THIS MODERN WORLD

Check out Health Care for America NOW, a new $40 million campaign being launched today. Member organizations include the AFL-CIO, SEIU, Moveon and lots of other people. They seem to understand that electing “nicer” people to office doesn’t make much difference without a social movement pressuring them. If we ever get universal health care in this country, it will be because of something like this.

I would never deny the importance of the FISA stuff, etc. And it’s possible to do lots of things at once. But health care should get BY FAR the most effort and attention from progressives, online and elsewhere.

You can join HCAN here. And this is their first ad:

A somewhat revealing interview with the author of the Times Magazine’s recent love letter to Rush Limbaugh:

BOB GARFIELD: Your piece on Limbaugh was very generous, I would say even flattering. You seem to give him a pass for his excesses. And when I’m talking about excesses, I’m talking about ad hominum attacks, truly mean-spirited stuff that goes way beyond satire and into the politics of vilification, and also playing fast and loose with the truth, seizing on some news item and grossly misrepresenting it and creating a lot of hubbub, using as the kernel of his satire something that is just fundamentally untrue.

ZEV CHAFETS: Well, do you have an example of that? I’m not an apologist for Rush Limbaugh, but I’m a little bit defensive because I think that the liberal media takes such an unfair view of him.

I hear people being vilified on the radio, on all sorts of radio stations by all sorts of people all day long. And Limbaugh is not worse than many of the ones I hear, even on NPR. He just has a different point of view.

BOB GARFIELD: The NAACP should have a riot rehearsal, they should get a liquor store and practice robberies?

ZEV CHAFETS: Not my sense of humor, but it’s not a lie.

BOB GARFIELD: Did Limbaugh not say that Abu Ghraib was no worse than a Skull and Bones initiation?

ZEV CHAFETS: Yeah, he did. It’s his opinion.

BOB GARFIELD: Yeah. Did he not deny that genocide was committed against the American Indian and state that the population is higher now than it was before Christopher Columbus — of Native Americans?

ZEV CHAFETS: Mm, I don’t know. I didn’t ask him that either. I don’t know what the population was before Christopher Columbus.

BOB GARFIELD: Yeah, it was about 15 million and, you know, by the 19th century it was 250,000. I mean, that’s what – that’s the numbers.

As with so many things in this life, I can only say … really? “It’s not a lie” that the NAACP should “get a liquor store and practice robberies?” It’s “his opinion” that Abu Ghraib was no worse than a Skull and Bones initiation?

I mean, to steal a riff from Atrios, it’s my opinion that Zev Chafets has oral sex with farm animals. Hey — it’s my opinion.

Josh Marshall is right when he says that John McCain’s economic plan is hilarious. Apparently Maverick thinks he can balance the budget with all the savings we’ll reap from winning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here’s a sneak peek at his economic advisors coming up with their budget plan :

Seriously though, there’s a few problems with McCain’s miraculous budget plan. First, it doesn’t contain any numbers, just wishful thinking. I’m no economist, but I’m pretty sure I remember reading somewhere that you’re going to need to do some math at some point.

Second, we can’t afford the wars now. Paying for the occupation of two countries full of people who hate us is actually causing a lot of the budget problems that McCain is claiming to solve. If things get remarkably better under a McCain administration, we’d still going to be spiraling even deeper into debt to finance his grand plans for a North Korea-style permanent military presence. Besides, even if he were to end the war and pull all of our troops out of both countries, there’s a big difference between promising to stop digging a hole and actually having a plan to fill it back in.

Finally, if John McCain’s plan to win the wars is related to the Bush policy he’s spent the last year and a half cheerleading, then it’ll just make our budget problems worse. We’re in a “surge”, remember? All those extra troops cost a lot of money, so if John McCain’s bluster about the surge working can be taken at face value, then the only way to win the war is send more troops or, to convert this into the McCain budget plan, the only way for us to save money is to spend a lot more of it.

I highly recommend David Sirota’s new book The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington. Many progressive political books, and just about all conservative political books, are crap and not worth the paper they’re printed on. That’s because politics is as simple as tic tac toe, and there’s never anything new to say about it. As Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adam in 1813,

To me then it appears that there have been differences of opinion, and party differences, from the establishment of governments to the present day, and on the same question which now divides our country, that these will continue through all future times…everyone takes his side in favor of the many, or of the few…nothing new can be added by you or me to what has been said by others, and will be said in every age.

But what can be done is serious, high quality reporting on what exactly is happening in the times we’re living in. Almost no one ever tries this because it’s hard work. But Sirota does in The Uprising—it’s full of useful and encouraging information about what regular people are doing all over the country to deal with the extremely serious problems we face.

This week Sirota is at TPM Cafe to talk about it. Check it out.

The wisdom of Glenn Beck, here.