SmartRemarks

So, where did I leave off?

…That’s right, there was a speech Wednesday night. A pretty significant one, in fact, for reasons I described at some length.

What of it, then?

I can’t deny that it was a very, very good speech. Rhetorically powerful. And yet, what it says about the direction of health care policy, and thus about Obama and the Democratic Party itself… still remains substantially up in the air.

(Even as every pundit who can string three words together attempts to read the tea leaves and tell us otherwise.)

I’ll try to avoid that kind of divination. But opinions? Analysis? I have those.

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Tags: Blue Dogs, Congress, Democrats, government, health care, insurance, Obama, progressives, Rahm Emanuel, Reid, Republicans, Senate

August is a strange season in politics. In the final weeks of summer last year, we had the incredible (and incredibly short-lived) public buzz surrounding Sarah Palin, before people realized she just used those glasses for looks, not reading. This year’s dog days brought us hordes of astroturf Teabagger Republicans demonstrating that they think public discourse boils down to “whoever shouts loudest wins.”

I’ve sat back and haven’t posted a great deal in recent weeks (although it’s been impossible to avoid following the theater of it all). For one thing, there are better things to do when the weather is nice (not all that common a condition in Chicago). For another, there’s been a lot of justifiable uncertainty and skepticism developing among progressives about exactly where and how Obama and the Democratic party are willing to take a stand, and I’ve been genuinely unsure of my own assessment, wavering from cynicism to optimism sometimes on a daily basis.

But Labor Day is behind us and silly season is over, and the president gave a major speech on health care tonight, and it’s time to take a serious look at where things stand.

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Tags: Democrats, Glenn Greenwald, health care, Obama, Paul Krugman, progressives, Rahm Emanuel

The CIA Inspector General’s report on U.S. torture of detainees was released this week (under court order, thanks to a diligent ACLU lawsuit, after five years hidden from public view). The timing dovetails with Attorney General Holder’s decision to launch an investigation of that torture (albeit a tightly constrained one).

The conduct detailed in the report is barbaric and shameful, and the report moreover makes clear that it was of questionable effectiveness in gaining any useful intelligence information. Most of the media coverage has reflected this straightforward reality.

Then there’s Fox News…

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Tags: CIA, Dick Cheney, DOJ, Eric Holder, Glenn Greenwald, Obama, OLC memos, torture

I have no idea who the original author of this piece is. It’s flying all over the internet, though, so presumably I’m not the only one who thinks it’s a thing of beauty that deserves to be shared. Next time you run across some halfwit opposing health insurance reform (or anything else) because he insists that “the government can’t do anything right,” just turn to this:

—

I Am An American Conservative Shitheel

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

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Tags: conservatism, government, health care, humor

Even as Dick Armey’s dick army continues to do the disruptive dirty work of its corporate-funded organizers (an onion Rachel Maddow has ably peeled for public view), even as its footsoldiers continue to spout fear-drenched talk-radio-esque bullshit about euthanasia, baby killing, and the evil plans of that Fascist Socialist Muslim Negro in the White House (who’s really from Kenya, you know!), even as they’re devoutly convinced they speak for Real America notwithstanding the fact that most real Americans are repulsed and embarrassed by what they see these people doing (and oh, yeah, disagree with them on the issues, too)…

… some folks at the top of the Establishment, those who understand the real interests at stake here (hint: it’s not the footsoldiers) and who are actually capable of making calm, methodical arguments (i.e., they don’t think whoever shouts loudest wins), are showing their hand just a little too boldly.

Case study: Fortune Magazine editor-at-large Shawn Tully’s recent pieces attacking what he dismissively terms “Obamacare.” Just as the right-wing culture warriors are perpetually projecting onto the left their own penchants for intolerance and bullying, likewise class war in America is almost always a top-down phenomenon, even as its practitioners try to cast it as the exact opposite. And Tully’s offerings on this subject demonstrate that phenomenon writ large, in glowing red letters.

