A musical introduction to Malron’s new tag: Manic Progressive. (And an open thread for the Green Balloon dead-enders.)

As long as Tim has broken the bad news embargo, I thought I’d pipe in with something that drives me nuts. I like Howard Dean fine, but what does this even mean?

If we were Republicans this bill would be done.

He’s referring to the health care bill of course, but in what universe would Republicans be trying to pass a bill like this in the first place? I know, I know, it’s a big give away to insurance companies, the Republicans did Medicare Part D blah blah blah. Seriously, though, here on planet earth, the Republicans would not be trying to pass a bill that provides $100 billion a year in subsidies for lower income Americans to buy health insurance.

I’m not saying that makes it a good bill, but it does make it the kind of bill Republican wouldn’t try to pass. Talking about what a great job the Republicans would do passing a bill like this one is like talking about what a great job Genghis Khan would do running the Peace Corps.

I’ve been hearing this for years, Democrats need to run their party the way the Republicans run theirs. Liberals need their own Fox News.

It’s bullshit. It’s been 80 years since Republicans had the kind of Congressional majorities that Democrats have right now. They had a good run in presidential elections, but that was mostly based on nasty tricks and Lee Greenwood songs. That’s no way to build an actual governing coalition. And if it’s true that Washington is wired for Republican control, that’s more a function of think tanks and media than of overwhelming electoral supremacy.

The modern Republican party has never been a real majority party and it probably never will be. Democrats have been for stretches and have a chance to be again right now.

IIt’s a big mistake to confuse what Bush “accomplished” with what Obama is attempting to do right now. Democrats may be fuck-ups, don’t get me wrong. But it’s a lot easier to burn down a house then it is to build one.

You guys laughed when this didn’t happen by February.

One shouldn’t dismiss the insurgent advantage. Having everything to attack and little to defend energized the liberal blogosphere and left the rightwing blogosphere with the an awkward choice between defending the government (not a great place under any administration, and most particularly this one) or hurting the movement. More than that I think people realize blogosphere left faces real trouble when when and if Dems sweep government in ‘09. At the very least partisans have to reconsider their relationship with muckrakers like Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum contrarians, and I honestly can’t wait to watch Glenn Greenwald become an intolerable pain in the ass for movementarians on the left.

Does it suck a little less to know that splintering inevitably follows political power? Or to know that the shit sandwich Bush left America would damn any well-intentioned President who tried to clean up after him? I guess not.

If you tweet, where can we find you?

I babble at http://twitter.com/johngcole

The story:

He’s a ~10-year-old male tabby. This is a picture my husband took in his office with Jack in his lap. Jack likes to lie on his back, like a baby, but only for my husband. He holds him, and Jack will do that sleepy-love-double-wink cats do, then butt his big head up against my husband’s chin, and press his cheek to his chest and purrPurrPURR. It is truly adorable. If he isn’t waiting to come inside at 10pm, he comes to the sound of a bike bell rung twice. I didn’t think my husband could train Jack to do that, but he picked it up right away, and knows the difference between my ring and my husband’s ring.

He isn’t a traditional rescue. Jack never went to kitty prison. We saved him from having to go, where I don’t think he’d have survived—plain tabby, a year old, never had a vet visit, never neutered, no vaccinations in that time, so skinny, fleas, some scars from fights. When we picked Jack up from being neutered, I mentioned how sweet and talkative he was to the vet tech, she said he’d not made a sound—no meow, no growl, no purr—the entire time he’d been there. I knew then, we really had rescued Jack; he’d never have been picked in a shelter.

Six months before he became ours, before a cold front, we had bought a collar for Jack, put a note on it with our phone number, asking for a call if he had a home. The woman apparently held on to our number, because she called us to ask if we would take him, because they were moving and couldn’t, and she didn’t want to take him to the shelter. (“When are you moving?” “Tomorrow.” “Who is your vet?” “We don’t have one.” “When were his last shots?” “Whatever he had we got him.”)

Miraculously, he had no diseases despite living in an old, overgrown neighborhood full of wild and domestic critters and college students. But those bastards who owned him never brought over the food bowls and toys (note no bed was offered) like they said they would. And it took them a week to move everything out of the house—we had to go over after they left to pick up poor little limp-with-sadness Jack who just sat there in the yard staring at the driveway where their car had just been.

Jack acts like a rescue. He seemed surprised by the bounty of daily feedings, of always having dry food whenever he wanted to eat it. It took a couple of years before he figured out he could complain about an empty bowl and be given more food. If we put a foot out to block him going where he shouldn’t (not behind the server!) and he cringed and tensed the way abused dogs do. Now we just say, “Get back, Bubba” and he does. He’s getting better about not freaking out when we go away overnight.

He purrs more than other cats I’ve known, loud enough that I can hear him in my husband’s lap even with the door closed between us. He tries to follow us on walks (walking with him doesn’t quite work—we have tried), and often, he asks to come inside just to be pet then wants back out again. He loves being told he’s a good boy, and he tried to teach me how to hunt chipmunk once. (He was disappointed when it nearly ran up my shirt and all I did was scream.) Whenever he gets anything new, or we wash his bedding so it’s freshly fluffy again, he purrs and purrs and just exudes Happy. He’s really excited about his new giant bed, and he doesn’t yet know that it has a heater in it. It’s been pretty warm here the past few days, so we’re waiting for a cold night to introduce that. I bet he purrs like crazy.

You are on your own. I’m sufficiently disgusted and demoralized from the day’s events. Not enough that I would stay home in Nov 2010 or giddily repeatedly try to make a self-fulfilling prophecy by daily telling everyone how much the Democrats are demoralized, because I remember that the Republicans are nucking futs.

Besides, Firefox needs to update for the 87th time today. When did this browser turn to total shit?

Also, don’t forget Radio Kaos from reader Rus at 9 Central.

If I hear one more breast-beating “THE INSURANCE COMPANIES WIN” tweet or post I am going to go postal. We have a system of private insurance. Guess what- no matter what we do short of an American NHS the insurance companies will win, because they are for profit industries. If they don’t “win,” they cease to exist. That is what “for profit” means.

So if you think there is the political willpower in the Senate to install an NHS, and all we need to do is have Obama use his bully pulpit more and fire Rahm Emmanuel, then the “INSURANCE COMPANIES WIN” posts make complete sense.

If you don’t think there is said willpower for an American style NHS, guess what, you’re an idiot and the insurance companies are going to win anyway, because the status quo is a win for them.

Fucking deal with it and decide whether or not this current bill helps people. I’m by no means thrilled with it, but I think it is a step in the right direction. And for the record, after watching this clusterfuck for the past year, I am now firmly of the belief that the only thing that will solve our problem in the longterm is a British style NHS.

And then there were 57 (assuming Lieberman and Nelson are still playing games):

Speaking with Neil Cavuto on the Fox Business Channel tonight, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) stated flatly that he would not vote for the health care bill moving through the Senate.

I’m struggling with this. As of this point, I’m not voting for the bill. … I’m going to do my best to make this bill a better bill, a bill that I can vote for, but I’ve indicated both to the White House and the Democratic leadership that my vote is not secure at this point. And here is the reason. When the public option was withdrawn, because of Lieberman’s action, what I worry about is how do you control escalating health care costs?

Crucially, Sanders said he’s not voting “for the bill.” That is not necessarily a vote against cloture. There’s an opportunity for him to vote for cloture and against the bill and still be technically correct about his intentions. For conservative Democrats, procedural votes and up or down votes on the bill became one and the same, leading to the hostage-taking process. Perhaps Sanders is still trying to extract more goodies from the bill, maybe even in the area of community health centers.

And so it will go with climate change, financial regulations, etc.

Might as well call Dick Morris up and start talking about school uniforms. Who gets to play Lewinsky this time? I hope it is someone better looking. I’m pulling for Beyonce or Zoe Seldana.

Someone finally said the safe words, so no more depressing posts. As a peace offering, I present this video that someone forwarded to me from the hijinks the other night:

Click to embiggen.

Good grief:

The Senate Republican leadership believes that the parliamentarian allowed Democrats to violate the rules of the Senate by allowing Sen. Bernie Sanders to cut off the reading of his single-payer proposal.

