What we are buying here is a modest home, not a mansion. What we are getting here is a starter home. It’s got a good foundation. Think about it that way. -- Tom Harkin

At Balloon Juice, Tim F. writes:

I pimped the hell out of [the health] bill, and I certainly did not think the bill was perfect. I pimped it because no national politician can bring back rescissions or pre-existing condition exemptions and expect to keep his seat. Weaker points can get ironed out later (or made worse), but major protections that affect large percentages of the public are a one-way ratchet. They quickly get fixed in the national character and people move on to fight about other things. Republicans always knew this. That’s why they fought it so hard. The good things got fixed so fast that even the GOP’s half-baked pledge promises to keep them. More will come later. Even if it doesn’t we’re a far sight better off than the status quo ante.

"More will come later?" How? By whom? What's the plan? Will this "starter house" bill survive a GOP hurricane? It's funny because Democrats have insisted on demanding loud clapping for the most progressive achievement in 40 years. That is the natural impulse of a politician - to take credit. In this case, the better approach would have been more of a "stay the course" strategy, and treat the the passage of a health bill as the first step in a longer journey. But apparently Dems have decided to play the "Stop Whining" card instead. Yeah, that'll work.

Speaking for me only

Update: So far it's been a great day. I'm thinking of all the things I have to be grateful for, like a career I love, great cases where I get to go to court and make a difference in someone's life, an incredible kid, good health and a blog that over the past eight years has produced a steady stream of caring and passionate readers. No more gripes from me. Have a great day!

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Today is my birthday. I'm glad I'll be in court all day because I don't want to even think about it. But the TL Kid wants to take me to dinner, and it's unfair to be negative with your child, so I intend to have a good time. He's the designated driver, so at least I can have a drink or two.

So between court and dinner, I won't be blogging today. On the bright side, at least I won't be hiding in bed. [More...]

CNN has obtained interrogation tapes of the soldiers charged with murdering Afghan civilians. It was done for sport. Not only that:

The charging papers from the U.S. military paint a picture of a band of rogue soldiers, smoking hash, bored and plotting and carrying out murders of Afghan civilians for sport.

Authorities allege Gibbs kept finger bones, leg bones and a tooth from Afghan corpses. Another soldier allegedly kept a skull from a corpse, according to charging documents.... A soldier who tried to blow the whistle was beaten and threatened, some soldiers said....

One soldier is charged with stabbing a corpse. [More...]

Was Sarah Palin being booed on Dancing With the Stars last night, or was the crowd booing the Judges for Jennifer Grey's "low score" of three 8's? In context, and watching in sequence, it had to be they were booing Palin. No way would the crowd have been booing Jennifer Grey's scores because they were too low... she got three 8's. For the second dance of the season, that's high, and it was the top score of the evening. [More...]

Via Digby, time for the Beltway to prepare the fainting couch:

Speaking for me only

Nicholas Marsh, age 37, was one of the prosecutors in the Ted Stevens case. He and other prosecutors in the case have been under investigation for misconduct due to their withholding of evidence in the case. Yesterday, Marsh committed suicide.

Marsh's lawyer, Robert Luskin (yes, also Karl Rove's former lawyer), says the investigation was coming to a close and he would have been shocked had Marsh not been exonerated.

After Attorney General Eric Holder moved to dismiss Stevens' convictions, the Judge appointed Washington attorney Henry Schuelke to investigate the actions of the prosecutors. Marsh was transferred from the Public Integrity Section to the Office of International affairs during the investigation.

How sad that at age 37, Mr. Marsh thought suicide was his best option. I hope there was some other reason besides the potential fear of losing his job.

Via Real Aspen, Gen. Stanley McChrystal was in Aspen this weekend, for a private Forstmann Little & Company conference. He was interviewed for over an hour by Charlie Rose.

The two were seated on a small stage in an open-air tent in front of a rich and powerful crowd that included Martha Stewart, Peter Ueberroth, Monica Seles, David Stern, Karl Rove, George Lucas, Daniel Snyder, Julian Robertson, Michael Ovitz, Alan Greenspan, Andrea Mitchell, Chris Mathews, Michael Eisner, Padma Lakshmi and Ted Forstmann, the Forstmann Little co-founder and IMG CEO who hosted the event.

Among his comments about Afghannistan:

“Right now, it doesn't exist,” said McChrystal, noting the perpetual state of civil war that has embroiled the country ever since the late 1970s. “Afghanistan is in some kind of post-apocalyptic nightmare.”

[More...]

The Obama Administration intends to introduce a bill next year that will make it easier for feds to wiretap your internet communications.

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

[More...]

AP:

Most Americans simply don't apply for jobs harvesting fruits and vegetables in California, where one of every eight people is out of work, according to government data for a federal seasonal farmworker program analyzed by The Associated Press.

And the few unemployed Americans who apply through official channels usually don't stay on in the fields, a point comedian Stephen Colbert — dressed as a field hand — has alluded to in recent broadcasts on Comedy Central.

Anyone familiar with farm work can tell you - it is impossibly taxing physically. No one would wish it on their kids.

Speaking for me only

There is no social security crisis. Tell Congress not to make changes.

Alan Simpson (R-WY), the Republican co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, and other commission members want to cut benefits, raise the retirement age, and push working Americans into private accounts.

Via MoveOn: The Top Five Social Security Myths: [More...]

Last week, I wrote a post noting that in order for the health bill to be even what its most ardent supporters claim it is, it would need to survive assaults on its provisions from Republicans. I argued that the structure of the law made it particularly vulnerable to Republican retrenchment and that the argument that it would become more popular and be harder to deconstruct over time was faulty because the law as structured did not create a powerful constituency. I then pointed to the fact that Republicans were already diagramming how to attack the progressive features of the bill. In purporting to disagree with my post, John Cole mischaracterized my point - which was that the health bill was not structured in a way to be transformatively progressive, as asserted by strong health bill supporters. For example, Matt Yglesias argued:

Paul Krugman ably tackles the issue:

[W]hat should we be seeing if [structural unemployment existed]? The answer is, there should be significant labor shortages somewhere in America — major industries that are trying to expand but are having trouble hiring, major classes of workers who find their skills in great demand, major parts of the country with low unemployment even as the rest of the nation suffers. None of these things exist.

Let me add a common sense observation - in September 2008, the unemployment rate, after a steady rise, was 6.1%. In August 2009, just a year later, the unemployment rate was 9.8%. To believe that this rise was a result of structural unemployment is to accept that the American economy became completely dislocated in terms of its labor market in just 12 months. The precipitous drop in demand and the financial meltdown were not the cause in the rise in unemployment but merely the result of structural unemployment. This would be an event without precedent in economic history. It simply is false.

Speaking for me only