A Widget Is Retired

After raising more than $415,000 dollars, it's time to take down the "Reward Those Who Stand Up For Health Care" widget. There are many reasons for this, but I think I can boil them down to two:

* No one else is contributing to this thing

* The people who sponsored it aren't even advertising on their sites anymore.

So, down it goes. Thank you to everyone who participated. I think that in the coming weeks there will be new ways to spend those extra bucks. For now, hold onto them.

What We're Not Getting: Redux

Updated Sept. 14

Yes, kids, you're privileged to be living in a time like this, when political giants roam the land, crafting legislation to make the country and the world a better place. Our leaders head vast departments of trained and capable uniformed and civil servants who explore the limits of knowledge and technology, defend the land, end racism, and reduce poverty.

Umm, sorry, I was dreaming about the 1960s again ...

Instead, what we're being treated to is another round of moral pygmies urinating on each other, and then doing whatever the pygmies with the most money decide. On Friday, two days after the President's speech on health care, the other shoe finally dropped on the chances of having a public option:

The Democratic leaders of the House and Senate on Thursday signaled their willingness to drop a government run public health insurance option from a final health-care bill.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in comments at separate news conferences, said they would support any provision that increases competition and accessibility for health insurance –whether or not it is the public option favored by most Democrats.

They spoke the day after President Barack Obama called the public option a preferred but non-essential element of overhauling the nation's ailing health-care system. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday that the president's speech the night before to a joint session of Congress "reiterated the public option is not the be-all, end-all in health-care reform."

Pelosi, who said as recently as Tuesday that a public option was essential for passing a health-care bill in the House, on Thursday used language on the issue similar to Obama's speech.

Democratic Leaders In Congress Soften On Public Option

What changed Pelosi's mind from two days earlier, when there was no way that a bill would pass without a public option? David Sirota thinks he knows:

This announcement came just hours before Steve Elmendorf, a registered UnitedHealth lobbyist and the head of UnitedHealth's lobbying firm Elmendorf Strategies, blasted this email invitation throughout Washington, D.C. I just happened to get my hands on a copy of the invitation from a source[.]

Elmendorf is a registered lobbyist for UnitedHealth, and his firm's website brags about its work for UnitedHealth on its website (Elmendorf was also a chief of staff for Democratic Minority Leader Dick Gephardt).

The sequencing here is important: Pelosi makes her announcement and then just hours later, the fundraising invitation goes out. Coincidental? I'm guessing no - these things rarely ever are.

EXCLUSIVE: UnitedHealth Lobbyist Announces Pelosi Fundraiser As She Begins Backing Off Pub Option

Could it be that Pelosi sold us out for some big bucks from a health care provider? Maybe. Or maybe she thinks she sees writing on the wall and is just cashing in.

Nothing is as certain to happen soon as when Nancy Pelosi says it will never happen. Except maybe that she'll find a way to demonstrate her utter contempt for the public shortly thereafter.

Senator Reid added further confusion yesterday:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Thursday endorsed the concept of non-profit insurance cooperatives that are at the heart of a highly anticipated health care bill being negotiated in the Finance Committee.

The Nevada Democrat reiterated his support for a so-called public option, which would create a government-sponsored entity to compete along private insurers, but said that a public option is “in the eye of the beholder.” Reid said that a public option is intended to create competition and drive prices down and keep insurance companies from conspiring to drive up prices.

Harry Reid: Public Option In Eye Of Beholder

Now, just for those who might be confused here, let me just clarify something - co-ops are not a public option. A public option is publicly financed. Co-ops would be groups of insurance companies, probably for-profit insurance companies. That means that the overhead will be several times the overhead of a publicly-financed insurance program.

To give Reid credit, he's never been a strong proponent of the public option. Now, he seems to be relishing the role of trying to put lipstick on the co-ops pig. Let's hope reports that he's in danger of losing his office next year are true. I, for one, am not lifting a finger to stop that from happening.

It's only been three months since I predicted, in what I can only describe as a particularly drained and pessimistic state, that all this would happen. I hate it when I'm right, because I'm never right about things going well.

