Part of me is looking forward to seeing how the right-wing performs when confronted with a resolution to lay it on the line about privatizing Social Security, but I have to worry about how these things will go. After all, Geithner still wants to rob that bank because that's where the money is.

If I thought for a minute that Obama meant we should "take our time" with the health insurance bill by going back over it and ripping out the crap to put good things in their place, I'd say, sure, I agree completely! Except I don't think that's what he's doing, so good on Al Franken for letting steam come out of his ears at David Axelrod over the administration's lack of leadership.

I already want this T-shirt, but it's increasingly clear that a lot more people need to see it. Especially now that DU has signed on to the STFU program.

Bonus Watching-the-Defectives section: Even I am stunned by the awfulness of Mark Sanford, a fine example of Republican values. Meanwhile, more high conservative standards from Sarah Palin, who thinks it's really crude to say the things Rush Limbaugh says, unless you're Rush Limbaugh. Also, Roger Stone is running the "Manhattan Madame" for Governor, and Mike Bloomberg, in a startling show of solidarity with civil servants, says that city workers should demand lower taxes for Wall Street.

Of course, educational achievement for women doesn't mean they out-earn men. (I wish someone had mentioned this to Daniel Patrick Moynahan before he wrote a notorious paper alleging that black women's educational achievements were what was keeping the black man down. Of course black women in the workforce had more education than black men. The same was always true of white women, too, but they still made less money.)

I also remember when "Children are our future" meant we were supposed to try to help them get somewhere in life besides prison. (via)

I'm told I can watch Comedy Central if I use another browser. But, jeez, I don't want to have to install another browser. I'm sick to death of things that make me install another browser just to get this site or that one.

You may recognize a few of our friends in the animated xkcd. (There's credits here for those who don't recognize our friends, or just think maybe that person looks familiar....)

Steve Winwood ]]> http://sideshow.me.uk/sfeb10.htm#1002071609 Bra of the Week

A moment from Not Only, But Also.

Decision-making

Iridescent Mars, and Mars over the fogbow.

A moment that doesn't completely suck.

The $250,000 question; Or, Class Warfare for Dummies - It really is amazing how many people don't get this simple stuff they have to see every year.

I know he's a conservative because he's such a bad dad.

Amanda talks about Torture and TV, and it's a problem I've been mulling over for quite some time, as well. Back in the days when it was normal to see news shows or stories discussing the fact that torture doesn't work (and not giving any credence to the illusion that it does work), I didn't worry so much about the way torture seemed to work in dramatic fiction. Trouble is, everyone now talks like this fakery works in real life, and there's no good speech allowed to counteract the bad speech. This stuff was "just a movie" or "just a TV show" back when no one was trying to claim the effectiveness of torture as fact - but those days are gone.

It's so nice to see a Democratic Senator who doesn't equivocate about women's reproductive choices. His name is Al Franken.

I don't get this stuff. I mean, the John McCain they're talking about became nationally famous for being involved in the S&L scandal. He had a brief moment of trying to polish his image up a bit by pushing campaign finance, but if he'd been serious it would have been a different kind of bill altogether, and he would have opposed other moves Congress took that did much to shore up the influence of money in politics - and he didn't. It's also the same John McCain who made a big show of opposing torture, only to quietly vote for it when it was put in front of him. There really is nothing new about McCain being a dick. Seriously. (via)

Oliver got snow pictures.

Traffic, live, 1972. ]]> http://sideshow.me.uk/sfeb10.htm#1002061406 Inequality and "Guard Labor" in a profile of Samuel Bowles by Corey Pein:

"The founders of the discipline of economics, almost to a man - and they were only men - thought that the problem of distribution between classes - they used the word classes - was the key to understanding why nations grew or not," Bowles says. What Bowles sees as the essence of his profession [is] problems of wealth distribution...

Isn't inequality merely the price of America being No. 1?

"That's almost certainly false," Bowles tells SFR. "Prior to about 20 years ago, most economists thought that inequality just greased the wheels of progress. Overwhelmingly now, people who study it empirically think that it's sand in the wheels." ... Bowles offers a key reason why this is so. "Inequality breeds conflict, and conflict breeds wasted resources," he says.

In short, in a very unequal society, the people at the top have to spend a lot of time and energy keeping the lower classes obedient and productive.

Kos commissioned a poll asking what Republicans believe. (More here.)

Even Arlen Specter gets it when he says they need to fix the health care bill and pass it. Unfortunately, this version of "fixing" the bill doesn't really fix the biggest flaws in it to create a truly comprehensive health care bill.

The Republicons, of course, want to do exactly what they warned that the health care bill would do: cut Medicare and kill Social Security. That's their plan. It has always been their plan.

Now we know, but it's like we're all in a coma.

But, nevertheless, We Must Overcome, or Our Kids Go Down.

Just think, a blog that tells you everything you could ever want to know about chickens, including Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs. ]]> http://sideshow.me.uk/sfeb10.htm#1002041540 I was entertained to learn that Obama had quoted a headline from The Village Voice in scolding the Democrats about a need for leadership. It was a good headline, too, although Obama really should have taken that as a message about his own leadership. But let us not forget that the headline in question came from the VV blog Runnin' Scared, where a couple of our friends write. That post, "Scott Brown Wins Mass. Race, Giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate," came from our much-beloved Roy Edroso.

I can't actually see this video due to living in the UK, but we saw it on TV and bless you Jon Stewart!

Tom Tomorrow reveals the real secret of Obama's birth certificate, not to mention explaining the behavior of both parties.

