Profiles in Discourage

Which we may now call all of the congressional Republicans,

I Rise from the Torpor of my Sickbed to Praise Nancy Pelosi

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The President and Rahm Emmanuel were playing tennis for a while, but the score was still 0-0.

"We might as well stop till Pelosi shows up," the President said, "because she's the one with the balls."

This is, of course, somewhat unfair, and I give the President great credit for finally putting his nose into the Republicans' quivering gut and driving them into their own backfield, creating stumbles and fumbles --metamorphosis! new sports metaphor coming out!

But I certainly read several places that it was Pelosi who fanned the Prez with a towel as he sat bruised in his corner and threatened to make Rahm Emmanuel drink the spit bucket when the White House got shaky after Scott Brown's senate win in Massachusetts. (It's a bird! It's a plane! It's yet another sports analogy!)

Thank you, Nancy. That was no lady. That was Pelosi.

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Nate Silver Says The Health Care 'Reform' Bill Will Pass

Mr. fivethirtyeight.com knows a balk from a beanball,so I guess it will. If I understand the politics of the thing, I hope it will.

Overall, the safe and sensible assumption is that the bill is in the 80-90 percent likelihood range for moving to the President's desk and becoming law.

Nate Silver Makes Me Feel Better about a 'Compromised' Health Care Bill

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Why Progressives Are Batshit Crazy to Oppose the Senate Bill

Could he be right? He invites critique in his "comments," so I'll keep an eye on that. If gravity can bend light, certainly my hatred for Joe Lieberman can distort my understanding of so complicated an endeavor as health care reform. We are a self-declared right-of-center country.

The kids may change it, but today we have to live with it.

My Prescription for Health Care Reform

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Prescription? I can't even mount a description of the process or of the possibility of useful change.

What I do of a morning -- now that the semester is winding down and my shirttail is no longer caught in the buzz saw of academic politics, dragging my butt toward pain and suffering -- is tour the liberal blogs. Some of them say that whatever health care reform gets through Congress will be a betrayal of principle and a practical disaster.

And some say just the opposite, that even if it's not "all good," that you'd be surprised how incremental change is good enough, at least in a fallen world. And, of course, some play with the notion that a failed bill would be better than a bad bill, and that "failure" won't be, not in the long term, midterm elections be damned. (Cue the ironic quotation marks.)

Sigh.

I understand it doesn't matter exactly what I think because even though my $500 contribution or my hand-written letter to Nancy Pelosi has some weight, I know just how much weight that is. But I would like to have an informed opinion, if only so I can say, "I understand" and don't have to sit quiet at the table during holiday reunions.

I understand that as in so many things my thoughts on the topic are probably just a manifestation of my disposition. I probably believe in incremental improvement in health care finance and delivery because I tend to believe in incremental improvement as the answer to any big problem. I probably do not despair at the prospect of a flawed bill rather than no bill at all because I expect to find flaws in every useful thing and really don't want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

In short, my views on the topic seem to be a kind of pre-existing condition. I seem to have arrived at a conclusion before actually working my way through the arguments (though I have *toured* the arguments, if you get what I mean). That's one of my goals over holiday break: to fill in the blanks and maybe just maybe decide what I think, not what I feel.

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Would Some Please Tell Me What to Think

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Health care refrom --or perhaps merely health insurance reform -- moves forward, as the Baucus bill passes out of committee. I am not sure if I should be glad that something of partial value may yet be passed or if we are now likely to get a shit pill that will cause more problems that it solves, wound the Dems and doom us to some Republican Mussolini.

That the Republicans hate it is promising, isn't it? But what if, for all its protest, this is yet another profit boost for the insurance industry??

I guess I'll think whatever Kevin Drum thinks.

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• Weiner: AHIP Justifies the Public Option (dailykos.com)

Obama OKay. I Think.

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But more than okay depends on what flows from the speech. It seemed to invite a delay of the public option, and that is either smart politics that will someday produce a public option, meaning an inevitable expansion of Medicare to the masses.

Or not.

But it was passionate and eloquent. Maybe it will be many things to many people, inspiring some, goading others. Maybe it provides cover for those who waver. But if only the spirit of LBJ would ooze up from beneath the White House floorboards and inhabit BHO for a couple hours a week.

By the way in Journalism Ethics today I wanted to use the mainstream reporting of the disruptions at the congressional townhalls during August -- the question being were the disruptions cherry-picked and exaggerated.

And Dah Babies didn't seem to know what in the hall I was talking about. Or maybe they did and they were shy. Sometimes, I flare my nostrils and stamp my feet too much. I must be terrifying.

I am Duty Bound to Blog About Obama's Speech

I'm a blogger. That's what bloggers do. They blog. If they stop blogging, they aren't bloggers. It's a very existential thing: existence before essence.

But what to say? Then again, that's not a question that has ever stopped a blogger from blogging. But when you are not quite sure what to say, the answer is:

Bullet Points. And here they come.

* I will be more disappointed in Obama if he fails to hit at least a 6-of-10 on the goodness scale with whatever healthcare reform Congress passes than I was with Clinton when he failed to get anything at all through. It's the Southern thing. I felt in my bones that Clinton was flawed, Faulkneresque. I had more hope than expectation (being Southern).

But Obama seemed like a new thing, and even though any analysis of his record in the context of Illinois politics suggested how very moderate and cautious he was, one could not fail to project upon him what was possible rather than what was likely. His blackness (such as it is; what there is of it) filled one with conviction that he was an outsider, which I interpreted as meaning he would come charging into the temple like Jesus among the moneychangers.

There was no particular reason to think this, only to be convinced of it. So if Clinton was from Faulkner, where is Obama from, fictionally speaking?

Moby Dick, All the King's Men, Death of a Salesman, The Great Gatsby -- damn, all my fav American lit is depressing. I think perhaps I must fall back on Shakespeare and Henry V.

Barack. About that speech tomorrow: Adapt, adopt and improve.



(Liberals as "we few; we happy few." That works.)

Obama's Final Solution (Minus the William Shatner Ad for Priceline, Which I Rather Enjoyed)

Howard Dean on Health Care Reform: