Shoutingatmytv.com

No-mentum

The essential function of a political party in governing the country is to manage the procedural issues in the legislature, and the strong tradition in both houses is to follow the party line as regards procedural matters. Lieberman is an independent, but he chairs a powerful committee on the sufferance of the Democratic caucus. If he joins a filibuster of the health care bill with Republicans as he has just said he would, he will have forfeited the last semblance of allegiance to the Democratic party that he promised when he was re-elected.

He should be removed as chair of his committee tonight, and begin a vigorous effort to see him turned out of office in the next election, right now. I'll donate to any candidate with more integrity than Lieberman, and any progressive who wants to be anything other than a doormat for his ambition will do the same. This was predictable (and predicted), and Joe must go.

"...delight in each other, make others' conditions our own..."

Most of the time, this blog's name alludes to shouts of "NO!" that spring unbidden from the viewer (at least, this viewer) at the inanities, banality, sloppy reporting, and outright lies that appear nightly on our TV screens. Every now and again, though, the same screen produces shouts of "YES!", and it would be both silly and churlish not to acknowledge them.

Last night was such a night. First, Keith Olbermann delivered an hour-long "special comment" about the need for health care reform that drew upon his own recent experience in caring for his father, who was stricken by serious illness last month. In that editorial, Olbermann made reference to the fears that inform the craziness that has been prominent among opponents of reform, the failure of the supporters of reform to allay those fears, and the high stakes that raise the pressure and the volume on both sides of the argument ("it's about pain and death").

Olbermann's special comments have become legendary (or infamous, depending on who you talk to), and I had my doubts about whether he could keep one going for a full hour, but he did it, in spades. If you have time, click the link and have some - it's great television and a service to the republic.

Olbermann's show was followed by the always interesting Rachel Maddow, who provided a characteristically informative and provocative hour, but the last segment of her show was the cherry on top of the evening's offering - an inteview with Sarah Vowell about her history of the Puritan settlement of America, The Wordy Shipmates, which is newly out in paperback.

Vowell's take on our history is layered with both pride in our country's principles and and ambivalence about our shortcomings, and so provides a much richer assessment of the subject than most. Unsurprisingly, her history of the Puritans runs true to this form. She compares the experience and writing of John Winthrop and Roger Williams as two poles of the Puritan experiment, and makes an interesting case that much of our national character is both represented by and was established in the conflict between these two men.

What made the segment on Maddow's show so compelling, though, was a discussion of Winthrop's famous sermon, "A Model of Christian Charity", written while Winthrop was on his way to become governor, and famous because of its exhortation that the Massachusetts Bay Colony should rise to its destiny as a "city on a hill", the city that Ronald Reagan referred to as "shining" in his paean to American greatness three hundred years later. Vowell pointed out that unlike Reagan's speech, WInthrop's sermon takes much more account of the fact that we can fail at this task, and that if we do so, it will be from a lack of the communitarianism that he calls for.

I expect that it was a coincidence, but coming as it did after Olbermann's personal and impassioned plea that we fix the glaring hole in our community represented by the health care system in this country, it was particularly moving and appropriate. Vowell points out that in making reference to the "shining city on the hill", Reagan buried the lede of the sermon itself. Instead, she commends to us a much more poetic and much less triumphalist passage, which comes just before the city on the hill reference:

"We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body."

I'm not a believer, but even I can say "amen" to that.

"The Tree of Crazy"

Rick Perlstein has a great piece in today's Washington Post that compares right wing rage of yesteryear with the carnival sideshow we're seeing today. He notes that the media enables such insanity today in ways that it didn't used to do:

The media didn't adjudicate the ever-present underbrush of American paranoia as a set of "conservative claims" to weigh, horse-race-style, against liberal claims. Back then, a more confident media unequivocally labeled the civic outrage represented by such discourse as "extremist" -- out of bounds.

TPM has posted a reader's note about the reaction this should engender among those who are currently so befuddled by this crazier-than-a-shithouse-rat ranting that keeps getting so much play in the media:

Obama isn't saying the right thing. He should be saying, "Stop lying."...

All the broadcast MSM does is report what politicians say. They don't fact check them. Afterwards, they have blowhards sit around in panels and have disingenuous spin-meister discussions about whether or not what was said is playing well with the general public...

