This is a transcript of the chat I had with Matthew Kerbel about his new book celebrating the "netroots," including groups like Daily Kos and Open Left which he considers to be part of "the Left." In this chat I tried to pin him down more specifically about what he meant by "the Left" and "progressives." First I'll post the Firedoglake summary so you can get more of an idea of what his book is about, and then the chat.

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[A warm welcome to the usual suspects. What took you so long? -- lambert]

Mr. Bowers loses his touch, and makes a clumsy attempt to conflate snark in a Quick Hit with commentary: "Progressive bloggers don’t write about single-payer because they are afraid of Rahm"*.

Fortunately, I assumed that "progressives" like Bowers would stoop to outright censorship at some point, so here is the post Bowers censored in order to replace with that link:

So, the question's still on the table: Why don't "progressive" bloggers cover single payer?

And now, the badge of honor!

Banned!

Finally, here's the post that Bowers is concerned to avoid answering (it was at the other end of the "can't understand" link (I think) in the screen dump above). Let me just post that screen dump for the record:

Oh, good Krist, this is wonderful Combined with this, I nearly fainted today, it's so nice to see this sort of thing. Stark is showing the Way, for those truly interested in being a New Media or whatever. It's so frakking simple.

Let me put it this way: I always thought I couldn't take good pictures. Trad film and I don't get along. Then they invented fancee digi cams that I can sort of use, and voila! I'm ansel adams, or something. But anyway, my point is that there should be a lot more of this, please.

Update: Well, at least they don't hate me because I'm queer. Whew. I feel so much better:

In an email to the Huffington Post on Monday, Harwood clarified that the quote was not meant to convey any displeasure on the part of the administration for the gay community's public advocacy.

"My comments quoting an Obama adviser about liberal bloggers/pajamas weren't about the LGBT community or the marchers," he wrote. "They referred more broadly to those grumbling on the left about an array of issues in addition to gay rights, including the war in Afghanistan and health care and Guantanamo -- and whether all that added up to trouble with Obama's liberal base..."

I have a writing assignment due today. I'm going to make the deadline, but I just looked at the time and I'm sort of amazed at how quickly the morning got away from me. Because I've been reading original sources, analysis and commentary from many different places all morning, and even though I'm a fast reader, it has still taken some time. It's too important to me, a pajama wearing blogger, to check and double source my facts and otherwise make sure what I'm about to write is reality-based and correct, to prepare my pieces any other way.

If I were employed by the mainstream press, I wouldn't have to do any of those things. I could just toss off an anonymously sourced playground insult and add some snotty, insider comment, and call it day.

I wonder if the next Blogger Ethics Conference will have a panel on the latest in fleece and microfiber jammies. I hope so.

Publius:

At this point, we can begin to see ACORN's true importance. The "video" is important not because it reveals some larger "truth" about ACORN, but because it is useful in this larger institutional battle to control national media narratives.

Frankly, the MSM has gotten much better since 2002 about ignoring the more absurd stories emanating from the Noise Machine. Beck and the birther nonsense haven't helped the cause in that respect. For that reason, though, the Noise Machine desperately needed to rehabilitate and strengthen the "MSM is biased" argument. Without that crucial weapon, it's very hard to storm the MSM's castle.

ACORN has, at long last, delivered the goods (much like Dan Rather before it). But ACORN itself is not essential to the strategy. It can be anything -- from town halls, to school songs, to whatever. The Noise Machine just needs a tool for bullying the media into accepting their garbage.

Exactly.

An excerpt:

"What I always found so frustrating about Ezra - the tendency to repeat, as told to him, political sales jobs for the side he likes, and to rarely look too critically at them - has really only gotten worse. There's no attempt in what passes for "reporting" from him to relate the proposed "reform" scenarios to concrete realities of the current healthcare system, or challenging any of his scenarists

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UPDATE ii: Action Alert for FAIR

UPDATE: Commentary from Healthcare-NOW!

Dave Lindorff: The New York Times Trashes Single-Payer

In an article in Sunday's The New York Times, headlined "Medicare for All? 'Crazy,' 'Socialized' and Unlikely," reporter Katherine Q. Seelye did her best to damn the idea of government insurance for all with faint praise.

Joe Klein, trying to dismiss Glenn Greenwald. And (hat tip to Athenae at First Draft), the most perfect comment ever on a Klein column. Take a bow, juniusredivivus.

