Noise of the Day

Glenn Greenwald on how the tea-party protests get it right and wrong at the same time.

The premise of these citizen protests is not wrong: Washington politicians are in thrall to special interests and are, in essence, corruptly stealing the country's economic security in order to provide increasing benefits to a small and undeserving minority. But the "minority" here isn't what Fox News means by that term, but is the tiny sliver of corporate power which literally writes our laws and, in every case, ends up benefiting.

Michael Lind on the racism behind the United States' rejection of social welfare programs.

The original Social Security Act passed only after domestic workers and farmworkers -- the majority of black Americans, in the 1930s -- were left out of its coverage, at the insistence of white Southern politicians. Aid to Families With Dependent Children, a New Deal antipoverty program that became identified in the public mind with nonwhite "welfare queens," was a target of popular resentment for half a century before it was finally abolished by the Republican Congress and President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

Noise of the Day

Roger Cohen on the real differences between French and American health care.

So beyond all the hectoring, the main French-American difference on health care is not ideological but a question of efficiency. Both countries use a mixture of public and private. France is at a very far remove from “socialism.” The United States has already “socialized” a significant portion of its medicine. (Nothing illustrates right-wing ideological madness in the United States better than calls from some to “keep the government out of my Medicare!”)

Cory Doctorow on Philadelphia's library closing.

Picture an entire city, a modern, wealthy place, in the richest country in the world, in which the vital services provided by libraries are withdrawn due to political brinksmanship and an unwillingness to spare one banker's bonus worth of tax-dollars to sustain an entire region's connection with human culture and knowledge and community. Think of it and ask yourself what the hell has happened to us.

What I'm Watching

Kiki's Delivery Service
A charmer, more linear, less crowded with mysterious detail than other Miyazaki films such as Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. And hence, I guess, more suited for children -- although I certainly wouldn't want to deprive a kid of the wonders of the other films. I wonder, though, at the mittel-Europäisch detail of the streets and architecture of the city in the film (also found in Howl's Moving Castle for that matter), and the absence of Asian people in the crowds on the street. Why are Miyazaki's cities not identifiably Japanese? Is it the Disney influence, the feeling that a "storybook" film has to look like it was written by the Brothers Grimm?

Noise of the Day

Ronald Brownstein on the disaster of Bush's presidency.

On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country's condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton's two terms, often substantially.

James Rucker on why fighting back against Glenn Beck is important.

The right wing media machine, of which Beck is now one of the leading members, is the single greatest force standing in the way of change. They have already helped derail the conversation on health care.... And they will do the same to the upcoming debates over clean energy, immigration, and every progressive policy priority. We simply don’t have the luxury of ignoring them. We must challenge them head on, expose their distortions, take away their advertisers, and position their views where they belong: far outside the bounds of any rational political discourse.

Frank Rich on the problems caused by Obama's no-drama style.

Obama’s leadership poll numbers have also suffered from his repeated deference to Congress. Waiting for the pettifogging small-state potentates of both parties in the Senate’s Gang of Six is as farcical as waiting for Godot.

Song for a Friday Night

Noise of the Day

M.J. Rosenberg on what the Garfield assassination can tell us about today's political climate.

The Republicans need to understand that hate cannot be contained in neat little corners or bottled and used as needed. It explodes, whether the haters want a full-blown explosion or not.

Glenn Greenwald puts Joe Wilson's outburst in perspective.

The American Right is indeed dominated by crazed extremists who often seem barely in touch with basic reality and who are at war with core American political values, but Joe Wilson's irreverence is one of the least significant examples of that, if it's one at all.

Joe Conason on the limits of Republican empathy.

Only after her husband began to disappear into the twilight of Alzheimer's disease did Mrs. Reagan perceive the value of the kind of government action they both had spent a lifetime denigrating. Government was the problem, not the solution, according to the Reaganite dogma. But then Nancy realized that federal support for stem-cell research might someday bring relief to patients like her beloved Ronnie, and anguished families like hers. Suddenly, spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on something other than Star Wars wasn't such a terrible idea.

Why I Am a Socialist

Today is a solemn anniversary for the country, but it's also an anniversary for me -- one that brings a mixture of emotions. A year ago this morning, I woke up with a headache and a curious gap in my eyesight. Several hours later, I was in the Stanford Hospital emergency room -- not a place you ever want to be -- and beginning a series of tests. The essential details of my experience are here, here, here, and here.