The right-wing has always claimed that Lyndon's Great Society programs failed, although in fact they cut poverty in America by 50%. (And I'll tell you, it was a good time to be looking for a job, whoever you were.) The funny thing is, the GOP started calling them a failure after Nixon had gutted them and, of course, they weren't doing the job anymore. They've also always said that the New Deal didn't work, but that didn't much go anywhere until they'd gutted financial regulations and people have started to see what it's like to live in a country run by the most reactionary economic policies again.

Susan Collins is not, of course, a moderate in any real sense, although in most cases she moderates her language in attacking Democrats or "the left" better than most other Republicans. However, she slips now and then and shows her real face, as she did recently. Nevertheless, it is sad to say that the belief that the protections in the Constitution only apply to Americans has ceased to be a far-right belief, at least among the Villagers, and is now pretty much common to all of them. But of course, the Constitution doesn't reserve rights to Americans - it says there are things the government cannot do, to anyone.

Way back when, VastLeft did what Obama's admirers told us to do - read the books - and didn't like what he read.

As someone who has been on TV opposed to an "expert" who hasn't actually studied the evidence, it doesn't really surprise me to know that the "expert" who went on TV to talk about the wonderful success of waterboarding was only repeating what he'd been told by its defenders.

At Open Left, Paul Rosenberg observed that the Obama illusion is wearing thin: "THEY JUST DON'T GET IT! Talking about jobs does not create jobs. And just about everyone outside of Versailles knows this."

Aurora Borealis galleries ]]> http://sideshow.me.uk/sfeb10.htm#1002012044 marketable commodity, but I wanted to hear what came out of his mouth to decide which army he'd be in. What came out of his mouth convinced me he wasn't on our side, and at best had no idea what liberal politics was about. I always had the suspicion that he was someone who simply knew the right trajectory to take to have the right "liberal" credentials, someone who'd hung around long enough to pick up some of the lingo - but not someone who actually shared those values. The more I learn about Obama, the more I have concluded that my worst suspicions were true, and that he is just a neoliberal jerk who was grabbing for the main chance. To others, he's a sell-out, but I don't really think that's it. John Caruso finds the latter explanation more comforting, it seems:

While I was reading Howard Zinn over the past few days, I happened across Adolph Reed's take on Obama -from January of 1996:

In Chicago, we've gotten a foretaste of the new breed of foundation-hatched black communitarian voices; one of them, a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics, has won a state senate seat on a base mainly in the liberal foundation and development worlds. His fundamentally bootstrap line was softened by a patina of the rhetoric of authentic community, talk about meeting in kitchens, small-scale solutions to social problems, and the predictable elevation of process over program--the point where identity politics converges with old-fashioned middle-class reform in favoring form over substance. I suspect that his ilk is the wave of the future in U.S. black politics.

[...]

I found this interesting because people whose opinions I respect have somehow waded through Obama's books and concluded that he used to be more than the grasping, soul-dead imperial roach he is now. I more or less took their word for it, in large part because I couldn't possibly care less about his past (and I only pay attention to his present unwillingly, because of the position he holds); I just assumed that his abandonment of this core humanity was a recent development, necessitated by his single-minded pursuit of power. But it did give his story a cut-rate tragic dimension. So it's reassuring to hear that no, he's actually been sucking the life essence out of every authentic movement he's been around - cynically co-opting their language while tossing aside their genuine concerns, in service to his own ambition - from the very beginning of his political career.

Eliot Spitzer on Banksters, politicians and their minions, and how they caused "this entire cataclysm". Of course, he had to be stopped. But I was rather impressed by the basic humanity and intelligence of what he said about how he (and others) screwed up. I think he gives some of his adversaries too much credit (and Obama, too, of course), but that's kind of the trouble with being a decent human being - you really want to give people the benefit of the doubt.

I admit it, I did get a chuckle over the fact that FOX cut away from Obama's speech because it was going too well. (And I think I prefer "Pox News" to "Faux News" and "Fox Noise".)

Your steampunk moment: Boilerplate.

A bunch of old guys playing live...eventually. ]]> http://sideshow.me.uk/sfeb10.htm#1002010333 Reminder: Avedon Carol and nyceve were on Virtually Speaking talking about health care, and you can listen to the archive noise/podcast at BlogTalkRadio.

Remember Danny Goldberg, the nitwit who once proclaimed that Democrats were losing big because Dem politicians were unable to talk to the kids, because they didn't listen to the same music or something - and thereby lost the "teen spirit"? And remember he's the same nitwit who helped drive Air America Radio into the ground by firing some of it's best people? He wasn't the only bad manager who helped kill AAR, but he played a significant role in the process. And Down With Tyranny! let him do a post making his excuses and purporting to tell the real story of what ruined AAR, now finally deceased - and the readers (including a few names familiar to ex-listeners) really let him have it: "Morning Sedition's last broadcast was on December 16, 2005. This was, in a twist not lost on us, Howard Stern's last day on terrestrial radio. With a legion of young fans looking for something else on the radio dial, a subversive comedy show with a growing audience and rising ratings that catered to a youthful demographic was removed from the airwaves by the author of 'How the Left Lost Teen Spirit.'"

It kind of makes your brain bounce around inside your head to know that the ACLU got rolled into helping out on that lousy Supreme Court decision. On the other hand, as I have said before, how much money corporations spend on backing political candidates during the last weeks of a campaign is kind of irrelevant when they already own the media and back right-wing narratives 24/7.

And of course, there's even the conservative New York Times. (via) ]]> http://sideshow.me.uk/sjan10.htm#1001310034 Bra of the Week

Cows with guns

Watch Jupiter Rotate.

Time-lapse sea creatures - You've never seen so many starfish, and they look like cartoons. (Speaking of which, superheroes as painted by Picasso.)

"The Smirking Poodle: "I would simply like Tony Blair to look me in the eye and say he was sorry [her son had died because of his "mistake"]. Instead, he is in there smirking."