As usual Somerby buries the lede:

"What really counts from Congo: Dowd’s column teaches a lesson today in the meaning of “tabloid” journalism. Before pretending to discuss something important, Dowd burns up half her piece with Clinton’s briefly awkward moment. Cable “news” has had a ball with it too. It’s what these imbeciles live for.

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Please, just read this excellent, comprehensive post on how our society fails in reacting to misogynistic hate crimes and the sad reality that is "TFL." Seriously, the whole thing should be read.

I'm shocked. (And who said symbols weren't important?)

Our tribunes of the people do willingly link to Wiener's stunt video, where Weiner gives Republicans the chance to "put up or shut up" on abolishing the "government run" kind of program they profess to hate: Medicare. And it's a great video. Great theatre, if you will.

But guess what: If you actually listen to it, you'll see that all the points Weiner uses to skewer the Republicans -- Medicare's simplicity, effectiveness, public buy-in -- apply with equal force to the Rube Goldberg-esque contraption of "public option," which is complicated, unproven, and impossible to explain.

But when it comes to linking to videos that advocate Medicare for all straight up -- which Speaker Pelosi says is the best policy -- what do we get from our TownHosers?

Zip.

Zilch.

Nada. Silence.

Blackout.

Continued FAIL.

It's like they want to force single payer advocates into the closet, or something.

The videos:

["Look! Over there! Sarah Palin!" was ironic, if that's how you landed here. --lambert]

Corrente front page:

(Fri, 07/31/2009 - 9:15pm)
Pelosi to offer single payer floor vote

[Posted at 10:48AM Saturday EST -- Readers, if you can come up with an example where an A-list blogger gave this a post on the front page, I'd actually be relieved. --lambert]

Now let's take a look at A list coverage single payer coverage starting, oh, at 5:00PM on Friday. Are there any posts that tell readers that single payer will be allowed a floor vote? (Casual mentions and asides, though I couldn't find any of those either, don't count.)

For completeness, I'll list the titles of all the posts. And for civility, I'll leave off the names of the authors.

FDL front page:

(Saturday August 1, 2009 6:32 am) Brooks as Goldilocks, Reminiscing about the Three Banksters

(Saturday August 1, 2009 5:15 am) Pull Up A Chair…

(July 31, 2009 10:00 pm) Late Late Night FDL: Club Poodle

(July 31, 2009 8:00 pm) Late Night: Elephants on Parade

(Friday July 31, 2009 6:01 pm) So That’s What It Takes

(Friday July 31, 2009 5:29 pm) Reply to Ezra Klein on the Importance of the Public Option and Exchanges (Part II)

(July 31, 2009 4:45 pm) Mike Ross Thrives While Constituents Struggle, Study Says

Crooks and Liars front page:

Is New York Times writer Gail Collins catching on?
Check out the challenges she issues to resident conservative David Brooks:

My version of reality is that:

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In this perfect meritocracy we commoners call America, it's good to see that our most dynamic, enterprising and promising youth can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and, by dint of the shear force of their intellegence, effort, and hard work*, rise to the top.

From my local single payer activist:

Dear friends,

On Tuesday, July 21, at 11:30 pm EDT, watch Dr. Aaron Carroll talk about single-payer health reform on The Colbert Report, the Emmy award-winning satirical television program on Comedy Central.

Dr. Carroll is a board member of Physicians for a National Health Program (www.pnhp.org), an organization of 16,000 physicians, medical students and health professionals who support single-payer national health insurance.

The episode with Dr. Carroll will also be available online about 24 hours after the initial broadcast at www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/full... (Episode # is 5097). It will be rebroadcast on the Comedy Central network on Wednesday, July 22, at 2 a.m., 9:30 a.m., 2 p.m., and 8:30 p.m.

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First, some detail for the gardeners, in case you want to go right out and deal with this: Late blight is the fungus that caused the Irish potato famine. Here's a slide show that shows what to look for on tomatoes. The fucking rain (at least on the East Coast) has created moist and cool conditions that are ideal for its spread. The fungus spreads through the air, goes after both tomatoes, potatoes (and peppers and eggplants), and can take down a garden in 3-5 days. Whether or not it originated in the big box stores, they are a likely source of infection now. Finally, copper fungicides work (that's been my experience with mildew on winter squash, though I combine that with milk spray) though wear a moon suit when you use the stuff. The Oregon Extension Service recommends cleaning your tools with bleach. Penn State master gardeners say don't rip out plants, because that spreads the spores, and recommend alternative procedures. If anybody has better information, please share it!

