Disney/Pixar liked it so much, they even added it to their YouTube channel, no legal bullshit. That’s awesome.

I’ve been very critical of my friends over at DKos lately, and I can’t seem to stop.  I wandered over again today to see the reaction to health care reform passing the Senate, and the reaction was fairly positive.  There was a nice post by DemFromCT.

But then I looked further down and ran across this post quoting Drew Westen, who I am told “isn’t just any guy with a computer. He’s an expert on political communication, the guy who wrote The Political Brain, and as digby says, the “it boy” of the Democratic party.”  So obviously, he’s the bees knees, and we should all hail his opinion:

What’s costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting….

Consider the president’s leadership style, which has now become clear: deliver a moving speech, move on, and when push comes to shove, leave it to others to decide what to do if there’s a conflict, because if there’s a conflict, he doesn’t want to be anywhere near it. [...]

Leadership means heading into the eye of the storm and bringing the vessel of state home safely, not going as far inland as you can because it’s uncomfortable on the high seas. This president has a particular aversion to battling back gusting winds from his starboard side (the right, for the nautically challenged) and tends to give in to them. He just can’t tolerate conflict, and the result is that he refuses to lead….

The time for exhortation is over. FDR didn’t exhort robber barons to stem the redistribution of wealth from working Americans to the upper 1 percent, and neither did his fifth cousin Teddy. Both men told the most powerful men in the United States that they weren’t going to rip off the American people any more, and they backed up their words with actions. Teddy Roosevelt was clear that capital gains taxes should be high relative to income taxes because we should reward work, not “gambling in stocks.” This President just doesn’t have the stomach to make anyone do anything they don’t want to do (except women to have unwanted babies because they can’t afford an abortion or live in a red state and don’t have an employer who offers insurance), and his advisors are enabling his most troubling character flaw, his conflict-avoidance.

This is complete garbage.

May I remind Mr. Bad Ass Democrat Drew Westen that it was under Obama’s watch, his first year as President to boot, that comprehensive health care reform is about to be passed.  This is something that FDR and LBJ, heroes of progressive lore that they are, could not pass.

It was clear from the outset that the Senate never wanted to pass a bill, but we soldiered on.  Somehow Mr. Westin thinks that Barack Obama had nothing to do with it, which I find completely at odds with reality.

Furthermore, this is exactly the kind of attitude that frustrates me beyond belief from the netroots on this issue.  It’s this idea that if only Barack Obama got into a staring contest (or perhaps an arm wrestling match) with Joe Lieberman, then the public option would have passed.

Ridiculous.

Obama talks to NPR about the new Health Care Legislation.

With 60 votes, as promised.

Even though there’s still one more hurdle (getting the House and Senate to agree), this really is a huge achievement.

Matt Yglesias:

As you know, my view is this: For all its flaws, if signed into law this bill would be the greatest progressive social policy achievement in over forty years. It’s fine not to be satisfied with this legislation, but it’s perverse not to be happy about it. The important thing is to try to make sure that we don’t need to wait another forty years before additional major improvements become possible.

Ezra Klein:

H.R. 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, passed with 60 votes, and though that sounds a razor-thin margin given the odd rules of the Senate, it is a landslide in the more normal context for major choices in American politics. The last time a president won with 60 percent of the vote, for instance, was when Lyndon Johnson trounced Barry Goldwater in 1964. Health-care reform passed the House with only 50.5 percent of the body voting for it. And the senators making up this morning’s 60 votes actually represent closer to 65 percent of the population. Harry Reid has much to be proud of today. [...]

Passing legislation, it turns out, is a long and ugly process. God, is it ugly. The compromises, both with powerful special interests and decisive senators. The trimming of ambitions and the budget gimmicks and the worship of Congressional Budget Office scores. By the end, you’re passing a compromise of a deal of a negotiation of a concession.

But bad a system as it might be, it’s the only one we’ve got. At least for now, this is what victory looks like. The slow, grinding, ineluctable advance of legislation that is quite similar, albeit not identical, to what you began with. It’s not pretty, and it doesn’t necessarily feel like winning is supposed to feel. But this bill will do most of the things supporters hoped it would do: cover about 95 percent of all legal residents, regulate insurers, set up competitive exchanges, pretty much end risk selection, institute a universal structure that we can improve and enhance as the years go on, and vastly reduce both medical and financial risk for families.