"Scurrilous Videos Besmirch, Enrage Forum, Leaders, World [...] In a series of diabolically stupid video manipulations, a cabal of anti-poverty filmmakers have performed an elaborate slander of the World Economic Forum, showing its "leading lights" taking a dramatic departure from the litany of meaningless pledges they usually make at the annual gathering in the Swiss resort town. In response, WEF spokesperson Adrian Monck could barely contain himself. "The only defense to satire is common sense!" he sputtered, before racing back into the WEF war room to deal with the burgeoning crisis. Fortunately for the WEF, few media outlets picked up on the WEF's fantastic but fictional approach to world poverty ("World Leaders Pledge Strategy to End Poverty Now"). Instead, the media was dominated by coverage of a real WEF press release warning of "Over Regulation of the Financial Sector" (sic)."

Alterman and Ehrlich on the media silence on the Supreme Court decision. You know, it's funny how not only don't individual Americans have rights anymore, but foreign corporations do.

You can read Howard Zinn's A People's History Of The United States online.

The idea of a special panel to "study" the national debt (that is, try to figure out how to kill Social Security and cut taxes for the rich) was so awful that even the Senate rejected it. so Obama is putting together his own stupid panel.

Obama: Bought and paid for.

DCBlogger has a request to those of us who live abroad and want to help fight for our country.

Note to Mr. Sideshow: Atrios says this works.

Obits for J.D. Salinger:
BBC News
The Times
Guardian
The New York Times
]]> http://sideshow.me.uk/sjan10.htm#1001301627 Digby and McJoan talking on last Sunday's VIrtually Speaking lefty bobbleheads show at the link. (Last night's episode with Jay Ackroyd and Juan Cole here.) Sunday at 5:00 PM Pacific, guests are DKos diarist nyceve (who coined the phrase "Murder by spreadsheet"), and The Sideshow's Avedon Carol, talking about - would you believe it? - health care. You can listen live here.

Democracy Now! Tribute to Howard Zinn.

While this article discusses the radically decreasing economic power - and circumstances in general - of 90% of the population - it doesn't mention that even the rich really do better when wealth is more evenly distributed than it is now.

Chris Hedges says, "Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction."

Betty the Crow says, "From Foreign Policy Magazine, a story about the CIA guy who went on ABC News to claim that waterboarding was a miracle interrogation tool but now says, well, not so much; 'it was a valuable lesson in how the CIA uses the fine arts of deception even among its own.' ABC's response? No comment, but they've apparently removed the video of the interview and altered the story about it."

The List of US Citizens Targeted for Killing (or Capture)

Logan Murphy discovers that, though Republican family members seem just as disgusted with right-wing ideology (and can no longer stomach FOX News!), they still end up saying, "Yes, but you're so left wing ...."

The Guardian tells me that Michael Moore has dug up the original (uncensored), buried film of FDR's Second Bill of Rights speech.

Have a couple of steampunk moments. (H/t Dominic.)

And a snow moment in Nashville. ]]> http://sideshow.me.uk/sjan10.htm#1001281616 this, you should pay attention:

Happy to be wrong, but the failure to deal with the underlying problems in housing and finance under the theory that prices will magically rebound and everything will then be ok is going to doom the economy....

So, what do we do with these people, who should be jumping out of Wall Street windows or at least in jail? We keep them in charge of the economy, and thus Ben Bernanke, the man who insisted there was no housing bubble, was reconfirmed.

Meanwhile...there are a lot of things I disagree with Lakoff about, but he is right about this: We have a disaster on our hands. If we don't get together and show we are a movement, nothing will happen. "Where's the movement?" is actually a pretty good question. Waiting for Obama to play 11-Dimensional Chess was stupid. Sitting around saying we have to support his legislation (largely with silence) is stupid. You want what you need? Get together and then get out there and demand it. Movements are not composed entirely of people sitting at their keyboards or even sending money. You have to be a body and a voice. You have to make real contact. You have to do all the things that people did before there was an internet, because that still works - if you just do it. ]]> http://sideshow.me.uk/sjan10.htm#1001281652 The State of the Union is that Howard Zinn has died. I wish he'd been giving that speech last night instead of the twerp who delivered it. I see no reason to give Obama's speech more than a D minus, in context. We've lost a great man, just when we really needed more of them.

Attaturk says it's getting tougher to focus on Republicans "as being uniquely and tragically mockable" - because the Democrats appear to be giving them a run for their money.

And for my money, Rahm himself deserves all the mockery we can muster when we see stuff like this: "Back in December, the Wall Street Journal reported that White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has been telling congressional Democrats that passing the insurance-industry-written Senate health bill will do for Democrats what NAFTA did for them in 1994. Amazingly, Emanuel has been billing this as a positive - as if NAFTA somehow wasn't a major part of what drove down Democratic base turnout in the 1994 election, helping usher in the Gingrich Revolution." Well, he's right that it will do for Democrats what NAFTA did, as polls show. If Obama doesn't stop giving money to the banksters, quit threatening Social Security and Medicare, and do a 180 on pushing through this giveaway to the insurance industry right now, he can expect to lose Congress the same way Clinton did. And for exactly the same reasons.

And then we have the alleged "liberal media", in which MoDo informs us that the idiot in Boston who took advantage of a self-made Democratic failure is the new It Boy, bringing the sexy back. She's ready to run him for prez, while the rest of us just recoil in disgust whenever we notice that the Pulitzer-winning gossip columnist is getting wet again: "He's The One, all right. The handsome, athletic pol with the comely wife and two lovely daughters who precipitously rose from the State Legislature to pull us all together." Oh, gods, we've heard all this before....

As I've mentioned before, it's interesting to me that "contracts" are only meaningful on one end - you have to uphold your end of a contract, but corporations don't.

Charles has written up his conclusions about Honduras.

Oh, look who's the far left, now. ]]> http://sideshow.me.uk/sjan10.htm#1001271204 can make stories. Right now, the story Obama and the Democrats are making is that Obama and the Democrats are just as uninterested in the plight of ordinary Americans as Bush and the Republicans were. If you don't think that will lead to disaster, you're just plain dumb.

You know, it really is stupid to think that moving the Overton Window farther and farther to the right is harmless. It is not harmless to let people think that spending on good things (stimulus, Social Security, real universal health care) is bad for the economy, but spending on bad things (stupid wars, subsidies to bloated corporations) is vital and necessary. It is not harmless to buy into the same right-wing memes that have brought us to our current crisis in the first place. It is not harmless to refuse to fight back against lies that the only problem is spending, and that it's spending that the public is against. The public's problem isn't that we aren't being mean enough.

The public is against spending when "spending" means taking all their money and giving it to rich, irresponsible bankers and insurance companies. People who assume this means the public is really against all spending - that is, people who have their heads getting stuck in the ever-narrowing Overton Window while making cracks about how whacky the left is for worrying about Overton's Window - are the real stupid.

On the bright side, you can believe Atrios when he says it is actual good news that the Senate has killed Obama's stupid plan "to create a powerful commission that would recommend ways to slash future federal budget deficits" by getting rid of some more good government in the name of tax cuts. If Obama was smart, he would stop trying to trot out creeps like Kent Conrad and pretend they are not trying to do us harm.

But, of course, Obama is not smart if he thinks his continued pandering to the right wing will buy him anything but trouble.

Oh, yes, it's all about change - the kind of change that gets you Enron. "The same lobbyist that sold Washington on Enron is now touting Ben Bernanke. [...] Robertson played a key role in some of Enron's most scandalous moments in the year prior to its collapse. For starters, she was at the center of negotiations involving the highly secretive energy task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. A review of Enron email shows that Robertson guided Lay through pivotal meetings with Cheney and other officials, and actually authored the Enron memo and talking points that were later integrated into Cheney's controversial energy plan." Yep, these are the kind of people we wanted in government when we voted for Democrats. ]]> http://sideshow.me.uk/sjan10.htm#1001251536 I found this neat graphic over at Gail's place, where I also found this revealing quote from Barney Frank: "A bill being passed [is in Democrats' best interest]--as long as it's being done in a way that's invulnerable to charges that it was jammed through, or the rules were disregarded. That's what I was afraid of was a disregard for the procedural rules: Bending the Byrd rule out of shape, or doing something with Paul Kirk's vote while awaiting certification--those things would be fatal." Got that? Barney Frank thinks that the only thing a health care bill needs is that no one accuses it of being "rammed through". It doesn't have to have anything good in it, and it doesn't matter how much everyone hates it, as long as the right-wing Villagers don't accuse it of being "rammed through". Doing a pretty minuet with the Republicans to hide the fact that this entire bill has been rammed through over the objections of most Americans will make it good for Democrats - to be known for the triumph of the health insurance industry and big pharma over everyone else. (Anyway, you might consider using that graphic on the leaflet you're going to print out informing your neighbors that Americans pay more in taxes to maintain our health care structure than almost any other country.)

The thing that tickles me most about Harold Ford is that, having turned out to be too right-wing for Tennessee, he is now planning to a career in New York politics. Oh, and did you realize this piece of crap is the current head of the Democratic Leadership Council? Seriously.

From Susie, a little Joe Bageant, Balancing Budgets on the Backs of The Poor, and the surprising news that the administration is actually appealing the decision letting Blackwater off the hook. Oh, and a record producer.

I'm sorry, but this really isn't a reason to reconfirm Bernenke.

I like this: "Because the Court ruled that a corporation's free speech is so important in being able to present its position, we need legislation to make sure that such expenditures do represent the views of the board of directors by requiring a public vote of the board on any such expenditures. It will be hard for the Republicans to oppose such legislation, although they will. But that should be part of a concerted effort to show how the Republicans are for the rich and powerful and why they are opposing every reform that is brought before Congress."

Not that Meadows and Day don't put in stellar performances, mind - and Astin just about defined "sleazy" in his role - but I've always loved the interplay between Cary Grant and Gig Young in That Touch of Mink, a fantasy movie about surviving beyond your wildest dreams in tough times. We may start seeing a lot of that again, soon....

Pretty. ]]> http://sideshow.me.uk/sjan10.htm#1001241346 Bra of the Week

I learn such interesting things from Biomes Blog, such as where to watch obscure old movies, and that Ocean Spray has a bog cam. I liked the photo, too.

Space dust

Omega sunrise

Thanks to the NHS, I never have to worry about these things, but our friends in America do, and Diane just got one of those ugly letters from her so-called health insurer raising her rates and demanding money yesterday, so perhaps you could chip in a bit for her so she can do things like, you know, eat.

The thing about "make-work" is that sometimes it works.

Some people, you just can't tell them anything.

Every now and then I hear someone come up with the idea that we need a Constitutional convention and I think, "And in your little fantasy, are you the chairman, or does Thomas Jefferson come back to do that for you?" I mean, seriously, if there really was a Constitutional Convention, who do you think would be running it?

Larisa Alexandrovna on the gag rule now being imposed on evidence surrounding the murder of David Kelly: "No credible expert believes that Kelly killed himself. Yet Lord Hutton continues to not only force the suicide claims down the throats of the medical experts who examined Kelly's body and of the British public, he has also now sealed all of the records. If Kelly killed himself, then why are the medical records being sealed?" And for 70 years? That's like, gosh, they want to guarantee that anyone who remembers these events - this crime - is dead. "The question remains: just how far were the Blair/Bush administrations willing to go in order to fabricate a reason for the Iraq war? The Bush administration was at the very least willing to out a covert CIA officer, committing treason in the process. What was Tony Blair willing to do?"

