This time in the Hill:

Democrats in Congress are holding White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel accountable for his part in the collapse of healthcare reform.

The emerging consensus among critics in both chambers is that Emanuel’s lack of Senate experience slowed President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.

The share of the blame comes as cracks are beginning to show in Emanuel’s once-impregnable political armor. Last week he had to apologize after a report surfaced that he called liberal groups “retarded” in a private meeting.

No one, of course, is on the record. That doesn’t slow down Americblog:

Emanuel has presented himself as the all-powerful. He’s led Obama’s presidency into a tailspin (and Obama let him). While Emanuel hasn’t worked in the Senate, his Deputy Chief of Staff, Jim Messina, is a long-time former Senate staffer. How Emanuel and his crew destroyed the Obama brand so quickly will be the subject of debate for years to come.

Meanwhile, back at the Hill, this portion of the story that will get overlooked:

“I like Rahm; he’s always been a straight shooter with me,” said a Democratic centrist senator who was closely involved in the healthcare debate.

The lawmaker said Emanuel misjudged the Senate by focusing on only a few Republicans, citing Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins as too narrow a pool.

“In the Senate, you have to anchor in the middle and build out,” said the lawmaker.

“They just wanted to win,” the source said of Emanuel and other White House strategists. “Their plan was to keep all the Democrats together and work like hell to get Snowe and Collins. The Senate doesn’t work that way. You need a radius of 10 to 12 from the other side if you’re going to have a shot.”

Anyone want to take a wild guess how Americablog and others in the progressive blogosphere would have reacted if Obama and Rahm had passed a bill in the Senate that appealed to 12 Republicans? I can hear the screams. There would be ActBlue accounts by the dozens to primary Obama.

It just never stops. And if Rahm steps down, they’ll just find someone else to act as the bogeyman.

NycEve.

A senior Congressional legislative aide called me this morning on background as follows.

We must begin to organize a massive and unprecedented telephone call in campaign for passage of healthcare reform, to begin at 9AM EST on February 24th and extend through the entire day of the presidential healthcare meeting on February 25th.

This senior Congressional aide (who asked at this time to remain anonymous), advised that nothing less than a citizen outpouring the likes of which members of Congress have never seen, will be sufficient to get healthcare legislation passed.

I wish that I had better news for you guys. It seems unreasonable to ask for more calls after you already spent weeks talking Congress back from a ledge (granted, without you the party might be pavement pizza already). Now I have to pass on that Democrats are still hanging ten on a marble balcony and only a few more items on your long distance bill can maybe save them from themselves.

For the most part constituent pressure only works at the margins, so our chances of a win remain slim. On the other hand we don’t need very many votes to wrap this up. At least it feels better than shouting at the TV.

Switchboard: (202) 224-3121. Tell your Representative to Pass. The. Damn. Bill. Tell your Senators to get behind a reconciliation fix for the excise tax and whatever else is holding up the process. Call Republicans too! Give them hell for behaving like useless obstructionist twits, and ask whether they plan to support privatizing Social Security and Medicare.

Guide for first-timers here.

Poll.

If you need motivation, read Kevin Drum and this diary at Kos.

***Update***

Since Capitol Hill is closed, try your Reps’ local office. Those of you in PA, MD, NoVA, OH, DC and NJ might have to wait until Friday or next week.

It just never stops:

Goldman Sachs helped the Greek government to mask the true extent of its deficit with the help of a derivatives deal that legally circumvented the EU Maastricht deficit rules. At some point the so-called cross currency swaps will mature, and swell the country’s already bloated deficit.

Greeks aren’t very welcome in the Rue Alphones Weicker in Luxembourg. It’s home to Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical office. The number crunchers there are deeply annoyed with Athens. Investigative reports state that important data “cannot be confirmed” or has been requested but “not received.”

At this point, Goldman Sachs should replace SPECTRE as the global villain in any future Bond movies.

This is a real opportunity:

Leading House Republicans raised the prospect Monday night that they might refuse to participate in President Obama’s proposed health care summit if the White House chooses not to scrap the existing reform bills and start over.

In a letter to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) expressed frustration at reports that Obama intends to put the Democratic bills on the table for discussion at the Feb. 25 summit.

“If the starting point for this meeting is the job-killing bills the American people have already soundly rejected, Republicans would rightly be reluctant to participate,” Boehner and Cantor wrote.

I know you all won’t do it, but this really is a gimme. Set up the room with a side for the Democrats, including nameplates, one for the Republicans, including nameplates, and hold the summit no matter what. If they come, you can have the summit. If they don’t, then you can have the summit without them, and can use the time (as the camera pans over their empty seats) to promote the positive aspects of the current bill all while discussing the only GOP plan out there- the Paul Ryan bill. I’d suggest panning the room a good bit.