It’s been a long time since the legislative system did anything this big, and people have forgotten how awful the victories are. But these are the victories, and if they feel bad to many, they will do good for more. As that comes clearer and clearer, this bill will come to feel more and more like the historic advance it actually is.

Today is a good day for America.

This had me lol’ing in my car yesterday morning.

Mark Keenan, Managing Director of Divorce-Online said: “I had heard from my staff that there were a lot of people saying they had found out things about their partners on Facebook and I decided to see how prevalent it was I was really surprised to see 20 per cent of all the petitions containing references to Facebook.

Source article

I just wanted to offer a shoot-from-the-hip reaction to the angle this article is clearly driving at. I think it is silly to come out with statistics like this. “Fueling” divorce? I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the rate of people citing “facebook” in divorce papers grew at the same rate of people signing up to use Facebook. Facebook is now a practically ubiquitous part of peoples lives, like driving a car and using a telephone. Neither of those cause infidelity, but they certainly get used in the process.

The Flaming Lips : Dark Side of the Moon is being released on iTunes for today only.

With a health care reform bill poised to pass, I thought I would mosy on over to DKos to see what the climate was like.  And that’s when I came across this:

People are so quick to rush to embrace a bill that’s not set in stone, which has been consistently eroded over the past year, at an exponentially accelerated pace, with each major concessions not just making the bill worse, but emboldening critics to make further demands. As crappy as the bill is now, it’s inevitably getting worse, and then, it’ll get even worse after that.And every time progressives shrug their shoulders and say, “all right, we’ll take whatever we can get”, you empower those critics. Rather than draw a line in the sand and bolster the efforts of true reformists, you are leaving them high and dry. And the weaker progressives get, the more Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman and Blanche Lincoln and the rest of that bunch can do to make this not just a bad bill politically, but a bad bill policy wise. [...]

We’re at the point, I think, where you strip this thing of anything remotely controversial and pass whatever is left — maybe tougher rules against rescissions, some regulatory reform, etc. But as far as substantive reform, we live in a legislative world were a majority can’t accomplish shit because idiotic rules prevent government from governing. And we can’t resort to reconciliation because we live in a world in which procedural tactics that were okay for Republicans, are somehow off limits for Democrats.

Nate Silver has a very well detailed take down of this kind of attitude, which I basically agree with unconditionally.

The bottom line is that the bill currently under consideration in the Senate (with the Executive Amendments and Nelson’s support) is still a good bill.  Is it a great bill?  No.  Is it my favorite bill?  No.  Would I like to see a robust public option?  Yes.  Am I pissed off that procedural rules give the keys to the palace over to the likes of Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson?  Absolutely.  But the take-away is that this bill is significantly better than the status quo.

To sit in your corner and stamp your feet because the bad men threw your bill in the dirt is beyond childish.  This bill will improve the lives of millions of Americans.  Ron Wyden’s bill will not.  The House bill will not.  Why?  Because they won’t pass the Senate.  Period.  Not even with reconciliation.

It’s time to grow up and pass a bill.

So I must have done something right so far, because I have some wee little sprouts of various flora.  The lettuce looks nice and healthy, and the chard is very pretty with its ruby red stems.  Very nice.

lettuce

swiss chard

spinach

On a related note, I decided to start composting, which is another activity that I used to think was impossible for any without a farm to do.  Turns all you really need is a garbage can with a bunch of holes drilled in it.  And you can even get them on the cheap if you’re a NYC resident.

I got to do my first bit of puppeteering recently in this spot for MoveOn.org. It was a ton of fun for my brain, but a lot less fun for my shoulder and arm, which was stuck up in the air for extended periods into the wee hours that night. This spot was put together in 24 hours, from fabricating the puppets to creating a finished edit and graphics, which is a testament to the enormous talent of the fine artists at Charged. I did the P-Span graphics intro as well; not my worst for some 6:30 AM work!

My arm is inside the gray haired balding guy on the right:

In 1970, Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter for the Pittsburgh Pirates against the San Diego Padres, high on LSD. Ellis is a hilarious storyteller and recounts his now legendary LSD no-no in what is quickly becoming one of my favorite animated films. Watch: