Andrea Mitchell asked a Villager health-care panel on her show today to discuss how Harry Reid can get to 60 votes with the public option since the "Gang of Four" refuses to budge and threatens to kill health-care reform entirely.

Mitchell: And Ruth Marcus, what do they do, how do they water down the public option to make it acceptable to some of the moderates but placate some of the more liberals?

Marcus: Well, it's the "and still placate some of the more liberals" is the hardest part. You're dealing with a very complex Rubik's cube really at this point because every time you change something to please someone, you're annoying someone else and potentially losing his or her vote.

But the public option, I think, could be scaled back. There is already something that Sen. Carper from Delaware is working on in terms of allowing it to take effect perhaps more quickly in states or immediately in states which have very high costs and other states could opt in. There is Sen. Snowe's old trigger option that one could still pull the trigger on, so there are ways of doing it.

I think that in the end it is possible to mollify enough of the centrist Democrats, perhaps even a Republican -- now that seems awfully remote. The president, I think, is going to have to tell the left wing of his party and the balking liberal Senators that it is crazy to pull down the entirety of health care over this one issue which the president has already said is not the be all end all of health reform.

It's always the liberals who need to compromise their positions to the conventional wisdom of the Villagers. The Gang of Four are all righteous and virtuous while liberals are out-of-control hippies who act like barking dogs. How dare they want to produce a real reform measure that could eventually provide true competition for the health care industry and that will help lower overall health care costs? Outrageous!

Remember, Marcus was being a concern troll the day after America elected Obama to the presidency with a mandate to overhaul health care and wrote a column telling him to not to govern from the left.

Yet the experience of President Bill Clinton's rocky early months -- remember gays in the military? the BTU tax? -- suggests the steep political price of governing in a way that is, or seems, skewed to the left. This risk is particularly acute for Obama, whose opponents have painted him as a leftist extremist. The good news is that his advisers seem exquisitely aware of this trap and determined not to fall into it.

As David Sirota wrote:

The standard lie about Clinton's failures aside (it was NAFTA, stupid), the last sentence is particularly odd. Obama's "opponents have painted him as a leftist extremist." Yet, that supposed "leftist extremist" won the largest presidential mandate in the last generation.

And somehow, having done that, we are supposed to believe that means he should tack to the right.

Say what?

Email Marcus and ask her why the Gang of Four aren't the real problem, since 56 other Senators are fine with the public option: marcusr@washpost.com

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Glenn Beck's obviously been drumming his fingers in contemplation after his semi-successful 9-12 March on Washington: What to do? What to do next?

Aha! He knows! He'll organize them into a sustained movement to "save America." He'll call it "The Plan."

Beck unveiled "The Plan" on Saturday at a rally in Florida that drew about 25,000 people, and The New York Times was there:

Glenn Beck, the popular and outspoken Fox News host, says he wants to go beyond broadcasting his opinions and start rallying his political base — formerly known as his audience — to take action.

To do so, Mr. Beck is styling himself as a political organizer. In an interview, he said he would promote voter registration drives and sponsor a series of seven conventions across the country featuring what he described as libertarian speakers.

On Saturday he held a festive campaign-style rally in The Villages in Florida, north of Orlando, in which he promoted his recently released book, “Arguing With Idiots,” and announced another book to come next August filled with right-leaning policy proposals gathered from the conventions.

Mr. Beck provided few details about his plans for the tour, making it unclear if he truly intends to prod his audience of millions into political action or merely burnish his media brand ahead of a book release.

Mr. Beck did say the conventions would resemble educational seminars, and he emphasized that while candidates may align themselves with the values and principles that he espouses, he would not take the next step to endorse them.

In describing the conventions, he told the crowd on Saturday: “You’re going to learn about finance. You’re going to learn about community organizing. You’re going to learn everything we need to know if you want to be a politician.”