UPDATE: Talking Points Memo's Brian Beutler has reached a similar conclusion about Nancy Pelosi's change of heart:

[N]ot two weeks ago, Pelosi insisted that a health care bill without a strong public option would not pass the House. That statement was of a piece with similar statements she'd made for weeks, which were based on the progressives' insistence that health care reform's passage depended on the public option.

In other words, since meeting with Obama--who's been notably solicitous of Senate moderates, and notably dismissive of House progressives--her public language has softened notably.

Today, Pelosi's Communication's Director Brendan Daly says "The Speaker remains firmly committed to the public option and will continue to fight for its inclusion."

There's a lot more wiggle room in there than there is in saying 'no public option, no bill.'

Does Pelosi's Softening Rhetoric Spell Doom for the Public Option?

This is how progressive causes are undermined in Congress - by the slow, almost imperceptible changes in rhetoric that encourage the opposition that they will prevail. It just happened, folks, and the only question is whether progressives will stand for it this time.

The More Baseball Changes, The More Remote It Becomes

Caption: Angel Pagan strikes out in the top of the ninth inning with runners on to end the game.

Image credit: Screenshots of Major League Baseball's Gameday by Cujo359

The Philadelphia Phillies just beat the New York Mets 5 - 4 in the first half of a day-night doubleheader. That's not a terribly interesting result, except for the fact that once again the Phillies' ace closer Brad Lidge managed to make it a one-run game before he finally struck out Angel Pagan to win it.

What's interesting is how I know that. This is a screenshot of Major League Baseball's Gameday, a Flashmedia-based play-by-play program that shows the status of a game as it's being played. For a fan, this provides much of the information one needs to know - the pitch count, the location of the pitches, what happens to those pitches when the hitter manages to hit them. It provides much of the information provided by radio coverage of a game. What it doesn't provide, of course, is video. That costs money. Embracing new technology, yet making decisions that leave many fans out in the cold is a thing Major League Baseball does all too often these days.


Caption: The full Gameday display, showing Jeremy Reed singling to center to drive in a run.

The Gameday display consists of a status column on the left, the pitching and hitting display in the middle, and statistics on the right. I was viewing it on my laptop computer's 1280x768 pixel display, so it's clearly designed to work well on a low resolution screen. A fan can note all sorts of things with this information. For instance, it looks like pitcher Brad Lidge, whose best pitch is the slider, isn't too confident in it at the moment. He threw three fastballs in a row to the same area to Reed, who promptly hit the snot out of the third one. Lidge's work to previous hitters showed that the slider was often ending up in the middle of the strike zone, which is the place only the most overpowering pitchers can let their pitches go.

It's possible, incidentally, to replay various at bats just by clicking on those at bats in the scrolling list at the bottom center.

Just as an aside, I once wrote that baseball is a game played at the extremes of human abilities. This is an example of that. A major league pitcher has to throw pitches that end up along that white area in the display above. It's an area of about 18 inches (45 centimeters) by 24 inches (60cm) or so, depending on the height of the batter. The pitcher starts out 60 feet, 6 inches (roughly 18 meters) from the plate. Just throwing a ball into that box consistently is a difficult task, and major league pitchers have to keep the ball in that 3 inch (7.5 cm) border around the box, or they will soon be ex-major league pitchers.

Gameday is a marvelous bit of web technology. It uses the capabilities of the Internet to bring real-time situational information to people all over the country. It's as though a fan can listen to a radio broadcast of any major league game he wants.

Of course, if you want your baseball experience to be more visual, things get tougher. One of the reasons I haven't written much about baseball the last couple of seasons is that I haven't seen many games. In fact, this year I've seen two games, and I only saw those because I was on vacation, visiting someone who had cable television. The Seattle Mariners, my local team, have not been on broadcast television in two years. I don't know why this is, but it can't be because the stations that used to broadcast them have better entertainment available.

It's supposedly possible to see games on the Internet now. I haven't been able to check that assertion out, though. The service requires a Flashmedia player, and at the moment there is only one provider of that player. Flash is becoming an open standard, but it's a complicated one. Until it is fully understood, no alternative players will be available. The only open source alternative I'm aware of Gnash, is at least a year away from supporting programs like Gameday at its current rate of progress. Until that day arrives, I won't be interested in spending the $50 or so that MLB.TVcosts at the beginning of the season. At least, I won't without being pretty sure I have alternatives if Adobe decides not to support my platform anymore. Since they never show games for free using that service, except for a week or two during spring training, I might still be reluctant to risk that much money, only to find that either the computer or my Internet connection couldn't handle the service properly.