Note that I acknowledged his writing only as calm and methodical. I didn’t say it was logically sound. Let’s delve into the details…

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Tags: class war, health care, insurance, McCain, Rachel Maddow, Shawn Tully

Just a quickie here. I had to share DougJ’s wonderfully pithy comparison/contrast at Balloon Juice between last week’s news (the Henry Louis Gates incident) and this week’s news (the angry teabaggers):

When someone talks back to a cop in his own house, that’s disorderly conduct.

When people make death threats and start fights in public, that’s exercising their First Amendment rights.

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Tags: conservatism, fascism

One could go on at literally exhaustive length about the ins and outs of the current “health care debate” in Washington, but I’ll try to avoid that. The media and the blogosphere have provided a constant play-by-play in terms of both substantive policy and, even more, political strategy. (Jonathan Chait at TNR has been particularly diligent. Meanwhile, much of the MSM seems content merely ringing premature death-knells for reform.) Me, I’ll just try to provide a few observations from a mile-high view.

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Tags: Blue Dogs, Congress, Democrats, health care, House of Representatives, insurance, Medicare, Obama, Paul Krugman, Rahm Emanuel, Republicans, Senate

The New Republic isn’t the place to look for progressive opinion these days (especially on matter of foreign policy), but every once in a while it does offer a reminder of why it used to be considered a liberal magazine. Most recently, TNR’s Ed Kilgore produced quite possibly the best and most succinct summary to date of all the reasons the left has to be disappointed with the Obama administration, including a handy bulleted list.

I can’t really improve on it, so let me just quote the pertinent bits:

Only six months into the Obama presidency, the new administration has already experienced an unusually robust assortment of criticism from fellow Democrats, at least at the elite opinion-leading and activist level … for a wide array of missteps, if not downright heresies. Here are just a few:

• Undertaking expensive and questionably effective “bailouts” of the financial sector instead of simply regulating and/or nationalizing it.
• Using vast political capital to promote a fiscal stimulus package that was too small to work, and allowing Senate ”centrists” to water it down even further.
• Refusing to reverse major elements of the Bush program for surveillance, detention, and interrogation of terrorism suspects, and obstructing efforts to hold Bush officials accountable for violations of civil liberties.
• Moving too slowly to end American military involvement in Iraq, and moving too fast to make new commitments for military action in Afghanistan.
• Deferring to “centrists” and even Republicans in Congress on crucial climate change and health reform legislation at the palpable risk of destroying the progressive nature of these initiatives.
• Failing to honor commitments for immediate action to promote GLBT equality, particularly with respect to the military.

Aside from these specific issues, there’s been a pervasive feeling in many progressive circles that Obama is too cautious, too “pragmatic,” too subservient to Democratic “centrists,” too worried about bipartisanship, too interested in outreach to people who will never support him, and too unwilling to utilize the bully pulpit to articulate and defend progressive principles.

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Tags: Congress, Obama, primaries, progressives

Chuck Todd is the White House correspondent for NBC News. He is, frankly, one of the smartest political analysts on network TV—certainly he was among the best covering last year’s elections.

And yet… events this week make it clear that Chuck Todd has no faith in the American justice system, has no confidence in the democratic process, and doesn’t even trust mass-media journalism—his own profession—to do anything for public discourse other than debase it. Apparently even a top-level practitioner of the Beltway media establishment still can’t help but embody its worst systemic flaws.

This all arose when Chuck was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Tuesday discussing AG Eric Holder’s possible appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Bush administration war crimes (as I wrote about here). Salon’s Glenn Greenwald jumped all over Chuck’s casually dismissive remarks about the idea, and Chuck (to his credit) agreed to a detailed interview with Glenn. The results were very revealing, and very discouraging.

Here are excerpts (all emphases mine) from what Chuck said on Tuesday…

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Tags: Chuck Todd, DOJ, Eric Holder, Glenn Greenwald, John Yoo, journalism, media, torture

The GOP Senators questioning Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor must have a truly remarkable tolerance for making themselves look like condescending, hypocritical jackasses in public.

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Tags: Republicans, Senate, Sotomayor, Supreme Court