How does Beck intend to inspire this movement? Well, if the video from Saturday's rally is any indication, it's going to be done the way Beck has done everything so far -- scaring the crap out of people, shouting fire in crowded theater, and herding them toward the exits on the far right. He is, after all, our Fearmonger in Chief.

And anyone who buys into his crap is just another right-wing bedwetter.

Some samples:

Beck: I told you over a year ago, please read about the Weimar Republic. Read about the end of the Republic of Germany, Weimar, before it fell into the hands of the Nazis. We are facing the same kind of financial questions that they faced! It was unsustainable! And for the first time in American history we started to monetize our debt! That's when I told you, please read about Weimar, because they did it! And it ends the same way every single time it has been tried.

[Actually, there's no comparison: Germany had just been defeated in a World War and was suffering the effects of hyperinflation in the 1920s, conditions that clearly do not apply here. More to the point, if you actually do study the end of the Weimar Republic, you can see that the final collapse of the Republic occurred precisely because it attempted a "conservative experiment" along the lines that Beck is prescribing: From 1930 to 1932, "In line with conservative economic theory that less public spending would spur economic growth, [Chancellor Heinrich] Brüning drastically cut state expenditures, including in the social sector." This, as it turned out, only heightened the social unrest that gave the Nazis their chance.]

Beck: So as I tell you these things, know that there is hope on the other side. But we are about to walk through a wall of fire! We are about to be baptized through fire.

It's because we weren't protecting liberty. But let me tell you -- let me tell you we have a choice ahead of us. I see -- I see America as the people on a boat. The boat is the Titanic. We've had a crew and a captain who took this ship and rammed her right upside the iceberg. She's been takin' in water for awhile, all the while the captains, the crews, they've been comin' and goin' and they say, 'Don't worry, don't worry, it's the Titanic, it's unsinkable.'

Then we elected a new captain and crew, and they took that thing and they backed it up, and now they are ramming it into the iceberg! Now they're taking this ship and they're taking it and they're -- with health care, and cap and trade, and stimulus -- they're doin' the same amount of damage that all the other crews did, just faster!

All the while they're telling all the passengers, you just go back into your stateroom, everything's just fine, you go ahead in the salon. There's some drinks up there for you, you go listen to the music, everything's fine.

Let me tell you something. Each and every one of us are here, and wide awake. Each and every one of us are a passenger on this ship, and it's our damned ship!

Actually, Glenn, a more appropriate analogy is that we're all on that sailboat in Dead Calm and you're acting like Billy Zane. But whatever.

Continue reading »

According to a report in the Financial Times, Microsoft has approached News Corp. about de-listing their sites from Google, which would be an apparent escalation in the search engine wars.

It appears that Microsoft isn’t limiting this to just News Corp either. It’s reported that they are approaching numerous online publishers and offering to pay them for content if they delist from Google. One publisher approached by Microsoft said this is all about “Microsoft hurting Google’s margin”.

Microsoft’s new search engine Bing is their latest attempt to give Google a run for the money. Here are the October search engine market shares, and as you can see Microsoft has a long way to go to beat out Google:

Bing has increased at the same rate that Google has, but what is interesting is that it appears their shares are coming from Yahoo. In July of this year Microsoft and Yahoo entered a deal for Yahoo to use the Bing search engine on their sites in exchange for a split on advertising revenue, so Yahoo’s decrease in the market share also directly effects Microsoft.

Of course the whole basis of this plan depends upon the belief that Google is actually “stealing” content, something that is in serious debate in both the tech and legal worlds. If this war does escalate and end up in the courts then we could finally see a ruling come out on exactly what the “fair use doctrine” covers – something we have been running blind on for years. Given the fact that Google only reproduces the headline and first few words of an article and that this use is both for research and archival purposes, it appears that Google would have a very strong case in the courts. To really solidify their case and put the final nail in the coffin of this war, Google could remove advertising from the news section of their search engine, which is the only questionable part of “fair use” when it comes to their service. Even better would be for Google to spin off the news part of their search engine and make it a non-profit partnered with Google. Google can surely afford it, and this would destroy any battle Microsoft or News Corp may be planning.

