Through the looking glass...

...or, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia...

The tea party sounds more like the Communist Party of the Cold War era. The tea party has taken America's freedom of speech to an all-time-low.

One would think this guy was a certain conservative pundit's evil lefty doppleganger, as he serves up one of their talking points with absolutely nothing to support it. From what I've seen of the Tea Party folks, as opposed to trying to silence anyone, they're just exercising their own freedom of speech and it's certain protesters from the LEFT side of the political aisle who are trying to shut them up. Not that it surprises me that this letter would run, but still, it's just disgusting.

A ten-year-old has the capacity for that?!

Are these people serious?

In the year before he killed restaurateur Viola Barrios, Joe Estrada Jr. was snorting cocaine three times a week, smoking marijuana daily and ingesting hallucinogenic mushrooms about once a week, he told a psychiatrist during a recent jailhouse interview.
...
Estrada, who faces either life in prison without parole or the death penalty for the capital murder conviction, has brain damage because of partial fetal alcohol syndrome, Adler surmised. He has the developmental age of a 10-year-old, he said.

In a vacuum that sounds reasonable, I suppose, but at breakfast yesterday (where Sabra and I first saw this in the Express-News' Saturday print edition), Sabra lent a different perspective. Her oldest daughter Bobbie will be eight years old on her next birthday, but she said she seriously doubts that in the next couple of years Bobbie is going to develop the foresight and thought processes to, say, attempt to burn the evidence of a murder she committed. (And I will point out that I'm sure she isn't going to go shooting people with arrows, guns or anything else to get money from them...) I may well be a heartless bastard for saying this, but damn, people, dispense with the excuses and put the needle in that monster so he can't do to anyone in prison what he did to Viola Barrios!

Fundamental flaw with the business model?

Sabra and I were eating breakfast at Bill Miller's this morning, perusing today's San Antonio Express-News, and this was one of the above-the-fold stories. Pretty newsworthy, eh? Sure it was, but the thing about it is, I had already read that story a good 15 hours before on the Express-News' website. I honestly have to wonder what the people who do this are thinking as they post those stories. If one can read those stories before they hit the print edition of the paper, then what the hell's the point of having a printed paper? I like having a printed paper at least as much as anyone, but which one's better? Obviously, it'd be the Web. I'm sure there are those who will say, "Well, some people can't afford a computer or high-speed Internet." And that may be true, but if they can't afford those, they probably can't afford a newspaper subscription either, much less buying a copy at a buck a day (and $2 on Sundays) from the newsstand. I heard one publisher say he was thinking about putting on the paper's web site, "See tomorrow's news today! Check (paper's web site) at 10 p.m. each night!" And I thought, "I'm sure the advertisers in the printed edition are gonna thank you for your making it unnecessary for the townsfolk to buy said printed edition." There are those who say newspapers are in the shape they're in because of reporters' and editors' bias and such, and while that may be true to an extent, I'd say a hell of a lot more of it is due to media corporations' failure to anticipate changes in the business model and act accordingly. I don't know what can be done about it, but it sure does suck for those in the business.

Where do you draw the line?

Kathleen Parker, on the tea-partiers, in today's San Antonio Express-News:

And though there's no centralized organization and no leader, some segments find nullification and, apparently, secession reasonable alternatives to failed politics and a gorging government.

I'm guessing she doesn't think those are reasonable alternatives. Which leads to the question: Is there ANYTHING Kathleen Parker and those who agree with her will take risks for? Apparently they think the American people should just take what the majority foists on them. And I wonder why it's never mentioned that the United States itself was formed by an act of secession. Oh, I'm sure they'll say "Ohhh, but THAT was diiiiifferent!"

To which I would reply, "How?" What the hell do these creatures think the Founders would have said had the British Crown required them to, say, buy health insurance? They started a WAR over less than that, for crying out loud!

So now we know the truth...

Overheard, earlier this evening, as Sabra and I were shopping at Wal-Mart:

"You think I'm just running my fingers through your hair, but I'm really just getting the pen out from behind your ear."

I was gonna buy her some, but I couldn't find 'em...

Even a broken clock...

...is right twice a day:

Ever since Ronald Reagan, the GOP has been run by people who want a much smaller government. In the famous words of activist Grover Norquist, conservatives want to get the government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
But there has always been a political problem with this agenda. Voters may say they oppose big government, but the programs that dominate federal spending — Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security — are very popular. So how can the public be persuaded to accept large spending cuts?