If the Republicans are lying -- and they are -- we have to call them on it. If we don't, no one will. And by "we", I mean our politicians. They have to say, "Stop lying." If they say that, the blowhards will say, "Do people like it when the president calls his opponents liars?" And after that, they'll say, "Is it a lie to say that there will be death panels?"

This is exactly what Kerry did when he got swiftboated. The whole, "This is so stupid, and so insulting, I won't even dignify it with a response," response. It's why he lost. If you don't dignify something with a response, the other side controls the entire discussion.

That's exactly right, and if Democrats don't start doing something about getting over the Stockholm syndrome that makes them refuse to "dignify" such lies with a rebuttal, they'll cede the discussion and lose the argument...again.

Change we're having a really hard time believing in...

President Obama's strategy of letting the various forces in the Congress fight out their differences and arrive at a health care bill he can sign onto is beginning to look like a failure. His dogged insistence on "bipartisanship", and his unwillingness to come out in favor of a strong bill that his allies can count on his support to defend is ceding the ground to the insurance industry and its Republican (and all too often, Democratic) shills in Congress.

And today we see confirmation of the rumors that both parties have been denying for a week, that the White House cut a deal with the pharmaceutical industry to secure its neutrality in the health care fight, effectively giving away the store in advance of the legislation by preventing the negotiation over drug prices that any reform with even a reasonable chance of controlling costs must enable.

In this respect, his stewardship of the health care fight is beginning to look like the deals he cut with the thieves on Wall Street and in the big banks to right the nation's capsized economic ship, deals that have left those executives sitting pretty while the taxpayer gets to foot a staggering bill for their greed and incompetence and the broader economy is still teetering on the brink of depression.

Add this to the continuing disappointment that Obama's supporters have suffered over his lack of clarity about a host of civil rights issues, from closing Guantanamo and stopping unconstitutional surveillance of Americans to ending "don't ask, don't tell", and you have a picture that looks increasingly ugly for those progressives who turned out in droves to provide the help Obama needed to get elected, and also to provide the supermajorities that Democrats enjoy on both sides of the aisle in Congress.

Drew Westen has a post up on Huffington Post about the air that's escaping from Obama's balloon, and speculating about whether that deflation is due to a too-clever-by-half attempt to let his opponents shadow-box themselves into exhaustion, a far less progressive set of beliefs than his progressive supporters originally thought, or a simple lack of spine.

The last line in that piece sums it (and the sense of disappointment that animates it) up very nicely:

The American people did not vote for "bipartisan" solutions that split the difference between the failed ideology of the last eight years, which continues to cost thousands of people their jobs and homes every day, and the change the President and the super-majorities they elected in both houses of Congress promised.

Moyers on Health Care

We're about to begin the debate on health care reform in the US, and its well past time, but we've left the most promising reform of all off the table. The reform in question is a single-payer health care system, and the most recent Bill Moyers Journal program covers that omission in some detail.

The bugaboo that has kept us from real consideration of the overwhelming advantages of single-payer health care has been the phrase "socialized medicine", but that objection is an attempt to create fear of something there is no reason to be afraid of. As has been said before (and as a couple of Moyers' interview subjects allude to), when most of us (in suburban and urban areas, anyway) turn on the tap and fresh, potable water comes out, we are reaping the benefits of a "socialized" water system, and when that water goes down the drain and doesn't end up in the back yard, it's because of a "socialized" sewage system. When we put our trash on the curb in most parts of the country and someone takes it way for us, we are enjoying the services of a "socialized" trash removal system. When we are in trouble and need a policeman, we call for the help of a "socialized" police protection system, and when our houses catch fire and someone risks his life to put the fire out, that fireman is working for a "socialized" fire department.

All of those solutions are "socialized" because the most efficient and fair way to solve those problems is through community action. Everyone needs those goods, and the best way to provide them is through public investment and management. The same thing is true for medicine, and what we have now in the medicine world is analogous to a system in which numerous providers of water are competing to get us water for a fee. The problem is that the inefficiencies are killing us by the thousands, the "water" we're "drinking" isn't potable, and a small cadre of powerful insurance companies are getting absurdly rich by arbitraging the availability of health care.

It's a situation that has to change, and there's a very real possibility that the debate we're about to have won't change it, due to the self-interest of a few very powerful companies, who own enough lawmakers to prevent that debate from happening honestly. Moyers' attempt to uncover that situation is yet another demonstration of why the man is a national treasure. If this week's Journal will run again on your TV, watch it. If it won't run again on TV, watch it on the web - it's an eye-opener.