What do you do with a problem like Diane Feinstein?

I used to try to figure out how the Democrats let Roberts get onto the Supreme Court. I wonder now why I did.

Around sunset:

"Yknow it's always darkest before the dawn," says me.

"Unless the sun blows up," says Giblets. "Cause now that the sun's blown up it's just always darkest before it gets more dark."

And that means you have to make a decision: Fight or escape.

And you have to ask yourself: "Do people like me have sufficient strength to win this fight? Is there any hope of getting it?"

And I can't bring myself to tell you that you should fight, at the expense of everything you've got. Not you, not your economic well-being, not your family will be safe from the evils and predations of these truly vile people and the hideous system they have created out of what used to be a fairly promising country that once held out hope and lighted a path for the world.

The United States that used to be a beacon of light is now shadow of darkness over the world, but where they used to at least try to protect Americans, and even some other allied countries, from their machinations elsewhere, the people who run things now feel free - indeed, almost morally obligated - to harm ordinary Americans at least as much as they have the people of other nations, and possibly more.

And the thing is, a lot of other countries that never got their people used to having to spend upwards of $60,000 a year in order to eat and keep a roof over your head are probably going to be better places to be living.

And I'm afraid Welsh is not being overly pessimistic when he says:

This decision makes the US's recovery from its decline even more unlikely than before - and before it was still very unlikely. Absolute catastrophe will have to occur before people are angry enough and corporations weak enough for their to even be a chance.

So, my advice to my readers is this.

If you can leave the US, do. Most of the world is going to suffer over the next decades, but there are places which will suffer less than the US: places that have not settled for soft fascism and a refusal to fix their economic problems. Fighting to the very end is very romantic, and all, but when you're outnumbered, outgunned, and your odds of winning are miniscule, sometimes the smartest thing to do is book out. Those who came to America understood this, they left countries which were less free or had less economic hope than America, and they came to a place where freedom and opportunity reigned.

That place, that time, is coming to an end. For your own sake, and especially for the sake of your children, I tell you now - it is time to get out.

I am not the only person thinking this. Even before the decisions, two of my savviest American friends, people with impeccable records at predicting the US meltdown, told me that within the next few years they would be leaving.

There's always hope, and those who choose to stay might stop this terminal decline.

But you need to ask yourself, seriously, if you are willing to pay the price of failure: if you are willing to have your children pay the price of failure. Because it will be very, very steep.

But let's face it, it's a lot better to be horrified from inside the protection of little things like, say, a National Health Service, not to mention national borders (especially if those borders involve a nice, big ocean). It's a lot safer not to be at the epicenter of it all.

But of course, there's a little problem, in that you are not all young and healthy and unencumbered, you aren't a linguist, and you don't have the money or skills that would ease your acceptance by another country's immigration service. In which case, I really don't know what to tell you.

(Via Suburban Guerrilla.)

But, you know, just in case you were still feeling some hopey-changey, check out this catch:

Hope for lasting liberal change was washed away on Tues day - not just with the loss of the Democrats' super-majority in the Senate, but with a closed-door deal that would lead to cuts in bedrock liberal programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. While Massachusetts voters were casting their ballots to install Republican Scott Brown in Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, President Obama was hammering out an agreement with Democratic leaders to support a commission on the deficit with the power to propose reductions to entitlement programs. This proposal represents a capitulation to conservatives in both parties, and leaves liberals surrendering not only on health care, but on the core achievements of the New Deal and the Great Society.

♪But when a dream is calling you, there's just one thing that you can do.♪ ]]> http://sideshow.me.uk/sjan10.htm#1001221352 ran a lousy campaign characterized mainly by having so much contempt for the voters that she thought she just didn't have time to go meet a few of them, Obama has broken all his promises, and a complete refusal to give the voters (consistently identified not just by the Republicans, but by the Democratic leadership as "the left") a single thing they want and need. (And why would Massachusetts vote for universal Romneycare? It's jumped their health care costs by 44%, fergodssakes!) What does the Village say is happening? Clearly, It's the fault of the all-powerful left. (And just how out of touch do you have to be to think that the people who want the public option can be called "the farthest left elements" of the Democratic Party? No, no, the farthest left elements want complete socialization of medicine, something absolutely no one has been talking about doing.) I liked Andrew Sullivan's response to Bainbridge's claim that, ""Obama and the Congressional Democrats (especially in the House) governed for the last year as though the median voter is a Daily Kos fan." He said, "This must come as some surprise to most Daily Kos fans. But if one had traveled to Mars and back this past year and read this statement, what would you assume had happened? I would assume that the banks had been nationalized, the stimulus was twice as large, that single-payer healthcare had been pushed through on narrow majority votes, that card-check had passed, that an immigration amnesty had been legislated, that prosecutions of Bush and Cheney for war crimes would be underway, that withdrawal from Afghanistan would be commencing, that no troops would be left in Iraq, that Larry Tribe was on the Supreme Court, that DADT and DOMA would be repealed, and so on." Funnily enough, none of that happened. As The Rude One points out, Americans voted overwhelmingly for change. What he doesn't say is that, thanks to Obama and his right-wing corporatist friends in the leadership, we did not get it. And that is the problem the Democrats have.

Of course, Obama is talking a good game again about financial regulations and controlling the size of "too big to fail" types of organizations, but, you know, I'll believe it when I see it. Like that "change" thing.

So, how's that big swing to the right and gutting the news staff working out for The Washington Post?

Last night, Jay Ackroyd talked to Mason Tvert, debunking the myths lies about marijuana.