This, it seems to me, is emblematic of the problem with baseball these days. Everything has a price. There are no local games on free TV, no free or "demo" games to show whether a fan's computer setup can handle the Internet broadcasts. How are people who don't have much money, particularly the young, going to be able to see games? How are future ballplayers and fans going to get hooked on the game? If you're willing to spend money, you can see, but before spending money most of us want to know if what we're paying for is worth the price. I learned to love the game by following my local team on broadcast TV. Nowadays, seeing it on broadcast TV is something one can do maybe once a week, and only for whatever big-market teams the network that hates baseball wants to cover.

Even as someone who's been a fan his whole life, the game is starting to get less interesting to me. There are plenty of other ways to spend one's time besides being glued to a TV for three hours. I'm learning more of them the longer there are no games on TV.

Major League Baseball could afford to show some games on broadcast TV. They could show a game or two a day on the Internet that either wasn't going to attract much outside interest, or that were already sold out and weren't being nationally televised. They could do that, but they choose not to.

Even though it is embracing modern technology to bring the game to its fans, baseball hasn't gotten over its greed. Ultimately, baseball is going to suffer for thinking only about the present.

As Though They Were Reading My Mind

Wonder why I identify with this cartoon? Read this, this, and this, and then consider Scarecrow's words:

Insanity is loose in the land, and here we sit trying to counter the craziness by writing blogs.

Slouching Away from 9/11

That's why.

Greenwald Makes Sense Of It All

Today, Glenn Greenwald made sense of the Right's reaction to President Obama's first year in office:

Nothing that the GOP is doing to Obama should be the slightest bit surprising because this is the true face of the American Right -- and that's been true for a very long time now. It didn't just become true in the last few months or in the last two years. Recent months is just the time period when the media began noticing and acknowledging what they are: a pack of crazed, primitive radicals who don't really believe in the country's core founding values and don't merely disagree with, but contest the legitimacy of, any elected political officials who aren't part of their movement.

Is The Right's Attack On Obama's Legitimacy New Or Unprecedented?

With all the nonsense I've been reading lately about how partisan things have become recently, it's refreshing to read someone writing what has been obvious. The Right hates anyone who isn't with them, pure and simple. Rep. Wilson's outburst wasn't an aberration. He's either one of, or playing to, the people who have been whining for months that their country is being taken away.

These are people who have, quite literally, created their own reality and continue to live in it. Take for example this tidbit from one of Talking Points Memo's readers:

Was having a drink with a friend at a fancy downtown bar when two well-dressed men start chatting with us. Seemed friendly and normal enough until one asks how big we think the march tomorrow will be -- "250,000? They say all the hotels are full!" I ask, "Are you here for that?" -- and get an earful about how Medicare has a $35 trillion unfunded liability, every letter you mail costs $1 is taxes, and Obama is a Manchurian candidate who wants to create a million-person national civil defense force with a budget equal to the Penatagon's.

Into the Teabag Vortex

It's hard to believe that people are so divorced from reality that they believe stuff like this. Unfortunately, as I mentioned yesterday, one needn't look very far to see the same sort of schism between reality and belief on our side. The idea that Obama, or any other politician for that matter, could somehow rise above this surreal political environment we've created is breathtakingly absurd.

Maybe when we as a nation, and our news organizations in particular, start to realize that all ideas are not created equal, perhaps then we'll start to see someone emerge who can get us to talk to each other. But when one side thinks that the other's leaders are all murderers, lesbians, or foreigners, and the other side are willing to believe that their adversaries' leaders would casually murder thousands of their countrymen without even a shred of proof, this isn't going to happen.

