"Self Hating Jews"

You get the feeling someone will be apologizing fairly shortly: (Via Matt Yglesias)

Netanyahu appears to be suffering from confusion and paranoia. He is convinced that the media are after him, that his aides are leaking information against him and that the American administration wants him out of office. Two months after his visit to Washington, he is still finding it difficult to communication normally with the White House. To appreciate the depth of his paranoia, it is enough to hear how he refers to Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, Obama’s senior aides: as “self-hating Jews.”

Not having the US 1000% behind whatever crazy adventure Israel wants to try this week might be driving Netanyahu a bit insane.

Oh yeah, and stopping you from building homes on other peoples' land isn't "ethnic cleansing".

Ugh. Make it stop.

The Progressive Block in Action

Waking up and reading this news made me wonder if I was still dreaming: (Via Open left)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday ordered Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to drop a proposal to tax health benefits and stop chasing Republican votes on a massive health care reform bill.

Reid, whose leadership is considered crucial if President Barack Obama is to deliver on his promise of enacting health care reform this year, offered the directive to Baucus through an intermediary after consulting with Senate Democratic leaders during Tuesday morning’s regularly scheduled leadership meeting. Baucus was meeting with Finance ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) Tuesday afternoon to relay the information.

According to Democratic sources, Reid told Baucus that taxing health benefits and failing to include a strong government-run insurance option of some sort in his bill would cost 10 to 15 Democratic votes; Reid told Baucus it wasn’t worth securing the support of Grassley and at best a few additional Republicans.

Reid's epiphany that gaining two votes is less important than keeping 15 may not seem like a big deal, but it is. So far he has done a horrific job of keeping type of caucus disipline, and laying down the law with Baucus is a great first step.

As if it couldn't get any better, you get this news from the house side of the equation:

After sparking progressive outrage, and sending the White House into damage control mode, a chastened Rahm Emanuel appeared before House Democrats yesterday to reassure them that the administration stands foursquare behind a public option.

At the meeting, House liberals warned Emanuel that he couldn't count on them to vote for a bill that contains a triggered public option. "We have compromised enough, and we are not going to compromise on any kind of trigger game," Woolsey apparently told Emanuel. "People clapped all over the place. We mean it, and not just progressives."

Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman said Emanuel assured him that "he doesn't stand by [the] trigger."

But all may not be forgiven and forgotten. Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, said the Chief of Staff ""made a hell of a mistake. He made a hell of a mistake and he knows it."

While it's too early to get excited, this is essentially the realization of Chris Bowers' progressive block strategy. It's the best way to get our goals accomplished, and simply phenomenal that it's actually being used.

Train of Thought Lounge: Die Wacht am Rhein v. La Marseillaise

No lesson here. Just watched Casablanca recently, and this scene, not the smaller tragedy between Bogart and Bergman, always brings me to tears.

It's funny how blatantly propagandist the film is (in this scene and elsewhere), and how much that strangely improves it. That its creators felt it would have an effect on the feelings of those who could make a difference in the war makes it so much more real for a viewer more than sixty five years later.

This will be better if you know the characters and can appreciate the turning point in the plot that this scene represents. But just imagine being an exile from an occupied country. And remember, this was filmed in 1942:

She Never Stops

Today's Palin idiocy:

“I think on a national level, your department of law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we’ve been charged with and automatically throw them out,” she said

At what point will people stop speculating about her future and focus on the storyline that a complete fucking moron nearly became Vice President of the United States?

Shouldn't we all just breathe a sigh of relief rather than giving a hell about what this nutjob does next?

(And just to be clear I'm only talking about real news organizations that should be covering real news. The Daily Show should probably open a Bureau in Wasilla to make sure they don't miss anything.)

Robert McNamara, ex Secretary of Defense, Dies

And with him, in some sense, the Vietnam War.

For perhaps, as Errol Morris remarks on Twitter, "McNamara was not the chief architect of the Vietnam War; the chief architect was Lyndon Johnson." But it wouldn't be a stretch to say that McNamara is the most deserving subject of Bob Dylan's Masters of War, and even less of a stretch to say that his were the hands that shaped the specific course of the war.