A few years ago we had a bad strawberry season, but it turned out to be good weather for blueberries, so a few strawberry farmers repurposed for the season, as a result of which there were lots of nice blueberries available at reasonable prices for the first time since I've lived here. Alas, as soon as we went back to good strawberry weather, we got some tasteless imports at ridiculously high prices. I really wish that hadn't happened - we didn't even get to the point where people started thinking about making blueberry pie. Think of that! I live in a country where they don't have blueberry pie! And I want some. ]]> http://sideshow.me.uk/sjan10.htm#1001201532 Atrios is so succinct: "People in this administration really are not very bright." And, indeed, you have to be stupid to even suggest that bipartisanship is going to win the day just as soon as the Democrats are forced to embrace it. Or, as Benen says:

This is a great idea, isn't it? All the White House and Democratic congressional leaders have to do is continue to work on their policy agenda, while reaching out in good faith to earn support from congressional Republicans. Bills will start passing with bipartisan support; the public will be impressed; David Broder will start dancing in front of the Washington Post building; a season of goodwill and comity will bloom on Capitol Hill; and Lucy really will let Charlie Brown kick the ball.

Or maybe not.

Look, much of the political landscape has changed over the last year, but if there's one thing that's been consistent throughout, it's that congressional Republicans aren't interested in working with Democrats on bipartisan policy solutions. Boehner, McConnell, Cantor, & Co. have a list of priorities -- destroy the Obama presidency, block the legislative process by any means necessary, undermine confidence in American leaders and institutions, rally the right-wing base -- but "getting things done" isn't on it.

I think most of America is ready to join The Torches & Pitchforks Party, and I don't think they even care anymore whether you have a (D) or an (R) after your name - you're either on our side, or you're on theirs. (I mean, really. No, really.)

Gee, that David Patterson really is a poor replacement for Elliot Spitzer - cut aid to schools, legalize ultimate fighting, and tax sales on Indian reservations? That's a joke, right?

Even Ezra Klein gets it, and he's quoting Ted Kennedy: "If the Democrats run for cover, if we become pale carbon copies of the opposition, we will lose - and deserve to lose. The last thing this country needs is two Republican parties."

Yeah, I want to reach across the aisle to people with these priorities.

I think I may have linked to a version of Naomi Klein's thing on branding before, but I'm linking it again because I still feel like smacking someone every time I remember having a deluge of spam excitedly inviting me to buy Obama coffee mugs and everything else coming straight from the Obama organization - at which point, of course, they got put on my MailWasher blacklist, which is the best that they deserved.

Susie mourns Kate McGarrigle with a little tribute.

I do have problems with phrases like "the US version of Torchwood." ]]> http://sideshow.me.uk/sjan10.htm#1001181922 Bill Moyers and Thomas Frank are mistaking The Village for "America". But, see, we haven't had an opportunity to forget the last decade, because nothing has changed but the name of the party in power - oh, and the fact that the drunken white moron has been replaced by that other guy.

There were hands in the air in Washington this week, but it wasn't a stickup. The new Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, appointed by Congress to find out how America got rolled, began hearings this week. These four are not the victims of one of the greatest bank heists in history - they're the perpetrators, bankers so sleek and crafty they got off with the loot in broad daylight, and then sweet talked the government into taxing us to pay it back.

Watching that scene on the opening day of the hearings, it was hard enough to believe that almost a year has passed since Barack Obama raised his hand, too -- taking the oath of office to become our 44th President. Even harder to remember what America looked like before Obama, because we've also been robbed of memory, assaulted by what the Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz described as a "fantastic proliferation of mass media." We live in a time "characterized by a refusal to remember." Inconvenient facts simply disappear down the memory hole, as in George Orwell's novel, "1984."

President Obama's made plenty of mistakes during his first year, and we've critiqued them frequently here on the JOURNAL, but hardly anyone talks any more about what happened in the years before. He inherited from George W. Bush the biggest financial debacle since the Great Depression, along with two unpopular and costly wars, and a dysfunctional and demoralized government.

As far as I can tell, the only people outside of the insurance industry who actually support the current version of the health care bill are party hacks who see it as advantageous to Obama to be able to credit him with a political win, or party hacks on the other side who know that passing it will just about kill any possibility of real health care reform. People who actually care about health care, such as National Nurses United, have come out against it. Because the thing is a disaster, and as LarryE says, "one that even as its advocates avidly, breathlessly, declare its vital, indeed "historic," nature, even they have to admit is seriously (although, they insist, not fatally) flawed." I'm sure the administration will explain to us that 150,000 nurses are just wild-eyed lefties or crazy teabaggers.

This kind of nonsense is the kind of nonsense that is being treated as a perfectly sane, rational part of the discourse. That's what we're up against. And we have a president who finds it too distasteful to unleash the truth against insanity. It's up to you to do that, because President Change wants nothing to do with it.

Digby thinks (and I concur) that it's time we should be Sending a Message: "If my comment section, email and other blogs are to be believed, there is a lot of netroots angst about the Democratic party these days. It's certainly understandable. With the free floating anxiety that's pervasive out in the country as a whole, the horrific spectacle of health care reform sausage making and the toppling of President Obama from his heavenly pedestal, we have the making of a full blown insurrection on our hands. The question is what to do about it."

Between Reaganomics and conservative judgmentalism and the punitive nature of their ideology, it's no surprise that America is the land of Big Prison. Why, just yesterday, I said, "Remember when people used to say, 'It's a free country'?" And the younger ones said, "No." You can see why...

From now on, I really don't think I have any use at all for Bill Clinton. People in Haiti need water, he runs around talking about how we have to shovel out the UN. And now this.

Meanwhile, in a worthy cause, you can buy this PAT ROBERTSON VOODOO DOLL! Proceeds Go To Haiti relief.

and because you're so nice, here's another cursor toy for you.