The Lesson Of 9/11

Image credit: National Park Service

It's September 11 again. In the eight years since the traumatic events of this day in 2001, we seem to have drifted into the most profound funk imaginable. If you want to know where we are today, I suggest you read Scarecrow:

I’m 65. I’ve lived through McCarthyism, racism and race riots, the civil rights movements, Berkeley in the 60’s, three assassinations, Nixon and Watergate. I helped kill some people in Vietnam and called in Medevacs for others, for no reason I can account for, and I’ve watched the American addiction to imperial adventures drag us into one quagmire after another. I lived and worked through the rise and neglect of environmentalism, Carter’s hapless energy wars and Reagan’s mindless wars against governance, science and rationality. I've watched the zealots of the nation's self-declared official religion become increasingly detached from reality and its humane commandments.

Slouching Away from 9/11

How we got here is a little harder to tell, at least for me. Certainly the fear and selfishness Scarecrow mentions are part of it. But I think it really comes down to our growing love of ignorance and stupidity. What we have done in the last few years, we mostly did because we were too badly informed to know what the right course of action was. Many let the government convince them, on the basis of mere assertion, that the Iraqis were responsible for the attacks, and that they were also stockpiling nuclear weapons. These assertions were all tragically false, as anyone who looked at the basis for them skeptically would have realized. Yet there were many people who were happy to believe, thanks to their abiding prejudices about Muslims and Arabs.

Not to be outdone, some people who were against the war and somehow recognized the mendacity behind it, came to believe in their own fallacy - that it was their own government that was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, not foreign religious fanatics. They, too, believed nonsense based on little more than assertion, because their predispositions led them to, and because their lack of critical thinking skills and knowledge left them without the tools to understand the absurdity of what they were being told.

The number of times I've been told by disciples of both these irrational beliefs that I need to open my eyes and see the truth, or that I'm willing dupe of whoever they were afraid of, are too numerous to mention. Look at these comments for some small idea. Arguing against mistaken ideas is pointless after a while. The people who still believe them won't change their minds, no matter how much evidence is presented. To this day, the WMD cult thinks that they were out there somewhere, and now they've been moved. Maybe they were moved to Syria, or the North Pole. "Truthers" beliefs have grown similarly wackier over time. Whether it's due to emotional investment in a belief, or just not wanting to admit they were wrong, most of these people will cling to their beliefs to the bitter end.

When we as a people can believe so easily and so willingly in nonsense, it's not hard to see that whenever we debate anything, whether it's war, or health care, or economic policy, that we can't help but get into the sort of nonsensical discussions we have. The best advice I can give to Americans is, when we are discussing matters of this importance, to try to check your assumptions at the door.

An Omen Of Sorts

On Tuesday, I was surprised at how visible Mt. Rainier was, given how hazy and cloudy it was. I took this photograph:
Image credit: Cujo359

Then I compared it to a photo I took a couple of weeks earlier:
Image credit: Cujo359

See all that extra white? Snow is sticking on the mountain. Summer's almost over.

Robert Reich On Triggers And The Public Option

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich wrote a good essay on why triggers for a public option mean, essentially, that there will be no public option:

The problem is twofold. First, it's impossible to design airtight goals for coverage and cost reductions that won't be picked over by five thousand lobbyists and as many lawyers and litigators even if, at the end of the grace period, it's apparent to everyone else that the goals aren't met. Washington is a vast cesspool of well-paid specialists who know how to stop anything resembling a "trigger." Believe me, they will.

Second, any controversial proposal with some powerful support behind it that gets delayed -- for five years or three years or whenever -- is politically dead. Supporters lose interest. Public attention wanders. The media are on to other issues. Right now the public option is very much alive because so many Democrats care deeply about it, with good reason. But put it off for years, and assign it to the lawyers and lobbyists I just mentioned, and you can kiss it goodbye for ever.

The Snowe Job, and Why a "Trigger" for a Public Option is Nonsense

It's a great tutorial about how things really work in DC, and well worth a read. If you haven't watched it already, I featured Reich's YouTube video explaining what the public option is yesterday. It's also well worth the time.

Journalist turned TV writer David Simon summed up why public option triggers won't ever be pulled when he said:

"I have the utmost confidence in the ability of any ambitious soul anywhere to take what is not progress and what is not valid and to gloss it up and to say, "We're doing a great job."