* * *

Yikes. "Spores in the air." Sounds like a horror film! And just like a hospital with superbugs can infect all its patients, an infected Big Box store could blight an entire bio-region, and destroy your garden, even if you didn't personally buy an infected plant. Isn't it great how, even if you're working to become self-sustaining and grow at least some of your own food, the corporations can still fuck you up? Reuters:

And I don't mean a FUCKING token link every so often, I mean solid, serious, thoughtful, respectful, and above all daily consideration and linkage. Could it be there's something the "political" blogs don't want us to see, that the "political economy" blogs are willing to face?

Barry Ritholz (go buy his book) presents this terrific chart:

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In Texarkana's environs a youngster slipped into an abandoned well, and a cowboy from a neighboring ranch stepped up to provide a rescue with his lasso. (hat tip: bringiton)

Here in Lubbock a Boy Scout has created 70 backpacks with basic necessities for disbursement to local homeless people.
Happy Father's Day weekend, everybody.

Yeah, things are tough all over. But go read this devastating account of what it's like not to have been middle or upper middle class to start with when w's recession hit. We all know somebody who's been hurt -- if we haven't ourselves -- by the crash that started, really, hitting the public radar 15-18 months ago, when Shearson/Lehman and Bear/Sterns failed.
But what's it like if you never had a 401k to lose, and you got by on minimum wage?

Rush Limbaugh, as Minnesota's new but unseated Senator famously titled a book, is a big, fat liar. What's more, his new $400-million contract is crippling his employer. Since his employer is the same Clear Channel that tried to destroy the Dixie Chicks and has effectively eliminated liberal voices from AM radio, that should be good news, no?

The Chicago Tribune TELEVISION section features a brief profile of MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. It begins:

Maddow slips in ratings but not in her resolve
By Yvonne Villarreal | Tribune Newspapers
April 22, 2009

The first 100 days of a new presidential administration are known as the honeymoon because it marks a time of friendly relations between the new chief executive and the media. But for MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show," the early days of the Obama administration have meant an unwelcome drop in ratings.

There is nothing, *nothing* that is "funny" nor "entertaining" nor easily dismissed, about the act of torture. Ever.

This is not hard for civilized people to understand. And religious people, too. Their sacred texts agree. And decent atheists, and humanists, and people who love children, or care for the weak and helpless. Or have been such.

I am likely too "serious" for this business, but I feel all my Divinity School training coming forth, as well as my personal experience as an abuse survivor. Please, stop the jokes and foolish dismissals of the American, and indeed all, record of "approved" methods of torture. As they say, 'you don't know it's not funny until it happens to you." Just stop it. And stop excusing it.

This extends not only to the current and past administrations, but all those who would make a joke of child-rape, or electrocution, or any of the other humiliations and tortures of those who are the subject of current discussion, regardless of how well they suit the purpose of casual snarking. It's disgusting. Inhumane. And most of all, something that will rebound ten-fold upon those who treat it casually, if that is the only thing that motivates. Yes, it can happen to you. And I promise you, you won't laugh when it does.

Here is an excellent observation by the Business Pundit:

"MSM (mainstream media) reports and government announcements leave us with a sense that something is off. We try to assuage our unease with online facts, leaks, and answers. That seeking, combined with the mainstream media’s ineffective communication, opens a portal for opportunistic publicity hounds. Like Hal Turner.

Yesterday, Turner announced that he had obtained leaked “bank stress test reults” (sic) from regulators. He pithily stated that “they are very bad.” "

snip.

Missing media critique not so missing anymore. From, yes, the AP (looked for other sources, to no avail):

WASHINGTON — Despite a pledge to open government, the Obama administration has endorsed a Bush-era decision to keep secret key details of an FBI computer database that allows agents and analysts to search a billion documents with a wealth of personal information about Americans and foreigners.

President Barack Obama's Justice Department quietly told a federal court in Washington last week that it would not second-guess the previous administration's decisions to withhold some information about the bureau's Investigative Data Warehouse.

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