Indeed, it may be that Morris simply got too close. His brilliant film Fog of War humanizes – if such a thing is possible – the reality of the decisions that lead to a pointless, failed war. For better or worse, Morris does it by letting McNamara enumerate in his own words the lessons he learned during his term as Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson.

Regardless of whether McNamara was the most directly responsible for that horror that haunted the 1960s, his death crystallizes a hard truth about our own times: I would take McNamara in a second over the warmongers of today. I'm sorry to see him go. The man was deeply rational, in such stark contrast to the mere ideology of the Bush era that it's breathtaking. You could say that McNamara's title, Secretary of Defense, fit him; when Donald Rumsfeld held the post, he might be better have been called Secretary of War.

That McNamara's death coincides with the Obama military's first push into Afghanistan is an opportunity to look back at how that paradigmatically rational Defense Secretary behaved. In doing his job well, he saved the lives of half the world. Yet how gravely, even backed with all the strength of intelligence and peaceful intentions, such an apparently rational man making apparently rational choices could lead the country awry.

And so, I leave you with McNamara himself, as presented by Errol Morris. There can be no better obituary than that. Truly, I cannot recommend this film more highly:

Rest in Peace, Robert McNamara.

Obama Can't Stop (Or Won't Stop) Progressive Attack Ads Targeting the Douche Caucus

As the battle for health care reform heats up, progressive groups have smartly started to turn their firepower against their real opposition, the douche caucus. The subject came up on a conference call with President Obama this weekend:

President Obama, strategizing yesterday with congressional leaders about health-care reform, complained that liberal advocacy groups ought to drop their attacks on Democratic lawmakers and devote their energy to promoting passage of comprehensive legislation.

In a pre-holiday call with half a dozen top House and Senate Democrats, Obama expressed his concern over advertisements and online campaigns targeting moderate Democrats, whom they criticize for not being fully devoted to "true" health-care reform.

"We shouldn't be focusing resources on each other," Obama opined in the call, according to three sources who participated in or listened to the conversation. "We ought to be focused on winning this debate."

Specifically, Obama said he is hoping left-leaning organizations that worked on his behalf in the presidential campaign will now rally support for "advancing legislation" that fulfills his goal of expanding coverage, controlling rising costs and modernizing the health system.

The easy response to Obama's point is that it's not "winning the debate" if the final bill doesn't include a strong public option. But unlike the other times in recent memory when Obama has attempted to pressure the left wing of his party to fall into line, I don't quite buy this. Like Ezra Klein says, if he really wanted to stop the attacks, he would have reached out to these organizations privately, rather than in a conference call that would leak to the press. Also, Obama has otherwise repeatedly signaled that he wants a public option, so this seems more like him using the ads as a rhetorical tool, rather than actually disagreeing with their tactics.

And if he actually wants a public option, he shouldn't disagree with their tactics because... well... they work! Just ask once staunch public option opponent turned supporter Kay Hagan who flipped her vote as a result of this type of pressure. The good news is it seems like no one is listening to Obama's call to stop the ad blitz:

The PCCC , who cosponsored the ads attacking Mary Landrieu on health care reform with DFA and MoveOn, say that they will continue their efforts on the heels of a Washington Post article indicating that President Obama wanted such ads to stop.

Stephanie Taylor, PCCC co-founder says: "Just for the record, PCCC will not stop running ads. In fact, we will be increasing our media buy for the PCCC "We WantThePublicOption" ad this coming week."

Adam Green, Change Congress CEO, a group that also has ads running against Landrieu in DC., says: "Change Congress will continue running ads targeting senators who oppose the public option while taking millions in campaign contributions from the health and insurance industries."

Earlier today Charles Chamberlain of DFA said that they will not stop their efforts, either.

Good. Whether it was legitimate concern of Obama's or not, it needs to be ignored. Threatening a politician's job security is often the only thing they understand, and no one needs to feel that pressure more than Hagan, Specter, Feinstein and the rest of the Douche Caucus.

Sabbatical

Apologies for the absence, by the way. In the meantime, check out this blog: http://summerofscience.wordpress.com/