There is a lot to disagree with in this Ezra Klein piece, but I want to focus on the new drumbeat that the "controversial differences" between the House and the Senate bill are few:

That would require House Democrats to do something they don't wish to do and pass the Senate bill unchanged. But passing the Senate bill unchanged would not mean that health-care reform cannot be changed. The bulk of the controversial differences between the two bills have to do with money -- how you raise it and how much of it you spend. Those differences can be resolved through the 51-vote reconciliation process. There's even an open reconciliation vehicle waiting to be used.

(Emphasis supplied.) Ezra is talking about the excise tax. But this is not the "bulk of the differences." It is really astounding that Ezra, who's own list of "fixes" to the Senate bill was quite long, argues this. Imagine what the House, who basically disagreed with Ezra's reform ideas, thinks. The House, especially House progressives, need to bargain to their maximum leverage now. As Ezra says, the Senate bill is sitting there - passage of that bill by the House can wait until the reconciliation agreement is hammered out. If that takes a couple of weeks or more, so be it. The elections are not until November.

Speaking for me only

Here it comes:

The real question Democrats have to ask themselves is: how come the greatest piece of social legislation since Medicare is something a progressive Democratic candidate for Ted Kennedy's seat has to speak so defensively about?

And we can look no further than Howard Dean, and MSNBC, and Arianna Huffington, and, yes, some columnists at the Times and bloggers here at TPM--you know, real progressives--who have lambasted Obama again and again since last March over arguable need-to-haves like the "public option," as if nobody else was listening. They've been thinking: "Oh, if only we ran things, how much more subtle would the legislation be," as if 41 senators add up to subtle. Meanwhile the undecideds are thinking: "Hell, if his own people think he's a sell-out and jerk, why should we support this?"

Now there is a winning political strategy . . . for Republicans. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. If the Dem Party reacts likes this guy, that will be blowing off a leg.

Speaking for me only

Seattle's new city attorney, Pete Holmes, says his office will no longer prosecute marijuana possession cases, and is going to dismiss those that are pending.

City Attorney Pete Holmes, who beat incumbent Tom Carr in November, said he dismissed two marijuana-related cases in his first day on the job, and several others are about to be dismissed. In addition, his new criminal division chief, Craig Sims, said he is reviewing about 50 more cases. Unless there are "out of the ordinary circumstances," Sims said, the office doesn't intend to file charges for marijuana possession.

"We're not going to prosecute marijuana-possession cases anymore," Holmes said Thursday during a public interview as part of Town Hall's Nightcap series. "I meant it when I said it" during the campaign.

Seattle has an ordinance making pot possession the lowest priority for police. Last week, a ballot initiative was filed to legalize adult marijuana possession, manufacturing and sales in the state. The Legislature is already considering bills to decriminalize and regulate marijuana, or to make it legal in the state.

Kevin Drum:

I've got all sorts of complaints about Obama. [. . .] Still, none of that comes within light years of providing a reason to turn on him. Conservatives gave Bush five or six years before they really turned on him, [. . .] Given the cards he was dealt, he hasn't done badly.

(Emphasis supplied.) Sheesh Kevin. "Turn on him?" What does that even mean? Was some loyalty oath violated? Yes, let's be blind loyalists like the Bush supporters were. Again, sheesh. As Bill Maher says, he's not your boyfriend.

Speaking for me only

It's late afternoon on the West Coast.

On the East Coast, Chuck and 24 come on in 40 minutes. Good night for DVR.

This is an Open Thread.

Last year I wrote this on Martin Luther King Day:

Whether marching for peace, for justice or for human rights, there's a unifying feeling and spirit of hope that change has come and will continue.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter From a Birmingham Jail

Let's make this an open thread for your hopes of change in the coming Administration.

Rather than complaints, I'm interested in hearing from those who think we've made substantial progress towards these goals in the last year. Anybody?

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Via the Associated Press, a new article by Scott Horton in Harper's Magazine reports new, and if true, explosive findings on the deaths of the three Guantanamo detainees who allegedly committed suicide in their cells in 2006. Horton alleges the deaths may have been homicides.

Three Guantanamo Bay detainees whose deaths were ruled a suicide in 2006 apparently had been transported from their cells hours before their deaths to a secret site on the island, an article in Harper's magazine asserts.

...Harper's reported that the deaths of the three detainees, or the events that led directly to their deaths, most likely occurred at a previously undisclosed facility a mile or so from the main Guantanamo Bay prison complex.

[More...]

maha has a post titled "Shooting Ourselves In the Foot." I'm less interested in the specifics of her post, which are a critique of FDL, but instead of her title. To me, it exemplifies a problem that Dem bloggers are not grasping - a lot of folks are not thinking of the Democratic Party as "ourselves." Haranguing them for feeling that way is not a political remedy for that problem. I touched on this issue in a post last Friday:

[L]et's accept the premise that internal carping has damaged Democratic electoral chances. So what do you do about that? Do you try and shout down the Left Flank of the Democratic Party in an off year election cycle? Is that really the thing to do? Of course not. What you do is pander address the concerns of this important disaffected sector.

To my way of thinking, maha's type of reaction is the actual "Shooting Ourselves In The Foot."

Speaking for me only

A few days ago in a comment thread, I was discussing President Obama's skills as a politician. My argument was, and is, that President Obama is a great politicians who has not applied his political skills to helping lift the Democratic Party's political fortunes nor to promoting his policies in a substantial way. The most recent WaPo poll supports my argument.

President Obama's approval rating is at 53%. In July is was at 59%. His personal popularity has been resilient. Unfortunately it has not translated into popularity for Democrats and Obama's policies. To be fair, it's not clear that Obama is doing any worse than the average President (his numbers are comparable to President Clinton's in early 1994.) But that is the point - in my view President Obama is capable of doing much better than the average President, especially given the conditions he inherited. Politically, President Obama has severely underperformed in his first year in my view.[More...]

Brian Beutler:

[T]he House could simply pass the Senate bill unchanged, and Obama could sign reform into law. As recently as last week, a number of high-profile Democrats were saying that would never fly. But many are now suggesting that the House might still pull through, if House members are promised that the deal they agreed to last week will be passed separately--and quickly--through the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process.

What is that final deal anyway? We know the deal cut on the excise tax. But what about the rest of it? Will any other improvements survive? Defenders of the process (and persons opposing Coakley) have been arguing that the House and Senate bills are virtually the same. This is simply not true.

More importantly, Progressive House members should use their newly found leverage to demand more. For example, they should demand passage of a public option in exchange for this deal. This is especially true since, as Beutler notes, Blue Dogs and centrists in the House will be very leery about voting for ANY health bill. Progressives in the House may have backed themselves into a maximum leverage situation -- if they know how to use it.

Speaking for me only

Back in December 2007, I wrote about this E.J. Dionne column, where he wrote:

Obama is running as the candidate who can transcend these fights.[. . .] "There's no shortage of anger and bluster and bitter partisanship out there," he said. "We can change the electoral math that's been all about division and make it about addition."

Today, E.J. Dionne writes:

A few weeks ago, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger surprisingly announced a shift from spending on prisons to spending on education. Part of his plan was for increased use of privatized prisons (think Corrections Corp. of America.) He received a lot of praise for his new plan.

There's a terrific op-ed in the Sacramento Bee by Michelle Alexander, former director the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern California, on Schwarzenegger's failure to recognize the real problem that the state's decades of mass incarceration, particularly of minorities, have caused. [More..]