"Shanghai Noodle Factory" ]]> http://sideshow.me.uk/sjan10.htm#1001170050 Bra of the Week

Glenn Greenwald points out that Obama seems to like the idea of government-funded propaganda, and so does Cass Sunstein, who "is currently Obama's head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for "overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs." In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-"independent" advocates to "cognitively infiltrate" online groups and websites -- as well as other activist groups -- which advocate views that Sunstein deems "false conspiracy theories" about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens' faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists." Oh, I don't think it would increase confidence in the government much at all....

Of course, anyone who follows the drug war knows that lying about the facts has become pretty solidly a part of our government - even to the point of requiring the "Drug Czar" by law to lie. And what is abstinence-only sex miseducation other than a big, expensive lie? So no surprises there. And I don't expect to be hearing very much about the showing that we could cut disabling fallout from traumatic combat injuries significantly if we went back to the old method of treating injured soldiers - with morphine.

But now we have reached the sad state of affairs where even Paul Krugman is attacking Marcy Wheeler (and Glenn Greenwald) for pointing out the similarity of the Armstrong Williams case (an "independent" voice of someone being paid by the Bush administration to comment on its policies) and the Gruber case (an "independent" expert being paid by the Obama administration to promote its policies). Glenn notes that being paid gives one a powerful incentive to say what the administration wants to hear, but it's more than that: It's government rewarding people for being on their side while supposedly maintaining their independence. It's not just propaganda, although it's that, too - it's also the gravy train for public figures and experts who know the money is in agreeing with the government.It corrupts well beyond the actors we know are involved, but increases the likelihood that honest questions will not be part of the debate - and we already have plenty of that.

And no, the Democrats don't need an excuse to go right - they already are. It's no good accusing dissenters of "helping the right-wing" when we're being asked to support people whose policies are the right-wing's policies. Either Obama is no progressive or Obama is a naif who is shooting himself - and us - in the feet with his incompetent leadership. It doesn't matter. We're ending up with right-wing policies that made us livid for the last eight years and should make us livid now, and new policies that will be even more damaging to liberal causes. Stop enabling this man!

And thanks to Lana for alerting me to the problem with the feed link - I never would have noticed that on my own. ]]> http://sideshow.me.uk/sjan10.htm#1001141642 I'm pleased to say that my clever ploy of posting links to Lindt chocolate commercials worked.

Let me apologize for messing up the link below to Down With Tyranny!'s "You Know Why Americans Are Unhappy About The Healthcare Bill, Right?" - but you should definitely go read it as it is now updated with a film of Rep. Alan Grayson's recent musings on why Republicans hate government. And while you're there, you might also check out "Harold Ford Starts His Campaign With A Long List Of Easily Refutable Lies" - especially useful if you encounter anyone who still believes the fiction that Ford lost his campaign last time just because he's black, or because his state is terrified of liberals, or whatever. No, it's that no one can stand him - especially liberals.

I was being fascinated by the latest on the Honduras Coup when I suddenly learned from Glenn Beck that the Great Depression happened in 1948.

Bob Somerby has a site up with his book How he got there - that is, how George Walker Bush ended up in the White House instead of, oh, I dunno, in jail or something.

The really depressing thing about this discussion with a union leader and a teabagger is that there is one clear message: Obama is losing the unions for the Democratic Party. In fact, I can't think of a single part of the Democratic Party faithful Obama hasn't pointedly spit on. (Oh, wait, he sorta kinda pretends to care about global warming - except that, well, he's still playing the Republican role in making sure nothing happens.) And here's that episode that starts off with Laura chatting with Marcy Wheeler and The Rude One.

So, Obama has really screwed the Democratic Party and liberals/progressives - but if the Democrat loses in Massachusetts, will that be a wake-up call, or just another excuse to say what they always say when a Democrat loses to a Republican - that it proves the Dems are "too liberal"?

"Massachusetts", live, 1989. ]]> http://sideshow.me.uk/sjan10.htm#1001131842 These days the conservatives have their own cadre of trained seals seeded in everything everywhere that might be able to make a difference. But once upon a time, they didn't have their own Generals in their stables, and they asked the wrong guy to help. Maybe legislators who intended to perform as the opposition to conservatives have become so tame and useless today because they are all too aware that this time, the conservatives will not make the mistake of asking a Smedley Butler. Butler warned Roosevelt, and then he wrote a little book called War is a Racket. It should be taught in schools everywhere.

Conservatives want you to think that Europe's economy is a shambles because they're just too "socialist". Of course, they have to make up the numbers to hide the fact that European socialism is a whole lot healthier than American capitalism, and the countries that are faring the worst are the ones that have been imitating America the hardest. (Also: To no one's surprise, Harold Ford is a lying sack of crap.)

"You Know Why Americans Are Unhappy About The Healthcare Bill, Right? You see, most people who don't like the healthcare reform bill, are disgruntled for the right reasons: the bill doesn't go nearly far enough to provide healthcare coverage, to control costs or to regulate the avaricious insurance gangsters. This is the most tepid and insubstantial reform imaginable, something designed-- unsuccessfully-- to get Republicans to not make such a godawful ruckus. Well, it wasn't only designed for that. It was also designed to please the Big Insurance Giants and other bad players in the Medical Industrial Complex who Obama and the Democrats are counting on to keep funding their political careers. Is that working, you ask?" And Charlie Rangel says Democrats have a problem. ]]> http://sideshow.me.uk/sjan10.htm#1001111359 below, Jack K. wonders how it can be true that snow at Christmastime is almost unheard of in London when it's in every movie of A Christmas Carol we've ever seen. And haven't we all seen drawings of ice-skaters on the Thames? And, as it happens, A Christmas Carol is not the only place Dickens plays this bit of poetic licence - but poetic licence it is to put an ice fair on the Thames well after the "mini-ice age" that once made that possible. We can speculate that this romanticized view of a snowy Christmas was as much a part of Dickens' Christmastime mythos as it is of ours, but the fact remains that it's been a good long time since London had any expectation of having a white Christmas. Even in February, which I'm pretty sure is our coldest month, it's still usually more than a decade between anything resembling a real snowfall. Speaking of which, I'm told it's supposed to have been a degree above freezing yesterday, and the snow in my back garden mostly melted, having never achieved a height sufficient to scoop up enough for a cup of fresh snow & maple syrup. Before I went to bed last night I looked outside and saw that a new dusting had fallen at some point, but that was gone when I woke up. There are still bits of snow out there, but it's already starting to feel normal again in London.

