palestinians and its neighbors, rather than just being (perceived as) the anti-AIPAC.
Similarly, gays needs to find a way to break the HRC's perceived monopoly on addressing gay policy goals. While most of my gay friends want strong movement on the same issues that concern Sullivan - equality, the right to live their lives just like anyone else - almost all of them financially support HRC. And so, just like AIPAC can lay claim to being the voice of American Jewry on Israel, HRC can make a claim to being the "gay establishment" because a significant portion of the gay community enables that claim. Gays who want to encourage our leaders to take a different approach than HRC need to mobilize for that purpose, create their own J Street, or G Street. While HRC members at a local level may want a more aggressive approach, the message doesn't reach the HRC leadership. As long as the message to the President and the Democratic leadership is that HRC, which sure seems to represent the "gay establishment", wants slow, cautious movement on those issues, that's what you're going to get from a meticulous, cautious president.
Which doesn't mean that Andrew should stop knocking the President for that approach. The only thing that will create movement on issues of equality is continued pressure on President Obama and the Democrats, both because that's part of breaking the monopoly, and also because it's the right thing to do.
Can anyone be surprised that the principled Senator from the Great State of Aetna who joined with John McCain and his other Gang of 14 Senate pals to keep Democrats from filibustering George Bush's judicial candidates is now threatening to filibuster the Democrats' health care plan if it includes an "opt out" public option? This is exactly the way I anticipated Joe Lieberman would show his gratitude for being allowed to retain his seniority in spite of his behavior during the Presidential campaign.
Of course, what's going on here is a power play. Lieberman doesn't want health insurance reform, we already know that, and he was never going to be one of the 50 Senators to vote to pass the bill itself, but he knows that something is coming. Now that Olympia Snow isn't going to tip the balance and vote for a bill containing an opt-out, Lieberman doesn't have the so-called "bipartisan" pressure of Snowe voting for cloture to give him the cover to vote for cloture himself and then against the bill; he is now in position to dictate terms, or at least be perceived by his owners at the insurance companies as doing that. Lieberman and his ego are not going to miss the opportunity to play that part, and in public rather than in a productive discussion behind closed doors, party loyalty (come on) be damned.
And President Obama has known this, too, which is why he won't commit to the opt-out plan. He can count, too.
Andrew Sullivan has been reacting to Pat Buchanan's sorry lamentation that white Christians are losing their country, not so much in response to Buchanan's racist paranoia and fear, but instead to the fact that Buchanan is just wrong. America is not, and has rarely been since it's foundation, a white country. Blackness has always been core to the American story, and American culture. If white Europeans somehow managed to push Native Americans aside, it has always needed black America, whether in the process of securing American independence or battling tyranny or building the foundations of America's capital.
Today, one of Andrew's readers hit on the banjo as a metaphor - and more than a metaphor - for American multiculturalism. Perceived (mistakenly) by some as a fundamentally culturally white instrument at the heart of bluegrass music, it is only a white instrument because it was adopted from slaves who brought the banjo with them from Africa. Reading this during lunch today, I was impacted by the truth of the post, but also by its incompleteness, for the banjo is currently undergoing a revival as a traditionally African and American instrument.
So I quickly (though not quickly enough, but more on that in a moment) prepared the following email to Andrew:
If you want to complete the circle on the post about the banjo as an African instrument, you really need to check out the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a wonderful Durham-based African-American band recapturing the black (pre-Bluegrass) tradition in banjo. It's fantastic and fun and playful and simultaneously black and country and multicultural and as American as you can possibly get. I can't hear it without a smile and pride in being an American. And tapping my feet.
I've been enjoying CCD for a couple of years now, one of the highlights of my time as a member of eMusic.com (which was, for a while, filled with great discoveries like CCD, but those discoveries became harder and harder for me to find, until I gave up my membership). And so I also sought out a few links to youtube videos of CCD to include in my email, including performances at UNC and Duke, and a short, Emmy-award winning biographical film about the group.
Which was all well and good, but while I bounced my head and danced in my seat, listening to CCD on my iPod and playing various youtubes, someone else was beating me to the punch. I sent my email about CCD to Sullivan around two o'clock. Well, I popped on The Dish around 3pm and noticed that Andrew had now posted about CCD - but someone else's email, not mine, around 2:30 in the afternoon, likely before he would have seen my email!
But I could outdo Andrew, and vowed that when I got home I would fire up the Mac, sitting inspired next to my banjo, and write up something that talked about the even broader multicultural nature of the banjo - from Alison Brown's jazz-inspired banjo to Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet's mingling of American folk banjo with Chinese cultural music, to banjo wiz (and sometime Sparrow Quartet member) Bela Fleck and his exploration of various musical genres and the role of the banjo in those worlds, including his recent foray (yes, I heard it on NPR) into bringing the banjo back to Africa.
You know what's coming, right? In the interim, Andrew had already posted about the documentary on Bela Fleck bringing the banjo back to Africa.
At some point, I will sit down and really address the multicultural aspects of the instrument, with more about how Abby has made the banjo not just a metaphor for multiculturalism but also an ambassador for American culture to other parts of the world. The Sparrow Quartet were, in fact, the first U.S. musicians to ever officially tour Tibet on a government-sponsored cultural mission. Pat Robertson would find Abigail Washburn's words about breaking down cultural walls horrifying; I find them an extraordinarily beautiful statement of what it really means to be an American.
I would post about that (although, as you know, I have already in the past), that is, if Andrew - through his prolific reader mail - hasn't beaten me to it by then.
It must be nice having Andrew's massive audience to keep him ahead of me, and to do it full time.
Since the PETA topic came up again in my Joss Stone post below; and since it annoys people (right wingers, unapologetic meat eaters who don't want to think about what they eat, faux feminists, people who don't understand that getting a message across requires getting attention - or those who understand that completely, and don't want the attention given - and the generally easily offended); and since we need an antidote to any post featuring an image of Dick Cheney ... I will point to this article about what PETA was doing in Washington, D.C. as the Senate was passing health care during a record snow storm.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, 
Not to be outdone, the hipsters employed several tactics. Like riding around the neighborhood in flesh-colored body suits. Or so it appears. I don't really know if this picture has any relation to the Hasid-hipster bike lane brouhaha, but heck, it's pretty darn funny if it does. So we're going with it. And from a Hasidic perspective, can it be any worse than a girl in shorts? 
It's a good thing, then, that South Williamsburg has 