I don't agree with Paul Krugman often, but he actually makes a good point here. If we're ever going to get a handle on our government's spending, we're eventually going to have to confront the fact that a big chunk of it consists of programs for which cutting spending is seen as a third rail of sorts. However, what Krugman doesn't tell you here is that the Democrats have a history of taking advantage of the Republicans' efforts to do that sort of thing. Does anyone remember back in the mid'-90s when the Republicans in Congress wanted to cut projected increases in Medicare spending? The spending was still going to be increased, just not as much as it originally was. The Democrats and the media (redundant, I know) went all out to portray this as an outright cut in spending, and the Republicans took a pretty big beating in the opinion polls from what I remember. If memory serves me right, the Democrats' cynical spin of this was to an extent responsible for Bill Clinton's re-election the next year. So yeah, that's why the Republicans aren't saying about what programs need to be cut, because they know the Democrats will spin it as Republicans wanting to starve babies and the elderly. The Democrats know damn well what programs whose spending we're going to have to cut too. But you know they won't do it. They'll just resort to the old mantra of "tax the rich," as they're wont to do, and nothing is going to change.

A wicked sense of humor...

Albatross has it:

How much deeper can our national deficit go? As Lewis Carroll wrote, "One, two! One, two! and through and through / The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!"

You have to click for the proper context. I can't quote just part of the rest. But trust me, it's worth it. Damn hippies. ;-)

And he says this as if it's a good thing?!

Rascal Flatts frontman Gary LeVox:

“I think we definitely opened the door for the Taylor Swifts and Carrie Underwoods of the world,” the Ohio native said. “We’re proud we’ve been able to expand our genre of music a little bit. A lot of times their perspective of country music is sitting on hay bales and whistling the theme from ‘The Dukes of Hazzard.’ But we’ve helped other genres look at country music like country’s pretty cool now.

Sitting on hay bales...? Whose perspective is this and why should any self-respecting music fan give a shit about the opinions of the people who hold such a warped perspective? I would guess that just like certain pundits, Gary LeVox pulls this shit out of his ass and expects fans to believe it based on his supposed authority as a "country music artist" (and trust me, in this case I use that term in its loosest sense). I submit the only reason that these hacks perpetuate this meme is to justify their watering down and bastardizing of the genre. I find it difficult to believe it's based in any kind of truth whatsoever, and to the extent it is, well, as the old punk number goes...So Fucking What? I would submit that those people with that warped image are the Johnny-come-lately fad-chasers at which country music was never aimed anyway. Sounds a lot to me like Gary LeVox is almost ashamed of country music.

As for the way other genres' stars look at country music -- one wonders what LeVox would say to people like Tom Petty and Don Henley, who think today's "country" music is some sort of sick joke. I would bet you that *I* have more evidence to back my side of that argument than he does to back up his. And even if I didn't, it wouldn't matter, because as a music fan, I honestly don't give a damn about what other people think is cool and what isn't. Would that I could get a personal audience with Mr. LeVox. I know exactly what I'd say to him.

"Made country cool? Whatever helps you sleep at night, dude. Your 'cool' kind of 'country' is the reason this long-time country fan is listening almost exclusively to bands like Pantera, Queensryche, Megadeth and The Cult these days."

She keeps me rollin', yes she does...

...by saying stuff like this:

"Why is your mother a fan of Houston, TX? I love Facebook. You can become a fan of anything...I should see if I can become a fan of scratching my ass in public."

Heheheh. She's all mine, yes she is. I am a lucky man!

Missing the point...

...David Brooks has time and time again demonstrated himself to be good at that:

Since Watergate, we've tried to make government as open as possible. But as William Galston of the Brookings Institution jokes, government should sometimes be shrouded for the same reason that middle-aged people should be clothed. This isn't Galston's point, but I'd say the more government has become transparent, the less people are inclined to trust it.

Brooks seems to be saying here that government is not trusted because it's too open. For the sake of the argument we'll grant his point and leave out things like the Democrats not wanting to let C-SPAN televise the talks on health care. One wonders why he fails to mention the possibility that Americans don't trust their government because of the outrageous things that our legislators do when the cameras are on them, seemingly not caring that they're being watched. Does Brooks think that it would be better if things like the deal Ben Nelson got for Nebraska in exchange for his vote for the health care plan were not so extensively documented? Once again, we see Brooks putting forth an argument with absolutely nothing to support it.

I also thought it was funny to see Brooks say it was "less necessary to be clubbable," considering how he prattles on about supposed intellectuals and with almost every column he writes divides people into two clubs -- the intellectuals and everyone else. In effect he does that here, as he puts forth the idea that society should have leaders, saying it's "not even clear that society is better led" and talks as if it's people in professions like finance that supposedly lead us -- breezing right over the fact that the people in finance in effect do things with money that everyone else makes. And that includes those in that other club whose members Brooks looks down on and derides. I shouldn't be surprised that he misses that from his lofty pseudointellectual perch, but it's still not a pretty thing to see someone demonstrate time after time just how "educated beyond his intelligence" he is.

Ahh, my favorite song from ...And Justice for All...

....right now, at the Boneyard, Sirius Ch. 19: "I give, you take, this life that I forsake...been cheated of my youth, you turned this lie to truth..."

I discovered Metallica via the self-titled black album as I've said before, but even so I thought Justice was the last of the truly great Metallica records -- at least perhaps until Death Magnetic. There are those who defend what came after by saying that James and the guys had explored that sound as far as they could and that it was time to go in a different direction, but I don't know if I buy that. Other thrash metal bands had explored it for about the same length of time as Metallica had, and they blasted on down that road even as Metallica took that detour. Maybe it all came down to inspiration; maybe Cliff Burton's death really did affect them that much. At any rate, as I've also said before, I am glad they went back in that direction.

If it don't come easy, you better let it go...

One of my Facebook friends from high school posed a GREAT question:

"Why do you spend years trying to convince a man that you are good for him?"

Goodness, that's a question for the ages, isn't it? From a man's perspective, I would argue that a woman shouldn't need nearly so long. If a man is worthy of a woman, he'll figure it out on his own and act accordingly. And it really is just that simple. Why so many men fuck around and string women along I don't know, but I am so glad I don't have to deal anymore with the consequences of other males doing that. What do I mean by that? Read on. No doubt many of you read between the lines last summer and figured out what happened with the one Sabra and I like to call Kitty-Eater, so I don't figure I am airing any dirty laundry here that hasn't been aired before...

Like I said before, Kitty-Eater got to where she'd be gone half the time and she'd be sleeping downstairs when she WAS at home. One thing led to another and I got the whole "I feel like we're more best friends than a couple" thing. She wanted to stay friends and roommates, but I wanted no part of that after being the victim of her bait-and-switch. She blamed her actions on the fact that she'd always had problems with men, and a few months later out of the blue I got a text message from her saying she really did love me but she got the idea that I was too good for her, which I guess led to her withdrawing from me and things working out the way they did. And then there was the message I referred to in this post.

But I told you all that to tell you this. I wondered now and then if the way she did me was in any way due to anything that had happened in her previous relationships. Not that I'd ever excuse her treatment of me or try to rationalize it, because ultimately we're all responsible for dealing with our own shit instead of causing pain for other people with our failure to deal with said shit. Those issues have to come from somewhere, though. And for all I know, Kitty-Eater's issues -- her thinking I was too good for her and sabotaging the relationship -- might have come from the way men had treated her before. And THAT goes back to what my friend was talking about and what I was getting at in my reply: You don't have to spend as much time as you think, or go THAT far out of your way, to show someone that you're good for them. If they're worthy of you, they'll figure it out and they will SHOW you. And that goes for men and women too.

Of course, the flip side of that is this -- you spend all that time trying to show someone you're good for them and they never figure it out, and you get to thinking you're not good enough for them -- or (God forbid) ANYONE. And as I had to learn for myself, that gets to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. God help me, there are going to be those who think I am channeling Stuart Smalley here, but you have to say "I AM good enough," you have to think it, and for heaven's sake ACT like it. Don't settle for less or think you're worthy of less -- because as sure as God made little green apples, you WILL get it.

None of that, however, is to say that things would have worked out between Kitty-Eater and myself had Kitty-Eater gotten her issues with men resolved by the time I came along -- or that it would've been nearly as good as it is with Sabra. Like I tell her all the time, Sabra is not just a step up -- she's a turbine-powered escalator up. ;-) She dealt with her post-divorce feelings and gives me her all to make it the best it can be every single day. Instead of withdrawing from me, she comes closer all the time.

Ahem. The answer is NO, Sarah.

One Sarah Buxton had this to say, on genre inclusiveness:

"If you can put Colbie Caillat in the same genre as Fergie, then I can be in the same genre as George Strait," Buxton says. "What was James Taylor? Was he a rock singer? Was he a folk singer? I don't know - he was kind of both. I feel like I'm many things, and I'm not comfortable trying to change parts of myself to make it fit in a genre."

Ahem. No, James Taylor was NOT a rock singer in any shape, form or fashion, and this attempt to cast him as such is one of the most pathetic attempts at justifying the bastardization of country music that I've seen in quite a while. I know they play him on the "classic rock" stations here and there, and I'd guess that's where that came from, but if you're going to lump James Taylor in with, say, Queensryche or Pantera, then what's the point of having genres at all? And I'd guess this :

"With Lady Antebellum and the Zac Brown Band at the Grammys, I think we all saw that country music is doing some pretty cool stuff," she says. "I'd like to see it be open to old-school country, traditional country, folk country, country rock, Southern rock - all kinds of different stuff."

is as good of a jumping-off point to a rant I've had percolating in my head for a while.

There are those who say that country is a big tent with room for all kinds of influences. And I don't have so much a problem with that big-tent philosophy, really. What I have the problem with is that so many people seem to see very little if any room in that big tent for the more traditional country singers -- whom I and many others see as the very essence of country music. I remember that's exactly how it came off to me right about 1999-2000, right after George Strait and Alan Jackson raised the controversy with their recording of "Murder On Music Row." I remember Tim McGraw particularly saying that some of those singers, and more generally that style of music, had had their time and it was time for them to move on. And that really pissed me off. More so when he recorded that "Things Change" song. "It's just good music if you can feel it in your soul," indeed, but I think there's a valid reason people divide music into genres and radio formats -- they want to hear a certain sound. I love Metallica and Merle Haggard too, but if I tuned into a radio station wanting to hear one and got the other I'd be a little nonplussed to say the least. The categorization of music is going to happen no matter what anyone says. It's just what humans do with things, whether it be music, food, or what-have-you. And I think there are perfectly valid reasons for that. Certain artists and bands are going to have similar sounds and those artists and bands are going to be grouped together despite protests about pigeonholing certain music into certain categories. And it works, because when you want to find more of that certain sound you have some idea of where to look for it -- whereas, if it was "just good music," that's just way too general to be of any use at all. That's just the way it is and it's one of the things about music as a concept that I see as very helpful, as it enables me to direct my finite funds toward sounds that I like. Taking the "it's just music" contention to its logical conclusion here, there are 67 Sirius channels focusing on various genres and subgenres. Should they get rid of 66 of them? Or have differently shuffled playlists on the channels still from all genres, where you have, say, Metallica followed by Rascal Flatts followed by Kelly Clarkson followed by Van Morrison and so on? I shudder to think how it'd be if that were the case. I'd probably still be waiting to hear the songs from the artists the parts of whose catalog I had yet to discover that I now may proudly count as part of my collection. So call me narrow-minded if you like, but my perspective on the concept of genres has served me quite well.

Back to Sarah Buxton -- as Sabra said, "This must be why she is finding it impossible to differentiate herself from all the other blonde starlets in Nashville." She puts forth what I guess would be a mishmash of utterly forgettable country-pop that is just like everything else out there, thereby causing yet more folks like me to seek their musical fulfillment elsewhere. I suppose if they discover all the great music I did that won't be so bad, but it's still not good for country.

Is it, now?

I am not surprised to see George Will, stuffed-shirt creature of the Beltway that he is, continuing to put forth this tired meme:

America, its luck exhausted, at last has a president from the academic culture, that grating blend of knowingness and unrealism. But the reaction against this must somewhat please him. That reaction is populism, a celebration of intellectual ordinariness.

For someone who fancies himself an intellectual, Will is certainly taking a shallow look at the reaction to this "president from the academic culture." It isn't that the proles are celebrating intellectual ordinariness. Before I go on, a bit of context for the remarks to come.

There are those who poke good-hearted fun at Kevin Baker's long essays, but there is much goodness to be found therein, one example being this joke from this post that sums the whole thing up in a nutshell:

There is a story, a joke in some ways, an allegory in others, that dates way back. In it, a British Lord travels to the Frontier West, America in the 1800's. His horse throws a shoe on the trail, so at the first little frontier town he comes to, he finds a blacksmith's shop to have the shoe replaced. As he rides up, he sees a large, sweaty, filthy man hammering on a piece of red-hot iron. The Lord sits on his horse, waiting to be served, but the blacksmith doesn't pay him any attention and continues to work his iron. Finally, the Lord, outraged to have been ignored this way by an obvious servant, dismounts, approaches the 'smith, and taps the man on the shoulder with his riding crop.

"You, man!" he barks, "Who is your Master! I wish to have a word with him!"

The blacksmith turns, looks at the Englishman, spits a stream of tobacco juice on the point of the Lord's boot and says,

"That sumbitch ain't been born."

The fact is that those "from the academic culture" are fancying themselves to play the role of our masters, and it's this fundamentally un-American idea that we should have masters at all that is causing this backlash. Working in conjunction with this is the fact that these supposedly smart people aren't making things better -- in fact, they're only making them worse, driving the country deeper into debt and plundering the wallets of America ever more to buy the votes of those who don't want to go out and make their own way in the world. We are seeing every day that beneath that shiny intellectual veneer -- and yes, beneath the shiny fool's-gold rhetoric of "hope" and "change" -- lie the same old venal, self-serving politicians that have been the bane of the Founders' Republic for way the hell too long. And that is ultimately what this is all about. I am reminded of another quote, this time from the great Bill Whittle:

We are, and remain, the descendents of people who had had quite enough of being told what to do by inbred aristocratic fops and unelected, intellectual sadists. When Europeans call us simplisme, they show themselves incapable of recognizing the difference between intelligence, of which we are amply endowed, and intellectualism, that circle-jerk of coffee table revolution and basement politburo planning that we have never had much patience with.

One could say the same of those who are trying to cast the backlash against the people in charge now as disdaining intelligence. I don't know if I'd call them incapable of recognizing the difference between those two concepts. I think I'd just call them and their arguments shallow and/or dishonest, not to mention condescending and disingenuous. Considering Will fancies himself one of these intellectuals, I am not surprised he'd take this tack along with like-minded individuals on the other side of the political aisle, but it's still an ugly and disheartening thing.

Crack down

Yes, indeed:

It is a crime to file a false police report. It should likewise be a crime to file a report of child abuse that is clearly made for the sole purpose of harassing another person.

It should, yes. I don't know if we could ever finagle charging those who file those false reports with being accessories to child abuse, but that's exactly how it works out in real life. No one will ever know for sure, but that caseworker who was investigating Sabra's case could have been investigating the case of a kid who's clearly being abused instead of being sent on that wild goose chase by that sorry excuse for a man she was married to. Said caseworker could have even saved that kid's life. (And yes, I know it might have been someone else, but Sabra's ex's other clearly documented actions speak for themselves as to his character -- and at any rate, those reports were made by some petty, vindictive asshole.) I do wonder if the people making those false reports ever stop to think about that?

Question of the day!

Right here:

On Feb. 9 and 10, ABC News' “Good Morning America” reported the country lost $100 million in production each day because 250,000 government employees could not get to work because of the snow.

My question is: What do these 250,000 workers produce?

Frank Wehmeyer,

Bandera

That's a damned good question, Mr. Wehmeyer.

Hey Leonard, two can play that game.

You really wanna do that?

In the Fox interview, you scored Obama for supposedly expecting Americans to “sit down and shut up” and accept his policies. But when asked when the president has ever said that, you couldn't answer. Obama, you sputtered, has just been condescending with his “general persona.”
...
More to the point, something is wrong when we celebrate mental mediocrity like yours under the misapprehension that competence or, God forbid, “intelligence,” makes a person one of those “elites” — that's a curse word now — lacking authenticity, compassion and common sense.
So no, this is not a clash of ideologies but a clash between intelligence and its opposite. And I am tired of being asked to pretend stupid is a virtue.

All righty, Leonard Pitts. Show me chapter and mother-fucking verse where Sarah Palin or any other conservative (or libertarian) has asked anyone to pretend that "stupid is a virtue." You can't. Which is quite telling, as it makes your mewling about Palin's comments to Fox more than a bit hypocritical. You know what I'm tired of, Leonard? I'm tired of lefty pundits (and those who proclaim to be conservative yet who insult the conservative rank-and-file at every single opportunity) implying that educated people are intelligent, competent AND trustworthy solely by virtue of their education, that they know what's best for us and that we should just sit down and shut up and let them do what they will. I seem to recall that being more or less what happened with one certain Houston-based energy company in the early part of the last decade, and we saw how that worked out, didn't we, Leonard? The people who ran that company were educated too -- the smartest guys in the room, as one film title sardonically referred to them -- yet the people associated with that company up and down the line were ruined, from the CEO to the shareholders. Do you and your fellow lefties REALLY want that example writ large on the United States, Leonard? Sometimes I think you do. And we all know what you'd say in the aftermath, too.

"The philosophy cannot be wrong! Do it again, only HARDER!"

Evan Bayh channels his inner Eric Cartman...

...or, Shorter Evan Bayh: "Screw you guys, I'm going home!"

Two-term Sen. Evan Bayh says ever-shriller partisanship and the frustrations of gridlock made it time for him to leave Congress.
...
...Bayh said voters could simply decide they want to vote out people they believe are too partisan and said Congress should change its rules of operation "so that sensible people can get the job done."

Yes, because implying your opponents aren't sensible isn't shrill partisanship at all, no sir. And you know he's not just talking about Republican senators who oppose health care, either. I would be surprised if he did not agree with this:

Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, you've probably had some very nasty town hall meetings lately, and most normal human beings don't enjoy being yelled at," said Jack Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont-McKenna College in Claremont, Calif.

In other words, "Can't these people see we're doing what's best for them?" Most folks would be thinking, "ok, if I'm being yelled at like this, maybe what I'm doing isn't the best and I should change course. After all, I work for them. They don't work for me." But then perhaps that's why I would never make it in Congress. Part of me would love to see the Democrats change those rules to get rid of the filibuster just to see the liberals overreach even more and get their tails beaten that much worse in November, but part of me says that would be a pyrrhic victory because there's no telling what they'd ram through beforehand. At any rate, good frakking riddance, Evan. Don't let the door hit you.

Yep, Sneering Scott Stroud is STILL an ass...

...and the proof's in this morning's column:

...the whole thing (the flap vis-a-vis Medina and 911 Truthers -- ed.) suggests we in the media hadn't probed deeply enough with Medina and that she, more than most hopefuls, should have been asked a few less orthodox questions: Have you ever been visited by an alien? Buried canned goods in your backyard? That kind of thing.

In retrospect, Medina might have dropped hints about her views when she talked about secession, an idea Perry didn't reject outright, either.

Wow, so those who advocate secession are now equivalent to Truthers? Way to slander those who advocate smaller government, Scotty. And yes, that's ultimately what those who advocate secession are tired of and don't want -- the bigger, more intrusive government advocated by those who were voted into office last November. They deserve better than to be lumped in with those who believe in alien abduction and the like. I suppose it's some small consolation that if it comes down to it, Stroud will be one of those that gets eaten.

A mile wide and an inch deep...

...that would be E.J. Dionne, in this morning's Chron...

But Republicans (and in retrospect, you can say this was shrewd politics) understood in 1994, as they do in 2010, that allowing these talented icon smashers (Bill Clinton and Barack Obama -- ed.) to govern differently and draw in members of their own party would be fatal to a GOP comeback.
So in Clinton’s case, Republicans voted to a person against his economic recovery plan that — combined with the first President Bush’s deficit-reduction moves — put the nation on the road to budget surpluses. Remember those? And then they killed Clinton’s health care plan.
Under Obama, Republicans have used precisely the same tactics without facing any criticism for a lack of originality. Obama’s stimulus bill got three Republican votes in the Senate — none in the House — and GOP lawmakers rail against it even as they claim credit for projects financed by a bill they opposed.
And the Republicans are doing all they can to make sure that Health Care 2.0 is ruined by the same political viruses that infected Health Care 1.0 under Clinton.

Once again, we have a liberal pundit trying to rewrite history. I don't understand how Bill Clinton and the Democrats tried to govern differently back in the early 1990s. They were for a more activist government just as Obama and his acolytes are. And it's widely acknowledged that Clinton's "assault weapons ban" was perhaps the key to the big Republican victories in 1994. I don't think it had anything to do with not allowing "icon smasher" Bill Clinton to govern differently. And I don't know what the hell Dionne is talking about here as he speaks of "political viruses that infected Health Care." The only viruses of which he speaks are inherent to the very idea of the Democrats' plans for health care -- more government regulation, more taxes, and under the latest plan a requirement to buy health insurance. (I guess that's certainly one way to achieve universal coverage...)

And as for "spend(ing) more energy trying to win over their enemies than in rallying their friends," you will also note that Dionne says nothing about the fact that Obama's friends are running scared from his health care plan because of their constituents' opposition to it. That seems to be the elephant in the room that he and his fellow lefty pundits don't want to acknowledge. I wonder why that is?