A year later, I'm about as back to normal as one ever gets from an experience like that. I still gulp a handful of pills (two antibiotics and a B6 tablet to counteract their side effects) every morning, just to be on the safe side. But I'm as active as I ever was (which is not very), don't tire as easily as I did a couple of months ago, and my eyesight has only a slight glitch in it. (Hard to describe. It's kind of like a little wrinkle in the peripheral vision. When I'm driving -- and yes, I drive carefully -- I have to keep scanning leftward because oncoming traffic sometimes disappears into the wrinkle.)

We still don't know what caused the abscess in my brain. It may have been tuberculosis (though I once doubted it) or nocardia. Whatever it was, the treatments -- the round-the-clock IVs, followed by the daily trip to outpatient infusion, followed by the pills -- seem to have worked. Well, one would hope three weeks in hospital, followed by two months in a nursing home, followed by nine months of medication would do something.

But the good thing is that all of this -- tens of thousands of dollars of surgery, doctor visits, MRIs, CTs, endoscopies, broncoscopies, nursing care, rehab therapy, IVs and infusions and pills -- was covered by my insurance: Medicare and an AARP supplemental policy. I'm a happy senior citizen, one who knows that he has benefited from a government program. I'm also aware that I have been paying for it for years through payroll deduction, and am still paying for it in smallish (by comparison with private insurance) monthly premiums.

Oh, sure, I have some gripes about Medicare, but they're minor ones. (For one thing, I could have had my round-the-clock infusions at home instead of having to stay in the nursing home, but Medicare doesn't pay for home treatment -- even though, given the cost of meals and other institutional overhead, it would probably save them some money.) The point is, it works -- and works well.

Which is why I'm so ardent about health care reform and so intolerably annoyed by the sound and fury that has been generated by the attempts to bring it about. Everyone deserves the kind of care and attention I have gotten for the past year, and anyone who says otherwise is a damn fool.

For the L of It

Careful, Barack, your liberalism is showing:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Noise of the Day

John Cole on the right-wing spin on Joe Wilson's outburst.

Kind of an awesome set of rules the President gets to work with. If you point out that people have been lying about death panels for the last few months, you are “poisoning the well.” If you don’t point it out, people believe it and the rumors and lies keep spreading.

Greg Sargent on Sarah Palin's latest nonsense.

The implication is that Obama is “demonizing” victims of the war on terror — 9/11 victims included — by saying war has financial costs. Palin interprets this to mean that Obama is saying that terror victims have “had too high a price tag.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates on Obama's no-drama style.

We (liberals) have spent so much of our time on the losing end of the past 30 years, that the impulse is to fight every battle, and challenge every press release. Moreover, media has uncovered our inner crazy. HuffPo blasts every utterance from Jon Kyl in bold font. Politico reports every feint and jab, like it's the whole fight.

Noise of the Day

Mark Bowden points with alarm at the state of post-newspaper "journalism."

With journalists being laid off in droves, savvy political operatives have stepped eagerly into the breach. What’s most troubling is not that TV-news producers mistake their work for journalism, which is bad enough, but that young people drawn to journalism increasingly see no distinction between disinterested reporting and hit-jobbery.

Tom Friedman on why the negativity of the Republican party is so disastrous.

The G.O.P. used to be the party of business. Well, to compete and win in a globalized world, no one needs the burden of health insurance shifted from business to government more than American business. No one needs immigration reform — so the world’s best brainpower can come here without restrictions — more than American business. No one needs a push for clean-tech — the world’s next great global manufacturing industry — more than American business. Yet the G.O.P. today resists national health care, immigration reform and wants to just drill, baby, drill.

Michael Bérubé on the weird mindset of the teabaggers.

not only in the bowels of the insurance industry but also in the minds of ordinary teabagging folk, the problem is that health care reform might provide health care to Other People.

Another Republican "family values" jerk embarrasses himself.

As the OC Weekly reports, 
Duvall has "blasted" efforts to promote gay marriage, and got a 100 percent score from the Capitol Resource Institute, which describes its mission as to "educate, advocate, protect, and defend family-friendly policies in the California state legislature". In March, a spokeswoman for the group called Duvall "a consistent trooper for the conservative causes," adding that "for the last two years, he has voted time and time again to protect and preserve family values in California."