Gordon at Alternative Brain reads an on-line article about Bill Moyers and agrees:

The Nation talks about a show I watched last Friday evening of LBJ's taped phone conversations and Bill Moyers' commentary. Highly recommended as a history lesson. And a warning.

One point of the program, he explained, was to offer viewers "an insight into the mind of one president facing the choice of whether or not to send more and more American soldiers to fight in a far-away and strange place."

But another point was to offer Obama and his aides a caution that only a few wise and worldly senators provided Johnson back in the mid-1960s -- chief among them Oregon's Wayne Morse, about whom Johnson says on one of the tapes: "outside Morse, everybody I talk to says you got to go in..."

Moyers was not making crude or casual analogies.

"Granted," he explained early on, "Barack Obama is not Lyndon Johnson, Afghanistan is not Vietnam and this is now, not then. But listen and you will hear echoes and refrains that resonate today."

Moyers:

Now in a different world, at a different time, and with a different president, we face the prospect of enlarging a different war. But once again we're fighting in remote provinces against an enemy who can bleed us slowly and wait us out, because he will still be there when we are gone.

Once again, we are caught between warring factions in a country where other foreign powers fail before us. Once again, every setback brings a call for more troops, although no one can say how long they will be there or what it means to win. Once again, the government we are trying to help is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent.

And once again, a President pushing for critical change at home is being pressured to stop dithering, be tough, show he's got the guts, by sending young people seven thousand miles from home to fight and die, while their own country is coming apart.

And once again, the loudest case for enlarging the war is being made by those who will not have to fight it, who will be safely in their beds while the war grinds on (my em). And once again, a small circle of advisers debates the course of action, but one man will make the decision.

We will never know what would have happened if Lyndon Johnson had said no to more war. We know what happened because he said yes.

Video here and transcript here.

Shorter: "You've got to get in or get out. Get in, you're gonna lose. Get out, you're a pussy."

It's kinda like losing a bet on a ball game and then losing it again on the replay. Stupid.

The man has a way with words... I liked it so much, had to reprint it in full.

Robert Reich was out beating the drum yesterday, speaking on "This Week" and posting this piece in Salon:

If you want to save universal healthcare, you must do several things, and soon:

1. Go to the nation. You're not only a powerful orator; you're also capable of motivating, energizing, and mobilizing the American public. You must go on the road -- building public support by forcefully making the case for universal health care everywhere around the country. The latest Wall Street Journal poll shows that three out of four Americans want universal healthcare. But the vast majority don't know what's happening on the Hill, don't know how much money the medical-industrial lobbies are spending to defeat it, and have no idea how much demagoguery they're about to be exposed to. You must tell them. And don't be reluctant to take on those vested interests directly. Name names. They've decided to fight you. You must fight them.

This is the president's biggest weakness. Please, more drama, Obama!

2. Be LBJ. So far, Lyndon Johnson has been the only president to defeat the American Medical Association and the rest of the medical-industrial complex. He got Medicare and Medicaid despite their cries of "socialized medicine" because he knocked heads on the Hill. He told Congress exactly what he wanted, cajoled and threatened those who resisted, and counted noses every hour until he had the votes he needed. When you're not on the road, you have to be twisting congressional arms and drawing a line in the sand. Be tough.

3. Forget the Republicans. Forget bipartisanship. Universal healthcare can pass with 51 votes. You can get 51 votes if you give up on trying to persuade a handful of Republicans to cross over. Eight years ago George W. Bush passed his huge tax cut, mostly for the wealthy, by wrapping it in an all-or-nothing reconciliation measure and daring Democrats to vote against it. You should do the same with healthcare.

4. Insist on a real public option. It's the linchpin of universal healthcare. It's one thing to give up on single payer, and say that a public option is the best feasible alternative. But further compromise would essentially gut any healthcare plan. Don't accept Kent Conrad's ersatz public option masquerading as a "healthcare cooperative." Cooperatives won't have the authority, scale, or leverage to negotiate low prices and keep private insurers honest.

5. Demand that taxes be raised on the wealthy to ensure that all Americans get affordable healthcare. Not even a real public option will hold down costs enough to make healthcare affordable to most American families in years to come. So you'll need to tax the wealthy. Don't back down on your original proposal to limit their deductions. And support a cap on how much employee-provided healthcare can be provided tax free. Yes, you opposed this during your campaign. But you have no choice but to reverse yourself on this. These are the only two big pots of money.

6. Put everything else on hold. As important as they are, your other agenda items -- financial reform, home mortgage mitigation, cap-and-trade legislation -- pale in significance relative to universal healthcare. By pushing everything at once, you take the public's mind off the biggest goal, diffuses your energies, blur your public message, and fuel the demagogues who say you're trying to take over the private sector. You have to win this.