Feel the shifting tectonic plates, you can get it even if you′re straight

There must be a heck of a lot of gay sex in Chile.

Preacher in the Ring

On this Purim, a series of essays on Jewish Values and Torture.

Time to dust my broom

I don't entirely understand curling, but I have to admit that my youngest daughter and I have enjoyed watching it as much as anything else during these Winter Olympics. It's always tense, keeps you engaged for a long time, and (because the Americans - are all the players from Minnesota? - aren't really the best) the CNBC coverage isn't nearly as Rah-rah Team USA jingoistic as the rest of the Olympics, which let's you just enjoy the skills and drama.

Still, wouldn't it be that much more fun if they still played with old-fashioned straw brooms?

What do you know?

Progressives are crying foul at President Obama again because the Administration's health care reform proposal going into Thursday's summit (that I proposed, thank you very much) doesn't include a public option, and because White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that the votes aren't there for a public option. However much I would like to see a public option, the President is right on this, and it's not cowardice to try to get this done in a way that it can get done.

The so-called Progressives just never learn. I'm beginning to think they'd love to see a Speaker Boehner. Because Gingrich worked out so well for the progressive cause.

Better on the other side

Kevin Drum complains about the lack of discussion about the dangerous impact of selling insurance across state lines, then hears from and points to David Adensnik at Conventional Folly, who in turn found this New York Times article that actually explained the folly (shocker) of the Republican infatuation with an (unregulated) intrastate insurance exchange.

Healthier adults would buy cheaper policies out of state, the budget office said, while less-healthy adults would stick to in-state insurance because it covers the services they need. Premiums would rise for the latter group as the risk pool became less healthy and more costly.

“From a consumer protection point of view, the result of allowing sales across state lines would be that the state with the least restrictive regulatory scheme would have an advantage and could undercut all the others, and you would have a race to the bottom,” said John Rother, executive vice president of policy and strategy for AARP, the lobby for older Americans, which supports the Democrats’ legislation and markets insurance itself.

Put simply, facts like this are the reason the GOP doesn't want to attend the President's health insurance reform summit. They can't put their ideas up to actual, honest public scrutiny, and holding an event like this is the only way the broadcast media will really tell the story to the public.

The question's many sided

Kevin Drum asks a silly question:

If the economy sucks, it's Obama's fault. If the economy prospers, it's a dangerous mirage brought about by Obama's failed policies. What do you think are the odds that the media will buy this?

Get a job

As David Leonhardt and the New York Times report, and despite the right-wing arguments and media collusion to the contrary, the stimulus bill has worked.

We love our Swaggart and Haggard

Lacking their own ultra-Orthodox Tim Tebowitz, the Rabbinic Alliance of America, apparently the Hebraic version of Focus on the Family, channels Pat Robertson, in the person of their spokesrebbe Rabbi Yehuda Levin:

"When Americans are suffering economically and millions need jobs, it's shocking that the Administration is focused on its ultra-liberal militantly homosexualist agenda forcing the highlighting of homosexuals and homosexuality on an unwilling military. This is the equivalent of the spiritual rape of our military to satisfy the most extreme and selfish cadre of President Obama's kooky coalition.

We agree with Eileen Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness that this will hurt the cohesiveness of the military, cause many to leave the army, and dramatically lower the number of recruits, perhaps leading to the reinstatement of a compulsory draft.
"Thirteen months before 9/11, on the day New York City passed homosexual domestic partnership regulations, I joined a group of Rabbis at a City Hall prayer service, pleading with G-d not to visit disaster on the city of N.Y. We have seen the underground earthquake, tsunami, Katrina, and now Haiti. All this is in sync with a two thousand year old teaching in the Talmud that the practice of homosexuality is a spiritual cause of earthquakes. Once a disaster is unleashed, innocents are also victims just like in Chernobyl.

"We plead with saner heads in Congress and the Pentagon to stop sodomization of our military and our society. Enough is enough."