Whatever happens with this, it is clear that Murdoch still isn’t set on removing his sites from Google. I just checked again and what I reported a couple of weeks ago still stands – News Corp sites have explicit directions asking Google to index them. This could also be used against the Murdoch/Microsoft plan. What would happen if Google showed that News Corp sites saw a large percentage of their visits originate from Google? I know that they have records of those kind of metrics, and it would be interesting to hear News Corp argue that they didn’t mind Google increasing their online visibility all these years for free.

(cross posted at IntoxiNation)

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From Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume tries to blame our situation with China owning our debt on President Obama, and throws in a bit of not-so-subtle racism with his offhand "bow and scrape" remark, just for good measure. It seems Hume has been asleep for the last eight years plus before Obama got elected if he thinks our problems with China just started in January.

Wallace: Let's talk about that point that Anne brings up Brit, because especially in China there was a sense of a diminished U.S. roll in the world. The Chinese were lecturing us when it came to economic policy and basically ignoring the President when it came to human rights.

Hume: Look, the president is in a weaker position than he might have been, not least because his policies have contributed mightily to the immense amount of new borrowing that's being done, much of it from the Chinese. So now you have the Chinese even worried about the size of the health care plan. That is unfortunate. But this president seems quite willing to embrace weakness as a position for the United States. I mean, the bowing and scraping that we see, in Saudi Arabia we saw it. We saw it on this trip in Japan--these kinds of gestures -- they wouldn't mean anything if they didn't seem to be of a piece with the general approach that the president has taken.

I think that he thinks that if he is such a -- he is a nice man, with a magnetic personality, and if he can reason with these people and not try to throw his weight around, that they will respond to him. That's exactly backward. The United States has some weight to throw around and still with the Chinese. They need our market as much as we need their money to borrow. And he's not in as weak a position as he behaves. And I don't think it helps for him to do what he did on this trip and the results bear that out.

From Chicago journalist Kristen McQueary, this deplorable story:

As a journalist covering Chicago politics, verifying information is like climbing a mountain of sand. With each step you take, the deeper you sink.

Last week while researching claims from a local Tea Party activist, I found myself asking a family for proof that they had lost an unborn grandchild.

The family, Dan and Midge Hough, of Chicago, spoke in favor of health care reform and in support of U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-3rd) at a Nov. 14 town hall meeting in Oak Lawn.

Their daughter-in-law, Jenny, and an unborn grandchild died recently due in part, they believe, to a lack of health insurance. They said Jenny was not receiving regular prenatal care and ended up in an emergency room with double pneumonia that developed into septic shock. Her baby died in the womb, and Jenny died a few weeks later, leaving behind a husband and a 2-year-old daughter.

Catherina Wojtowicz, of Chicago's Mount Greenwood community, an organizer for a Tea Party splinter group, Chicago Tea Party Patriots, falsely claimed that the Houghs fabricated their story. In an e-mail, she called them operatives of President Barack Obama who "go from event to event and (cry) the same story."

When the Houghs spoke at the Lipinski event, some Tea Partiers ridiculed them. They moaned and rolled their eyes and interrupted. Midge Hough began to cry.

The audience, Wojtowicz later explained, was exasperated by stories of isolated tragedies that cloud debate over the health care bill itself.

"What we are talking about is the bill," she said. "We've all had family members pass away, but would this health care bill really have prevented (Jenny's) death? We do question it."

American history is brought to life by adorable children in this truer-to-life-than-you-likely-read-in-your-history-books reenactment of the first Thanksgiving.

And yet, there are no consequences. It's unlikely anyone will ever stand trial for the slaughter of countless innocents in Iraq - but at least the truth is coming out in England. If only it would happen here:

Military commanders are expected to tell the inquiry into the Iraq war, which opens on Tuesday, that the invasion was ill-conceived and that preparations were sabotaged by Tony Blair's government's attempts to mislead the public.