The Republican right to obstruct shall not be infringed. It is in the Constitution! Meanwhile, this remembrance of Republican love for parliamentary procedure:

CAFTA actually went to vote early—at 11:02 p.m. When the usual fifteen-minute voting period expired, the nays were up, 180 to 175. Republicans then held the vote open for another forty-seven minutes while GOP leaders cruised the aisles like the family elders from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, frantically chopping at the legs and arms of Republicans who opposed the measure. They even roused the president out of bed to help kick ass for the vote, passing a cell phone with Bush on the line around the House cloakroom like a bong. Rep. Robin Hayes of North Carolina was approached by House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who told him, “Negotiations are open. Put on the table the things that your district and people need and we’ll get them.” After receiving assurances that the administration would help textile manufacturers in his home state by restricting the flow of cheap Chinese imports, Hayes switched his vote to yea. CAFTA ultimately passed by two votes at 12:03 a.m.

I’m sure Sanders will email the American Spectator and the Senate Republicans a copy of his amendment if they want to read it.

About health care reform is that it is a primer for Banking and Financial Regulation. We get to look forward to watching the House bill get neutered down by the conservadems, the GOP will be aligned in unison with industry against, and then when the final bill is not up to Howard Dean’s standards, the progressives can sink it because it isn’t good enough, and noted liberals like Tom Harkin, Ron Wyden, and Russ Feingold will be labeled sellouts to the cause just like they were with health care. Also, I’m sure this will all be Rahm’s fault.

Then we can stand around and masturbate each other about how, unlike Republicans, progressives stuck to their principles and refused to pass a bad bill. FAP FAP FAP. Then we can get wiped out in 2010 and 2012, and we are back to where we really like to be- in the minority, bitching about the Republicans, raising lots of money for our PACS, while Sarah Palin cuts the top marginal rate to 4% and invades Iran.

Victory!

I think I may just turn this into a gaming and pet blog.

And you know who will have health insurance even if this bill fails: Howard Dean, Katrina van den Huevel, Ed Schultz, and 99% of the people burning up twitter and memeorandum right now.

What will it take for this man to be fired:

Only Arabs and Muslims can fight the war of ideas within Islam. We had a civil war in America in the mid-19th century because we had a lot of people who believed bad things — namely that you could enslave people because of the color of their skin. We defeated those ideas and the individuals, leaders and institutions that propagated them, and we did it with such ferocity that five generations later some of their offspring still have not forgiven the North.

Islam needs the same civil war. It has a violent minority that believes bad things: that it is O.K. to not only murder non-Muslims — “infidels,” who do not submit to Muslim authority — but to murder Muslims as well who will not accept the most rigid Muslim lifestyle and submit to rule by a Muslim caliphate.

Tom Friedman deciding that the route to world peace is an Islamic civil war. I have no clever retort.

Via TNC, Sebastian at ObWi talks about what it is like to learn that someone you have known only through online gaming has died, and wonders if it is odd.

All I can think about is the WoW Guild that crashed an online funeral for one of their guild mates who had died:

For those of you who have no idea what you are watching, you are watching one guild slaughter another guild on a pvp server as they had gathered to hold a remembrance for a lost friend.

Ed Schultz has Katrina can den Heuvel on right now.

Drink every time you hear “the base.”

Drink every time you hear “public option.”

Drink every time you hear the phrase “sold out.”

Or just start chugging and shoot your tv.

When Ed Schultz is berating Tom Harkin for not being liberal enough, does anyone else think of the teabaggers attacking Cornyn for not being conservative enough?

Remember when Harry Reid told the WH he had the votes and to step back, and they said “You better.” Good times. So glad Rahm and the WH are to blame for this current debacle.

So glad Howard Dean thinks it is a good idea to scrap the current bill and trust Reid with reconciliation. Nothing could go wrong there.

You can almost guarantee this person gave money to the anti-Rahm tv commercials:

In the past few weeks, the two most famous and arguably most successful black men in America have taken a huge fall. It has become clear that both pro golfer Tiger Woods, just named Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press, and the American president, Barack Obama, the first black person to lead the country, suffer from a surfeit of hubris which has finally caught up with them. If both men somehow thought they were untouchable, they have been put to right. Both have crashed to earth and it may well be true that they can never recover their earlier status again.

Obligatory link.