And if the Republicans don’t take a hit in the polls for refusing to show up, and if the media does not rip the Republicans apart, then you all can take out a shovel, beat bipartisanship in the back of the damned head until dead, and bury it in the WH yard, and start acting like you have large majorities.

Looking outside, the sky looks like an angry, swollen bruise- the kind of sky you see in movies like The Perfect Storm.

Time for Round 2 of Snowpocalypse.

No idea what the problem is- we have honestly not changed the site in weeks, but some of you are having a problem reaching the front page using:

http://www.balloon-juice.com

However, I have been informed that if you use the following in the short term, it works:

http://www.balloon-juice.com/index.html

I will have the minions look into it.

Alternately, try clearing your cache.

Via Digby, this great catch form the folks at MMFA:

Bethesda, Md.: I thought that “Why are Liberals So Condescending” was the most intelligent article I’ve read in the Post in some time.

Do you think that this is the result of a decision by your editors to be more fair and balanced?

Also, I would appreciate your comments on the “All serious scientists agree that Global Warming is an enormous problem.” school of thought. This matter has been positioned in exactly the same condescending manner.

Gerard Alexander: I can only tell you that the Post editor I dealt with searched me out, and were as encouraging as any editor could conceivably be.

Your liberal media at work.

In all honesty, the only thing that surprises me about this is that they felt the need to outsource it. Seems to me this could have been handled quite easily in house by Broder, Will, Krauthammer, Gerson, Hiatt, or, let’s face it- anyone on the WaPo op-ed pages not named Eugene Robinson.

This (from the dickwhisperer) makes me want to start drinking:

My policy in each presidential race is to vote for the best candidate who is not on the ballot. I think this is superior to the Len Downie approach of not voting at all; I don’t have to commit to one candidate or the other in the race, but I can still go through the exercise of who would be a good president. So I voted for McCain in 2000, when Bush and Gore were on the ballot. I voted for Chuck Hagel in 2004, when Bush and Kerry were on the ballot. And I voted for Mike Bloomberg in 2008.

Admittedly this advice might come a little late for those of you stuck in the path of SNOWPOCALYPSE and SNOWPOCALYPSE II: The Quickening. Nonetheless, if you can get to a outdoor supply store I strongly recommend that you seek out a pair of gaiters to keep snow off your feet. Mine look like the pair below, but you can choose any kind as long as you don’t get cheap skier models with no heel strap.

My Honda Fit is comfortably burrowed in an alley that might get plowed in March, so I’m walking around a lot. Thanks to gaiters in the last few days Dr. Mrs. Dr. F and I have waded through waist-deep snow for hours with warm, happy toes. Boots are nice but not critical; today I wore gaiters over leather dress-y shoes on the way to work.

Tip #2: Car floor mats do more than protect the factory carpet. If you get stuck spinning your wheels, kick or dig out the small hill of snow that has built up in front of your drive tires. If that works, great! If not, take out your back floor mats and lay them under your primary drive wheels in the direction that you want to go. The traction boost gained by this little trick will amaze you. I rescued four cars with the floor mat trick just walking around this weekend.

One argument in favor of lifting DADT that I’ve yet to hear anyone mention is the fact that one of the most fearsome fighting forces in the ancient world was a collection of 150 male couples known as the Sacred Band Of Thebes. According to Plutarch, the idea for this came from Plato’s Symposium, which makes neoconservative opposition to gays in the military almost completely inexplicable.

Here’s a thread for you- had rehab today and I am actually in a helluva lot of pain- as bad as early last week. I just don’t see much blogging for me happening tonight.

Also, Chuck.

Earlier today in the comments, I said some nasty things about Steve Clemons, and Steve has come to defend himself. All’s good, he was right, I was rude and hasty and unfair, and I apologize. In other words, it is Monday.

The crux of the foodfight is his post several months back in which he asserted that the WH intentionally did not put up the text of the Human Rights Campaign speech fast enough on a Saturday night, which started yet another inevitable “Obama Hates The Gays” three day affair on the internet. You may not remember which one of those it was, because it was sandwiched in between a couple days of “Obama hates the womyn folk” because he doesn’t play basketball with them, and a couple of days of “Obama hates the progressives” because he hasn’t shot Lieberman in a dark alley yet but asked Howard Dean to tamp down the rhetoric (hint- one of those two people has a vote in the Senate). Likewise, I don’t want you to confuse this freak out with the “Obama hates the gays because he has not waved a wand and ended DADT and DOMA” and “Obama hates the gays because Rick Warren gave a shitty speech and was totally outclassed by Gene Robinson and Rev. Lowery.” No doubt, the fact that I have even mentioned this will foster fifty emails and delinkings because I am not gay friendly.

But here is the thing- Steve says he has private information, and I just don’t want to hear it. The piece making the assertion was public- very public, and if he and others have evidence that this was intentionally done, then I want it out there so I can beat up on the WH Communications Office. I don’t want private assurances, because right now I see a real deficit of trust between the beltway progressive activists who call themselves the base and a lot of the rest of the party who look and think like me and many of the people here.

I’m new to this whole party, so I haven’t quite figured out the whole history of all the infighting yet, but I have to tell you that there are a number of people like me who worked their ass off last year trying to get Obama elected, and who would still crawl over glass to get him elected again. We are just sick and tired of the unending negativity in some quarters and tired of being told that we are vastly outnumbered by the disaffected (but loudest) few, when polls show Obama with up to 90% of liberal support. So help me God I will curbjaw the next person who savages Obama on Fox and then has the balls to use the “Overton window” as a defense. I’m sick and tired of people writing pieces flaying the administration alive and then saying “but I only wish the best for the admin.” I’m sick and tired of people looking at the HCR bill and picking out only the things they dislike, ignoring all the positive aspects that make folks like Feingold and Sanders willing to vote for it- but that isn’t good enough for our progressive betters on the blogs and in the media.

I’m sick and tired on the focus on Rahm, because it weakens the President for his alleged allies to constantly act as if Rahm is really running the show. Everything you think has happened because of Rahm, Obama had to sign off on it.

I’m sick and tired of people on the left having the same amnesia that the folks on the right have about how well and truly fucked this country was on 20 January, and now pitching daily fits because there is no pony yet. I’m sick and tried of going to progressive websites and reading the following posts:

Obama sucks
Rahm sucks
Obama and Rahm suck
Obama sucks
Rahm sucks
Obama and Rahm REALLY suck

And then, without a trace of humor, ending with a concern troll post about how demoralized Democrats are about the fall elections. No shit? Your readers are demoralized? I wonder what could be helping to cause that?

So I tend to act in a volatile manner when I see unsupported assertions. Maybe we have carved out our little Obot sanctuary here. Or maybe we have carved out a place where we remember all the good things that have happened in the past year, on top of the failings. And yes, there have been lots of failings.

But right now-I just don’t trust the beltway progressives any more than the beltway Republicans, even though on a lot of issues I think the progressive activists are probably right about policy. What I see going on are the same hysterical types of responses to everything that we get from Republicans, only the position on the issues has changed.

And I’m rambling.

Per the NYTimes:

Representative John P. Murtha, the longtime Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, has died at age 77…

A former Marine, Mr. Murtha, his office noted, was the first Vietnam War combat Veteran elected to Congress. Throughout his years, Mr. Murtha paid particular attention to defense spending and to the Pentagon and the military.

When he called for bringing the troops home from Iraq in 2005, after having voted for the war, his proposal stunned many in Congress and added a powerful voice to the growing forces demanding immediate drawdowns and or deadlines.

Just this past Saturday, Mr. Murtha became Pennsylvania’s longest serving Member of Congress.

I’m sure the 101st Chairborne are planning their ‘victory’ celebrations already. But in the real world, who’s going to take Murtha’s seat?

For good clean fun, sit down, put your right hand behind your back, and then try to cut the toenails on your left foot using only your left hand. Good times.

Looking through the internets this morning two items caught my eye.

First, the NYT has a nice interactive look at the proposed 2011 Federal Budget. It is a good tool to get an idea of where and how the Federal Government spends money—and how the Obama Administration sets its priorities for that spending. Clicking the “Hide Mandatory Spending” button gives you a good idea of how little discretionary spending there is to work with.

The other was a great post from Ezra Klein about the Republican Ideas that are already in the HCR Legislation. Ezra looked at the Republican ideas for Health Care Reform offered in the GOP’s “Solutions for America” homepage, and found that ALL OF THEIR IDEAS are already included in the legislation that passed the House and the Senate. This exposes the hypocrisy of their opposition to getting a HCR Bill enacted into law. Their only goal is to say NO, regardless of the cost. The meeting that President Obama will have on February 25 to go over these HCR Bills with Democrats and Republicans should be interesting television.

Have you called your House Member and Senators today to remind them to PTDB? This would be a good week to do so.

Cheers

dengre

and yes, this can be used as a lunchtime open thread…