"You can only push people so far: Pity the poor American bankers in Britain! Atop a 50% tax on their earnings, passed by a Parliament overwhelmed by populist anger, American bankers in Britain now face a 'vesting' requirement that allows them to take only 40% of their taxable earnings this year, with the rest paid out over the next three years - if financial circumstances warrant. And they do not like it. Not one bit. They are, in fact, fed up." Of course, European countries are small enough that the threat of physical reaction from the populace against the excesses of the wealthy is still a real one, so they really do have to do something before the people start reminding them about the guillotine. My favorite part is where the Americans are threatening the Brits with the possibility that they will pull their irresponsible, illegal, and fraudulent practices out of London if this keeps up. And it occurs to me that a country that really cleaned up its banking industry and rode hard over any institutions doing business with them could eventually become an important financial center just on that fact alone, because even people with real money are getting sick of trying to do business in a free-for-all.

"Court to FCC: You Don't Have Power to Enforce Net Neutrality: A federal appeals court gave notice Friday it likely would reject the Federal Communications Commission's authority to sanction Comcast for throttling peer-to-peer applications." The FCC's main purpose is to protect the public's ability to communicate and to be an informed electorate. Making money for Comcast doesn't enter into it. They are supposed to protect our airwaves on our behalf. If the court's are now saying that it exists solely to keep us from seeing Janet Jackson's nipples or top us from hearing Howard Stern's sexual obsessions, they really aren't needed at all.

Move Your Money out of big banks and into smaller, local institutions that don't feed the monster. If the government won't rein in Wall Street the way they should, that leaves it to us.

This Week In Tyranny there is actually some good news, and it's now possible to get a good look at what you think is important in the Federal Register via GovPulse, to see some documents the ACLU pried loose from the Justice Department as well as the formal withdrawal of the torture memos, and a bunch of other stuff, but: "The DC Court of Appeals gave away more power to the president. It seems as though a significant part of the judiciary wants to rule itself out of existence. What good are checks and balances when they are entrusted to those with an authoritarian streak?"

It's nice to see someone on Maddow reminding people of what it means to take convicts out of their own communities and count them toward the census in the counties where the prisons are. And yes, I want you to think about the war on drugs in that context.

Don't forget you can listen to Marcy (emptywheel) Wheeler and Cliff Schecter's VS talk here.

One often wonders whether all of Washington couldn't be improved if Sally Quinn would give up public life. God, what a skewed vision of the world that woman has. There's a right way and a wrong way to fight terrorism, and our leading opinion-makers stand four-square behind getting it all wrong.

Echidne explains what's wrong with the health insurance plan, and, more importantly, how to do some of the things with Echo that you used to be able to do with Haloscan. ]]> http://sideshow.me.uk/sjan10.htm#1001100340 Bra of the Week

Andromeda Island Universe, and The Mystery of the Fading Star.

I keep reminding myself and forgetting to post the link to Schneier on Security on Maddow.

Speaking of liberal media, I can't believe I got so distracted Thursday I forgot to listen to David Waldman (KagroX) on Virtually Speaking Thursday, but, thankfully, I still can. And Sunday night we get Marcy Wheeler and Cliff Schecter.

Avram Grumer: "Patrick referred to 'international terror klutzes' yesterday, but I think maybe Charlie Stross's 'murderous clowns' was more accurate. So far, we've had the recent exploding underpants, and Richard Reid's exploding shoes, both classic bits of circus clown comedy. This implies that the TSA's obsession with fluids and spray canisters is actually right on target for preventing a future seltzer bottle attack. Variants on the 'suitcase gag' are also clearly anticipated and taken care of. A ban on pies and rubber chickens would seem to be in order."

McJoan says the FCC is taking public comment on Net Neutrality, and "Save the Internet has an easy-to-use online tool that you can use to add your support for the proposed rule. But you have to act soon--the comment period closes next Thursday, Jan. 14." (But, in our experience, rumors that suggest Obama is backing away from campaign promises usually precede denials of same followed by Obama backing away from campaign promises.)

I guess California has too much money in the state coffers, because now Arnold wants to waste a bunch of it on privatized prisons. I still think whoever came up with this idea should be strangled in his cradle by a helpful time-traveller.

Oh, no! We're losing All Spin Zone. (And I was interested to learn that Law & Order eventually got a social conscience. Or is that a gag? We're a few years behind on it over here last time I looked, when it was still pretty much a show where any pretext was good enough for a charge and even the thinnest circumstantial evidence was more than enough for an indictment. Much as I loved Lenny as a character, he did seem to think everyone was guilty and manage to convince the DA of same with just a raised eyebrow and smart remark.)

Dirty hippies abusing the troops

D. Potter chimes in with her nominations, for "The viper at our breast", "Media media", "Your money or your life", "Nowhere, doin' nothing", "Remember, remember", and "Shivering in the light". And Lambert chimed in with another vote for "Why can't you just admit it stinks?" ]]>