I'm all for pursuing pragmatic liberal policies, etc., and talking endlessly about the monolithic system is boring and pointless. Yes.

At the same time, however, it is not edifying to imagine conflict, drama, and actual events to be occurring when they are not.

TPM (a world away from IOZ):

As Politico first reported, the White House is pressuring a reluctant Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to cut a deal with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to keep the prospects for health care reform legislation alive, a keyed in aide confirms.

Reid's inclination is to wait until the CBO reports back on the public option compromise at the root of Lieberman's filibuster threat. But the White House has made it clear that they don't want to mess around.

The White House denies the charge. Spokesman Dan Pfeiffer tells TPMDC, "The report is inaccurate. The White House is not pushing Senator Reid in any direction. We are working hand in hand with the Senate Leadership to work through the various issues and pass health reform as soon as possible."

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was less responsive. "The President is anxious to see progress and will continue to work with Democrats and Republicans and independents and everyone in between."

Today, Interior Secretary, and former Colorado Senator, Ken Salazar paid a visit to Lieberman. The White House has dispatched Salazar to the Hill numerous times over the course of the health care fight to finesse things with swing vote members, and today his focus is Lieberman.

So let's say Democratic leadership does cut a deal with Lieberman to scrap the public option compromise entirely. What happens next? Does Lieberman get off scot free with his former party?

A Senate Democratic aide says they're not thinking about that yet. "The anger is too raw, and the task of figuring out what to do now is too pressing, to ponder that," the aide said.

Can any initial interpretation of events exclude the possibility of Obama and Lieberhole acting in concert?

Update: Hamsher at Firedoglake (who is not commenting from a distance but from within the fight -- she has been the single person most responsible for the strong alignment of House Dems in support of the now-defunct public option):

It’s quite convenient that what Joe Lieberman is demanding — no public option, no Medicare buy-in — happens to look just like the Senate Finance Committee bill that the White House wrote with Baucus. Now the White House is saying Reid should take it...

Joe gets his way by giving Obama what he wanted anyway. Sweet. The weak and ineffectual/corrupt Reid will no doubt find a way to do just that. And Byron Dorgan’s drug reimportation bill that Harry Reid is blocking from coming to the floor? Well, we probably won’t see that either. Because it’s not part of the White House’s PhRMA deal, it can’t be in the bill. And if we’ve discovered one thing, it’s that the White House and Harry Reid will do anything to deliver on those secret deals...

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In a move that senior leadership aides say has left them stunned, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) that he will filibuster a tentative public option compromise unless it's stripped of its key component: a measure that would allow people aged 55-64 to buy insurance through Medicare.

The development casts substantial doubt on whether or not a health care reform bill can pass in the Senate, and even more doubt on whether a bill that does pass the Senate will be reconcilable with substantially more progressive House legislation in such a way that a final reform package can once again pass in both chambers of Congress.

I don't even want this thing to pass, but surely there's a special place in hell reserved for Lieberman. What an amazing world-class prick. I mean, I get that his job is to whittle away any part of the bill that actually helps people and just leave the Insco subsidy, but still...it's breathtaking.

Addendum:

IOZ has the solid on Lieberman's role in this little bit of grand guignol:

Lieberman. You have to admire his tenacity. He cut himself an admirable deal. Senate leadership lets him run a committee and do whatever he wants, and in exchange, he willingly functions as a convenient scapegoat and target for ineffectual Progressive wrath, as they are constitutionally incapable of understanding that he is not an impediment to the Donk's grand plans, but a primary component. Indeed, if "Republicans apply the torque that turns the thing rightward [and] . . . Democrats are the pawl," then the likes of Lieberman (see also, Ben Nelson, the Blue Dogs, et al) are the teeth on the gear, which is to say, the sharp protrusions against which the Democratic pawl clicks to prevent backsliding. The wheel turns right; the Donk slips in; Lieberman cries "Across this line . . . you do not . . ."; and the Progressive internet goes bonkers and ignores the rest of the machine. Whether health care or the terror war. Doesn't matter. The effect is the same.

Better than assassination?

Ha:

Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations' drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.

Also good news:

GEORGE GOEHL: What we're trying to do is really organize around a set of ideas. And when we think a real successful movement would be more around an allegiance to ideas over party. And some of that'll contain protests. But it's really about a vision of what we want to create. Around a more fair and just economy. So, right now, I think a lot of the action is around banking reform. But I think we're building the foundation for a big movement around an economy that serves us all.

...

This is an incredible opportunity to turn a tragedy into something good. So, if we can get it together, and I really think is not about the Congress. This is not about the President. This is about the people watching this show and other Americans saying, 'Enough is enough.' And I'm going to move from my seat out into the streets, from fingers on a keyboard, boots on the ground, and get out there." Whether that means calling the Members of Congress. Whether it means organizing a little protest in front of a bank. Whether it means making a YouTube video and cutting up your credit cards and posting it and sending it out to your friends. If people get engaged, we can win this fight. And that's happening. There are actions planned all across the country in 25 states over through the end of the year. And then as next year comes around, you'll start to see more events like the showdown in Chicago.

A guilty admission: I've stupidly bought into the media-pimped notion that the Teabaggers are the Official Face of Popular Outrage at the Banks. In my defense, I'll say that I wasn't very wholehearted about it, I just hadn't heard of any good shit coming from the left. Bill Moyers, god bless him, shows it ain't so. The video is worth watching, although Heather Booth is a bit muddle-headed, a regrettable necessity in activist interviews. It will be a huge loss when Moyers does his last show soon.

Also of note, I learned from Doug Henwood's peerless radio show Behind the News, that Evo's re-election was by a huge margin and turnout and that Bolivia's economy is doing so well that even the IMF praised it. Venezuela meanwhile isn't looking as good. Which is further evidence to bolster my core belief that change is best when it's from the bottom up and not the top down. It isn't easy being this right all the time, people. But I do it because I care.

If you like radio, Behind the News as well as Chuck Mertz's show are the best things on the air. Sane speech. Very refreshing.

Naomi Klein:

We are seeing a redefinition of environmentalism, which has always been a bit of a kind of, sort of touchy-feely movement here in the North. “We’re all in it together. Let’s hold hands,” right? There’s nothing wrong with holding hands, but the fact is, we’re not all in it together in the same way. There is an inverse relationship between the people who created the problem and where the effects of those problems are being felt. There’s an inverse relationship between who created the problem and who can afford to save themselves from the problem, and it isn’t only in the Global South. Think about New Orleans. Right? It’s also the South in the North. The people who had resources could drive out of the disaster zone; the people who depended on the state were left on their roofs, a kind of a climate apartheid, in the United States.

So we have this discussion of reparations. In the United States, when you talk about reparations, it’s not about the stealing of resources as much as it is about the stealing of people. So this movement that we are talking about today is part of that movement, as well. In fact, at a conference in 2001 in Durban, South Africa, the Conference on Racism, the issue of ecological debt was one of the issues on the agenda, but so was reparations for slavery. And I think there are some people here from N’COBRA from the United States, which is the national coalition calling for reparations for slavery. And they deserve to be acknowledged, because this movement is building on their work, as well.

...

I said at the opening of Klimaforum that there’s a place for rage and there’s a place for civil disobedience. I was not saying, as some news reports claimed, that Copenhagen should be trashed. I really don’t think so. I think that’s a very bad idea. And I’m going to say that explicitly, even though people are always telling me, “Don’t say it’s bad. Don’t say it’s bad.” Listen, the reason why it’s bad is precisely because of what we’re seeing here. This conversation that has started here about the real face of environmentalism, as a class war that is being waged by the rich against the poor, has never happened before. There has never been global media attention on this discussion. If we allow the media to change the discussion into broken windows in Copenhagen—which is the boringest discussion in the world, OK?—we have truly failed.

But I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be direct action. There should be direct action

So the protests are well underway and according to the Telegraph some windows have been broken and there've already been mass-arrests, pre-emptive and otherwise. So the pens are filling up as planned. I haven't looked widely and so I don't know whether corporate media has latched onto this and made this all about broken windows.

What's interesting about Klein's words here isn't so much her denunciation of property destruction as a form of direct action, although I agree with her in this instance, but her sketch of the new form of the Global Justice movement. To the extent that her sketch is accurate I find this a very promising direction indeed.

Essentially what she's outlining is the late Murray Bookchin's idea of social ecology, the central insight of which is that ecological problems are rooted in social problems. Since I basically agree with this, I find it very promising that mass-movements are starting to organize around this principle, even if sans la lettre. I don't expect anything of any worth to come out of the official portion of this conference, but if the Global Justice movement can successfully forge organizational, rhetorical and theoretical links between environmental struggle, class war, and slavery reparations as a result of converging at this place and time, it would be invaluable. Linking these elements would be an achievement on par with the long-hoped-for unity of labor, student and environmental groups that made Seattle so effective. This is a ray of hope that the movement of movements can find its feet again after its post-9/11 dissolution.

It does also illustrate a key function of these protests, which isn't only to contest power. Most protests don't put very much pressure on power and many people feel they are worthless for this reason. But these convergences, and protests generally, act as sort of mini-conferences. Morale is boosted by learning you are not alone, connections made, information and ideas exchanged, hope, solidarity and agency are cultivated, alienation and frustration dissipated. Oddly, all of this sort of thing doesn't happen very much at actual movement conferences. Having the imperative to action makes consensus, actually listening to others, and finding common ground more urgent thus reducing the sectarian squabbles that occur when the discussion is purely academic. Not that there's not sectarian squabbling at protests, but vitriol and length are greatly reduced.

The next phase of course would be devising new tactics that break out of the ritualization pattern JHD commented on earlier. This is a good beginning though. Even if they don't get the right headlines in the right media outlets, resistance is still fertile.

Huffington Post:

The White House, aided by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), is working hard to crush an amendment being pushed by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) to allow for the reimportation of pharmaceutical drugs from Canada, Senate sources tell the Huffington Post. As a result, the Senate health care debate has come to a standstill: Carper has placed a "hold" on Dorgan's amendment and in response, Dorgan tells HuffPost, he'll object to any other amendments being considered before he gets a vote on his.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) is a lead co-sponsor of Dorgan's amendment... The amendment has the support of a number of other Republicans, including Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Charles Grassley (Iowa), John Thune (S.D.) and David Vitter (La.). Opponents of the amendment worry that many more Republicans may join the amendment not because they agree with it, but because they want to put the health care bill in jeopardy.

So the White House and the drug makers are trying to persuade as many Democrats as they can to oppose the amendment despite their previous support for it.... Publicly, President Obama continues to support reimportation, as he did during the campaign. "The President supports reimportation of safe and effective drugs. He made that clear in his FY 2010 budget, which included $5 million to enable the FDA to begin developing policy options," reads a statement from the White House. "The Food and Drug Administration has raised safety concerns about the current proposal and will continue exploring policy options to create a pathway to importing safe and effective drugs."

And: it turns out that the "reform" bill allows InsCo's to continue arbitrarily capping the amount of coverage patients can receive per year. The caps are what cause people to go bankrupt when they get seriously ill.

Tiger has on the one hand played the typical celebrity-sacrifice game, offering an "apology" to people who deserve none: the media and its consumers. On the other, his choice to stop playing golf "indefinitely" is a brilliant fuck-you to this system's nihilistic insatiability. Thus: refuse to provide any further fodder to both informational revenue producers, gossip and sports industries alike, henceforth.

Had Obama any of Tiger's shamelessness or moxie (not, mind you, the libidinal fecklessness, which is indeed a good thing to lack), he would have realized long ago that a similar mechanism is in place to nail him one way or the other. He will never be tough enough or popular enough to not be embarrassed and toppled. Agency only lies the way of refusal; refusal to play along, to feed the monster that exists, to believe your own myth at our expense.

Now let's get on with it:

I see that the process of liberal disllusionment with Obama is well underway, somewhat earlier than I’d expected it to set in.

...

...there’s great political potential in popular disillusionment with Democrats. The phenomenon was first diagnosed by Garry Wills in Nixon Agonistes. As Wills explained it, throughout the 1950s, left-liberals intellectuals thought that the national malaise was the fault of Eisenhower, and a Democrat would cure it. Well, they got JFK and everything still pretty much sucked, which is what gave rise to the rebellions of the 1960s (and all that excess that Obama wants to junk any remnant of). You could argue that the movements of the 1990s that culminated in Seattle were a minor rerun of this. The sense of malaise and alienation is probably stronger now than it was 50 years ago, and includes a lot more of the working class, whom Stanley Greenberg’s focus groups find to be really pissed off about the cost of living and the way the rich are lording it over the rest of us

.

Today we heard Obama's Nobel speech, in which he gravely lectured the world about its moral obligation to acknowledge that it deserves American bombing, which should be received without childish resentment. Presumably the international community should welcome mass carnage in the same spirit as it ought to consent to the theft of a large portion of the world's wealth and resources by American bankers.

We also had it confirmed today that the entire process of legislating health care reform, from its beginnings last winter through this morning, was indeed a charade.

Also, I read this:

...the Obama administration has authorized the United States Army Corps of Engineers to design a vertical underground wall under the border between Egypt and Gaza.

In March, 2009 [after the IDF terrorist massacre of Gaza] the United States provided the government of Egypt with $32 million in March, 2009 for electronic surveillance and other security devices to prevent the movement of food, merchandise and weapons into Gaza. Now details are emerging about an underground steel wall that wil be 6-7 miles long and extend 55 feet straight down into the desert sand.

The steel wall will be made of super-strength steel put together in a jigsaw puzzle fashion. It will be bomb proof and can not be cut or melted. It will be "impenetrable," and reportedly will take 18 months to construct.

The steel wall is intended to cut the tunnels that go between Gaza and Egypt. The tunnels are the lifelines for Gaza since the international community agreed to a blockade of Gaza to collectively punish the citizens of Gaza for their having elected in Parliamentary elections in 2006 sufficient Hamas Parliamentarians that Hamas became the government of Gaza...

The underground steel wall is intended to strengthen international governmental efforts to imprison and starve the people of Gaza into submission so they will throw out the Hamas government.

...One more time, the American government and the Obama administration has been an active participant in the continued inhumane treatment of the people of Gaza and should be held accountable, along with Israel and Egypt for violations of human rights of the people of Gaza.

I can just hear the liberal response: how childish are these idealists! They do not know the cost of peace!

What a contemptible sanctimonious prick is Barack Obama.

other great moments in mindbending horseshit:

From 30 Rock:

Jenna Maroney: ...You've got to lie to her, coddle her, protect her from the real world.

Jack Donaghy: I get it! Treat her like the New York Times treats its readers!

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