They were so shocked by the lack of preparation for the aftermath of the invasion that they believe members of the British and US governments at the time could be prosecuted for war crimes by breaching the duty outlined in the Geneva convention to safeguard civilians in a conflict, the Guardian has been told.

The lengths the Blair government took to conceal the invasion plan and the extent of military commanders' anger at what they call the government's "appalling" failures emerged as Sir John Chilcot, the inquiry's chairman, promised to produce a "full and insightful" account of how Britain was drawn into the conflict.

Fresh evidence has emerged about how Blair misled MPs by claiming in 2002 that the goal was "disarmament, not regime change". Documents show the government wanted to hide its true intentions by informing only "very small numbers" of officials.

The documents, leaked to the Sunday Telegraph, are "post-operational reports" and "lessons learned" papers compiled by the army and its field commanders. They refer to a "rushed" operation that caused "significant risk" to troops and "critical failure" in the postwar period.

One commander said the government "missed a golden opportunity" to win support from Iraqis. Another commented: "It was not unlike 1750s colonialism where the military had to do everything ourselves". One, describing the supply chain, added: "I know for a fact that there was one container full of skis in the desert".

[...] Significantly, the documents support what officials have earlier admitted – that the army was not allowed to prepare properly for the Iraq invasion in 2002 so as not to alert parliament and the UN that Blair was already determined to go to war.

The documents add: "In Whitehall, the internal operational security regime, in which only very small numbers of officers and officials were allowed to become involved [in Iraq invasion preparations] constrained broader planning for combat operations and subsequent phases effectively until Dec 23 2002."

Blair had in effect promised George Bush that he would join the US-led invasion when, as late as July 2002, he was denying to MPs that preparations were being made for military action. The leaked documents reveal that "from March 2002 or May at the latest there was a significant possibility of a large-scale British operation".

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From Saturday Night Live Nov. 21, 2009

It's an obvious joke, no stealing here, but for the record our own Blue Gal beat SNL to it by a solid week.

cab drollery: For those naive enough to be laboring under the delusion that the Obama administration's Department of Justice is any different than the Bush administration's, allow me to disabuse you of that misconception.

The Big Picture: How overrated is sentiment in economics?

alicublog: The Children of Zhdanov

Corrente: What we can learn from Iceland

Mondoweiss: Feeling the hate in Washington

The Grey Matter: Light bulb moment, striking statistic, dramatic change

Cartoon via. h/t The Political Carnival.

Open thread below...

A little bit of ephemera from an early sixties documentary, we join, in progress, a bit of a work session in Gerry Mulligan's apartment. Tom Jobim is playing his One Note Samba when Mulligan joins in on clarinet. They jam for a bit, but Gerry isn't happy with a note or two that he blows, so they stop, discuss, and swing the song out perfectly.

I'm no trained musician, and I'm still not quite sure what exactly they were discussing, but I love watching great artists in the process of working a piece through.

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("Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your . . . .never mind")

Since debate on the issue of our current Immigration laws should be heating up soon, this may be jumping the gun. But it's never too early to start getting some historic perspective on issues. So this post is about the debate over the McCarran/Walter Immigration Bill of 1952.

The program, American Forum Of The Air, hosted a debate on the bill with Senator Herbert Lehman (D-New York) and Congressman J. Frank Wilson (D-Texas)on May 17, 1953.

Sen. Herbert Lehman: “Aliens already in this country can be apprehended and placed in custody. In some cases they can be deported without even the benefit of a hearing. Mister Blair, the McCarran -Walter Act took over all the worst features of all the immigration laws which have been enacted over the last thirty or forty years. But it added many new provisions that were equally bad and combined the whole structure into a legal code which is anti-humanitarian, anti-foreign and, in the profoundest meaning of the word Un-American. It is a complex law and very difficult to summarize in all of its details. But if we are to keep faith with our American traditions, this law, in my opinion must be completely revised and rewritten.”

Then, as now the subject of our Immigration Laws was the object of much heated debate. In the 1950s, with the Red Scare in full bloom, the fear was mass migration of Communist subversives and assassins - however, then as now there was the racial/ethnic overtone which seems to be really what the debate is always about.

Some of it isn't so subtle.

You know, the Catholic Church certainly gets to enforce whatever rules they make - but this wouldn't bother me so much if they were consistent. After all, when was the last time a bishop singled out someone for supporting what the Church itself labeled an "unjust war" or for voting in support of the death penalty?

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin has banned Rep. Patrick Kennedy from receiving Communion, the central sacrament of the church, in Rhode Island because of the congressman's support for abortion rights, Kennedy said in a newspaper interview published Sunday.

The decision by the outspoken prelate, reported on The Providence Journal's Web site, significantly escalates a bitter dispute between Tobin, an ultra orthodox bishop, and Kennedy, a son of the nation's most famous Roman Catholic family.

"The bishop instructed me not to take Communion and said that he has instructed the diocesan priests not to give me Communion," Kennedy told the paper in an interview conducted Friday.

Kennedy said the bishop had explained the penalty by telling him "that I am not a good practicing Catholic because of the positions that I've taken as a public official," particularly on abortion.

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George Stephanopoulos just had to give Liz Cheney some more air time on his bobblehead show in another of his "fair and balanced" panels. Sorry Liz but what's "inexcusable" is your daddy helping to get us into this quagmire in the first place. I still want to know when she's signing up for the military if she wants to keep beating those war drums.

WILL: The danger is that the president is going to be seen as escalating this war. He’ll do it half-heartedly with his heart not in it, he will lose his party, and he’ll be supported by Republicans of the stripe of Liz Cheney, and that’s not a sustainable path.

CHENEY: Well, let me just say that what I will support is the strategy that actually will win in Afghanistan, a strategy that’s the one that was laid out by General McChrystal, and I think it’s just completely inexcusable that we’ve now had month after month after month of photo-op out of the White House and no decision.

The president is very fond of saying, “Before I commit troops, I’m going to think very carefully about it.” Somebody in the White House needs to remind him: He’s already committed troops. We’ve got American men and women in Afghanistan today, because we’ve got to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a safe haven for Al Qaida. The cost of walking away, the cost of defeat, the cost of retreat is huge. They’re fighting there today, and they’re fighting without the kind of resources and reinforcements that he needs -- that they need.

Dear Associated Press,

Holy Joe Lieberman is a man of many parts.

He is a sleazebag, a warmongering Neocon, a sanctimonious backstabber, "Armageddon" John Hagee's "Zionists bring the Second Coming" Reacharound Buddy, a serial betrayer of the leaders of the Democratic Party, ...and many other things which could not be could not be adequately described given the family nature of your publication.

One thing he emphatically is not is a "Senate Democrat".

Perhaps as they clean out their desks and make their way out the door, one of your many hundreds of newly laid-off reporters could pass along to you that portion of their notes which detail the recent political history of Joesph I. Lieberman wherein he:

1. Lost the Democratic primary in Connecticut to an actual Democrat.
2. Formed his own Lieberman Uber Alles Party (Motto: A Smarmy Of One)
3. Ran against the candidate of the Democratic Party and,
4. With massive assistance from a cartel of banks, insurance companies, credit card companies and Republicans who now collectively own his quisling ass, managed to win back his former Senate seat.
5. He also endorsed the Republican candidate for President in 2008 and campaigned for (Mc)same, and was welcomed and applauded as a member of the family at The Grand Ol' Party convention of insane freaks.

Which means, as I said, despite the fact that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Barack Obama both still inexplicably seem to want to have his babies, Joesph I. Lieberman is not a Senate Democrat, and is most certainly -- as your strange photographic juxtaposition suggests -- not THE Senate Democrat.

I hope this clears thing up.

Yours in Christ, and crossposted from,

driftglass