So I guess it's not ironic that this press release blaming the Haitian earthquake on homosexuals and the potential repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell made it out via the ChristianNewsWire. (Thanks, Goldblog.) Obviously, these disturbed so-called rabbis couldn't find another source that would be as receptive to their screed. (A quick google shows that these clowns have made a habit of attacking the gays. It seems to me that they protest too much.)

I guess all those gay soldier serving in the Israeli Defense Force must explain a whole bunch of natural disasters.

On a serious note, this past Saturday, my rabbi did a sermon about how Judaism doesn't read the Torah literally, and how that has helped us advance as a people and a religion. Someone didn't tell these guys. Then again, since the RAA doesn't recognize non-Orthodox Jews as being Jewish, I don't think they'd be interested in my rabbi's opinions.

(This should cause a tremor or two.)

It's the persecuted ones that will find the light

Yglesias, quoting Daniel Levy, comments on how, despite the growing recognition that the status quo in Israel is untenable, there is a total unwillingness to actually take any action to change the course of history and move toward peace with the Palestinians by, you know, actually doing something different.

But then Matt proceeds to touch on the issue that constantly frustrates me (I was even thinking about it over the weekend), to wit, the recognition among the majority of American Jewry that a two-state solution is absolutely necessary, but the fact that criticism of Israeli policy that doesn't work toward that end is impermissible. The best example of this on a almost daily basis is Jeffrey Goldberg, who is constantly having things both ways. Fundamentally, he knows what needs to be done. But don't say it (unless you are Jeffrey), because then you are the next Stephen Walt. That's not completely a criticism; I get that he's actually trying to sort it out, and I appreciate that he's motivated (I hope) by good faith, unlike many others. But it doesn't leave much room for anyone else to sort, and it doesn't help anyone get to a solution, either.

UPDATE: Heh. Goldberg plays whack-a-mole with Stephen Walt again today.

Don't take this as support for Walt. It's not. But I find these words from Goldberg somewhat ironic, given the ease with which he plays the other side:

Slipshod, even malicious, renderings of history are par for Walt's course, and I'm glad that John Judis has taken the time to point out this particular calumny. But I feel for John Judis. I've only met him a couple of times, but suffice it to say, he's not Marty Peretz when it comes to questions about Israel. But now he'll be accused of being part of the Israel Lobby by Stephen Walt, because Stephen Walt's definition of an Israel lobbyist is anyone who criticizes Stephen Walt.

[Emphasis mine.]

The band played on with no one around

Evan Bayh finally got tired of being one of the leading Democrats that Democrats love to hate. Matt sums up what is probably a pretty common view of the Bayh surprise retirement:

Obviously, Evan Bayh’s never been my favorite Senator. And the more one learns about both the manner of his departure, and the thinking behind it, the clearer it is why. Simply put: He’s an immoral person who conducts his affairs in public life with a callous disregard for the impact of his decisions on human welfare. He’s sad he’s not going to be president? He doesn’t like liberal activists? He finds senate life annoying? Well, boo-hoo. We all shed a tear.

He’s ditching his seat in a manner calculated to throw control of it to a conservative Republican. And nothing about his stated reasons for leaving suggest that he thinks replacing Evan Bayh with a conservative Republican will make the lives of Americans better. Nor does anything about his states reasons for leaving suggest that he thinks replacing Evan Bayh with a conservative Republican make the lives of foreigners better. But he’s acting to ensure that it happens anyway. Because he doesn’t care about the welfare of the American people or the people of the world. It’s not a recipe for good conduct as a Senator and it’s not a recipe for good conduct when it comes to choosing a way to depart.

This guy wants to be President? Well, so long as basic decency isn't a requirement, the sky's the limit.

UPDATE: Here's Ta-Nehisi:

That is just amazing to me. I don't know Evan Bayh, so I don't know if this is narcissism or what. But to leave your colleagues in such a bad way strikes me as an extraordinary act of selfishness.

Not calling the president or Harry Reid because they might try to "talk him out of it," is telling. I don't know what to make of people who talk big in front of cameras, but can't look their comrades in the eye.