The folks in our nation's capital have been playing this game since the Reagan era, if not earlier. They're perfectly capable of ignoring the obvious while they do what's in their own best interests.

Getting All Hot And Bothered About Sweaty Brown People

Updated at 8:50PM PDT

Biden: It's OK, Nance. Wilson's just ranting about the brown folks again.

Image: Screenshot from this video by Cujo359

I was beginning to believe I would never see the day. Rep. Joe Wilson (SC-02), who shouted "you lie" at President Obama during his speech last night, apologized later that evening:

Midway through the speech, as the president was defending his plan to a chamber packed with members of Congress, Rep. Joe Wilson, a South Carolina Republican, shouted, "You lie!"

Senior Republicans, including Obama's opponent in last year's election, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., quickly called for him to apologize. About 90 minutes after Obama finished, Wilson issued a statement saying he had "let my emotions get the best of me."

"My comments were inappropriate and regrettable," the statement said. "I extend sincere apologies to the president for this lack of civility."

Rep. Joe Wilson Apologizes, Calls Outburst During Speech 'Regrettable'

Republican politicians and their supporters shout so many outrageous and stupid things these days that it barely counts as news. Apologizing for it, though, is something generally left to Democrats.

No, I really don't expect that this is the start of a new trend. It's more likely that they'll just avoid shouting nonsense during nationally televised speeches. Even that would be an improvement.

While we're on the subject, let's examine the content of this apology. Recall that Rep. Wilson shouted out this insult while the President was saying that illegal immigrants would not be benefiting from this plan. Of all the moments for what Wilson describes as an emotional outburst, why this one? Was he upset when Obama said that tens of millions of Americans are doing without health care? Was he mortified that people die every day from lack of such health care, and that this pitifully inadequate plan wouldn't be implemented for four years? Was he upset because a public option might conceivably mean that insurance companies won't suck every possible cent out of the health care system? No, he wasn't upset by any of those human or fiduciary tragedies. He was upset because he thought there was a chance that some of those sweaty brown people who enter the country illegally might be getting health care.

As Blue Texan notes at FireDogLake, avoiding the appearance of racism isn't high on Wilson's list of political priorities:

Long before Joe Wilson (R-SC) made a complete ass out of himself and his party on national television, he fought to keep the Confederate battle flag flying over South Carolina.

The flag came down that year [2000] after Republicans in both houses went for a compromise that would put it on Statehouse grounds at the Confederate Soldier’s monument. The “Magnificent Seven” of Senators who voted to keep the flag up included current Congressman Joe Wilson...

That's right -- Wilson was one of only seven members of the South Carolina Senate to vote to stick it to the blacks keep the battle flag. It was finally brought down under intense national pressure and from an NAACP boycott, which cost the state millions in tourism revenue.

South Carolina Congressman Who Screamed at President Obama Fought to Keep Confederate Flag

[links and emphasis from original]

In a more enlightened constituency than Rep. Wilson apparently represents, these would be unflattering observations.

UPDATE: Fixed the time of Wilson's apology. Originally, I'd said he apologized today. I also added the quote from Blue Texan.

UPDATE 2: Thers over at FireDogLake deserves the last word on this thing, if only for the title of his piece:

All I'm saying is that the problem with the "You Lie" thing is that it was crazy horseshit, not that it was impolite, even though it was impolite. [Washington Post writer Dana] Milbank is shocked, shocked at the lack of decorum at "what was supposed to be a sacred ritual of American democracy." Milbank is thus upset because an Unwritten Law of Washington Protocol was violated -- far more so than he is about anything like who is lying and who isn't about this "illegal aliens" race-baiting intentional-distraction nonsense.

The Shocking Lack of Civility in Our National Discourse, In My Considered Opinion, Sucks Hairy Baboon Ass

I couldn't agree more.

Number One In Saab Slobber Sokning

For reasons that surpass understanding, this article is number one in the Swedish Google for "slobber saab". Here's photographic proof:

Slobber And Spittle's March 2009 archive also garners the number two position, for this thoughtful piece on slobbering boyfriends and some random mention of General Motors selling off a subsidiary or three.

We've had many firsts here at SnS, but nothing makes us prouder than knowing we can breach the language barrier to bring you the best in intellectual discourse.