Possibilities

Health insurance rates are going up (a lot) in California - specifically, according to Anthem Blue Cross, because healthy people are forgoing coverage due to the poor economy. They're also going up elsewhere.

Which puts the lie to the charge that health care reform would be the cause of increased insurance rates. Rates are going to go up, regardless. Health care reform would begin to impose some restraint, as well as increasing the pool of insured to address the problems with health care access.

But, despite the evidence that increased insurance rates are independent of reform (or, given the reasons mentioned above, they're the result of the lack of reform, but we'll tread softly on that one for now) - President Obama and the Democrats will be attacked and blamed for all rate increases once HCR is passed. It will happen.

And our media will fail to inform you differently.

Internal revenue

The FOX News crazies and their Tea Party viewers can pretend that Barack Obama is a socialist because of widespread ignorance like this:

About a third of the $787 billion stimulus was made up of tax cuts, but Americans evidently don't realize they got them: a CBS News/New York Times poll shows that only 12% of respondents knew that President Obama had lowered taxes during his time in office; 53% said Obama kept taxes the same; 24% said he raised taxes; and 11% said they didn't know.

Look, I was opposed (and I wrote about it on this blog) to such a high percentage of the stimulus being in the form of tax cuts. It wasn't and isn't stimulative, and it isn't perceived by people as government action. It was theirs in the first place, whatever. And Democrats - particularly radical liberal socialist Nazi Muslim ones (like there's any other kind) - don't get credit for tax cuts. Even from Democrats, forget reactionary right wingers.

That being said, the current attitude is to blame Obama for this public lack of awareness of what the government and the Obama Administration did to help them out (and make no mistake, the stimulus has helped, saved an incredible number of jobs, and prevented a free-fall into a full-fledged depression) - it's his job to sell what they did, or some such. We've entirely replaced the idea of a public servant with the idea of a political animal. The President is now fundamentally required to be a marketing department, and politics these days is no longer about policy but about politicking; it's all about sales and packaging your goods rather than doing the public good.

It's the perception of reality from a press that has become subsumed in the broader media, and a media that views its own world that way. They program based on weekly viewership ratings; you're supposed to change storylines and television shows and lineups and characters to boost those numbers. It's what the broadcast media do.

Speaking of the press, Oscar Wilde once wrote:

In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing. Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism.

Unfortunately, journalism has also been eaten up by Media.

But why do we need to govern our country this way? And if we must, why can't those we rely upon embrace a meager sense of responsibility to truth and the popular good?

Maybe, just maybe, much of the fault of our political and partisan chaos, the lack of understanding of fundamental social issues and current events, could rest in our so-called journalists, who'd rather present sides, who's up and who's down, the crass commercialism and marketing of politics, rather than the sober elucidation of fact. The witty yet serious Brian Williams and the erudite Diane Sawyer and the peppy Katherine Couric and the bearded Wolf Blitzer backed by the Greatest Political Team in the Known Universe could clear this up. They really could.

But it's not their job, they'd tell us. Their job description, as it were - which they themselves have the privilege to define - is to merely report on the horse race and on what Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin are saying, and what they're saying about Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama; to tell us about the gaffes and the titillation and the hardships and poll numbers and anger, but not about what the stuff actually says and means. If you don't understand what's in the stimulus, or how the stimulus has actually saved jobs and increased consumer spending - the exact purpose of the stimulus - well, that's your problem, not the problem of the Fourth Estate entrusted, we thought, with keeping us informed rather than just entertained, and entrusted, we also thought, with giving us the knowledge to make us better and more aware citizens rather than merely giving us alternative sources designed to validate our preexisting worldview, evidence be damned. If you don't know that the health care proposals actually provide for interstate exchanges or why mandates are necessary to get coverage for people with preexisting conditions, well, that's your problem, too.

Because Sarah Palin is interesting to them, and as for facts?

Well, just look outside; there's lots and lots and lots of snow out there (not that if you are where you care that there's lots and lots of snow you cannot just look outside and figure that out yourself) and I guess that means it's an opportunity to mock the idea of global warming, because simply saying global warming means it can never snow again and the media is doing us a service by debating and ridiculing the concept of climate change; or, when it's not merely mocking the issue, it's taking an issue that really isn't open to reasonable, sane and intelligent debate, and nevertheless engaging in a reasonable- and earnest-sounding, yet ultimately substance-free, debate. The media has, like it or note, determined that the standard-bearer for conversations of issues is a never-ending loop of the Cheney-Lieberman Vice Presidential Debate. Because that turned out so well for everyone. Using the snowfall as an opportunity to discuss what is really meant by global climate change, how it impacts everyone, and what needs to be done about it? Not their job. Leave that to NOVA.

In short, if a snow storm doesn't give us the opportunity to fill the air waves with commentary about how dumb and obnoxious and wrong Al Gore is, then what good is the media, anyway? Big, fat Al Gore is eating his words. Get it? (Yeah, FOX went there.) All class.

Journalism today is simply about giving voice to opinion.

That's what today's media is there for. Substance is in the eye of the programmer. And the Nielsons have spoken.

Wilde was right then as he is right now. "But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing."

Shake and bake

Good move. Greg Sargent reports that the President is going to hold a summit on health care with the GOP.

Racheting up efforts to call the GOP’s bluff on bipartisanship, Obama made a surprise announcement moments ago that he’ll be holding a summit of sorts with leading Republicans at the White House to discuss their ideas on health care reform — and possibly to move forward on legislation with them.

“They’re gonna be coming into the White House next week,” Obama told CBS’s Katie Couric moments ago, in a reference to Republicans, adding that they will be asked to “put their ideas on the table.” This meeting had already been announced.

But then Obama continued that after the recess, he would hold a second “large meeting” of “Republicans and Democrats” to see if there’s a way to find common ground on health care.

At this second meeting, Obama said, the White House, Dems, and Republicans would determine whether there was a bipartisan way forward on specific legislation. He said he wanted to “look at the Republican ideas that are out there” on lowering costs and insuring the 30 million uninsured.

“If we can go step by step through a series of these issues,” Obama said, then “procedurally there’s no reason why we can’t do it a lot faster than we did last year.”

But here's the key graf:

It’s possible, though, that this is all about laying the groundwork for pursuing a Dem-only reconciliation solution later. Such an effort, should it happen, will inevitably be portrayed as yet another partisan back-room effort to ram reform through. So perhaps the White House hopes a very public gesture of bipartisanship and transparency now will undercut those attacks and allow Dems to argue that they had no choice but to move forward alone.

Not that I am one to say I told you so (OK, maybe I am), but ... I told you so.

Often feels betrayed

I've been fairly quiet of late, because most of what I would have to say is simply repetitive of what I have been saying for some time. Yet every once in a while, things bear repeating. But this time, I'll let Kevin Drum do the drill.

But this is also utterly pathetic because....well, it just is. So Max Baucus didn't listen to us. Big deal. So we didn't get invitations to White House tea parties. Who cares? It may be understandable that progressives feel dissed, but are we really all such delicate flowers that we're going to give up on a cause we've spent a century on because the current bill isn't quite what we'd like and Rahm Emanuel is mean to us? Jesus.

In 20 years this bill will be entirely forgotten except as the first step toward broad national healthcare. The excise tax, the public option, the subsidy levels, the exchange — all forgotten because they will have been steadily replaced by an entirely different infrastructure. It's true that some of that infrastructure will be path dependent on the details of the current bill, but most will simply evolve as a result of technology and public demand. By 2030 arguments over the public option will seem as antiquated as rants against the tin trust.

But that's 20 years from now, and we won't get there unless we take the first step. So the White House needs to start listening seriously to progressive ideas and progressives need to suck it up and understand that they're going to lose most of the battles. That's just the nature of consensus politics. But speaking for me, that's OK as long as we win the war. And the only way to do that is to pass the damn bill. So let's pass it.

Hind parts

Richard Shelby. Master of the GOP art of accusing others of what they themselves are guilty.