At OpenLeft. In Quick Hits, of course:

How to make change
(dr anonymous)

This is a 1976 guide on how to understand and organize your community effectively that I came across recently.  Whether you care about health care broadly or reproductive rights or lgbt rights or anything else, this will be useful to you in working locally (or on the internet!).

http://www.tenant.net/Organize...

If only. Greenwald:

The Washington Post's Ezra Klein has an amazing post in which he trumpets what he calls the "Twilight of the Interest Groups" reflected by likely passage of the health care bill (h/t).  Why are Interest Groups -- once so powerful in Washington -- now banished to their "twilight"?  Because, says Ezra, "the Obama administration succeeded at neutralizing every single industry."  If, by "neutralizing," Ezra means "bribing and accommodating them to such an extreme degree that they ended up affirmatively supporting a bill that lavishes them with massive benefits," then he's absolutely right. 

What's amazing about it?

Here.

I'm going to try to plant some "Three Sisters" -- a companion planting of beans, squash, and corn -- this year. I don't have full sun, though.

Angry Bear lays out the case.

Here's a thread where people can post on the historically historic shit sausage making that's going on today. Apparently, you can watch it all on the teebee!

E.J. Dionne: Why Democrats Are Fighting for a Republican Health Plan. Dionne concludes:

You could argue that Democrats have learned from Republicans. Some might say that Democrats have been less than true to their principles.

But there is a simpler conclusion: Democrats, including President Obama, are so anxious to get everyone health insurance that they are more than willing to try a market-based system and hope it works. It’s a shame the Republicans can no longer take “yes” for an answer.

But there's an even simpler solution: Big Money owns both legacy parties.

... the odds for passing a "historic" bill -- by which I mean a bill that all the serious folks, including career "progressives" label "historic" -- are very good indeed.

Here's a musical antidote:

... well, you know what it turned to, right?

No, really.

I'm wondering whether to plant my tomatoes in the same patch, or plant them somewhere else.

Bloomberg:

The Federal Reserve Board must disclose documents identifying financial firms that might have collapsed without the largest U.S. government bailout ever, a federal appeals court said.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled today that the Fed must release records of the unprecedented $2 trillion U.S. loan program launched primarily after the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. The ruling upholds a decision of a lower-court judge, who in August ordered that the information be released.

I'm going to cut down the evil Norway maple in front of the house to (a) save the main waste pipe from the evil roots, (b) get more light on the garden, (c) prevent the evil TMV-infected leaves from dropping on the garden, (d) keep the evil branches away from the roof, (e) avoid the expense of periodically cutting the branches back from a power line, and above all (f) to chop it up and burn it as firewoodtwo winters from now, when the logs will have dried.

But to chop the wood -- which will also be good for my muscles and heart -- I'll need an axe. Readers, suggestions?

Obama's good war.

[UPDATE Another career "progressive" joins the fun! -- lambert]

I just got some spam from one "Michael Bennett" at FDL, with a subject line so crudely deceptive that it could only have been written in a shop somewhere on K Street, albeit a second-rate one. The subject line:

BREAKING: Public option back in play

A little deconstruction:

1. "BREAKING" is crudely deceptive; it's general practice in the blogosphere to reserve "BREAKING" for actual news. Of course, "Bennett" might argue that the beginning of yet another useless "progressive" whip campaign is itself news, but that's way too meta for me.

2. "back in play" is crudely deceptive; combined with "BREAKING," it implies that somebody other than "Michael Bennett" pressing the Submit button on his bulkmailer regards the so-called "public option" as being in play, which of course is not the case.

HCR: High Corporate Returns.

Izvestia:

After a Bitter Campaign, Forging an Alliance
On a snowy Thursday shortly before her weekly meeting with President Obama last month, Hillary Rodham Clinton got a distressing phone call: her husband, Bill Clinton, was in a hospital with chest pains and needed an urgent heart procedure.

Mrs. Clinton kept her appointment with Mr. Obama in the Oval Office, taking her customary seat on the yellow sofa as the two talked about her coming trip to the Persian Gulf, where she planned to turn up the heat on Iran over its nuclear program.

“No one had any idea” that she might have had a personal worry, said a senior White House official who was present. Afterward, Mrs. Clinton raced for a shuttle flight to New York to see her husband. ...

“We’ve developed, I think, a very good rapport, really positive back and forth about everything you can imagine,” Mrs. Clinton said in a recent interview in her wood-paneled State Department office. “And we’ve had some interesting and even unusual experiences along the way.”

The Oval Office episode reminds me of what James Carville --- God rest his soul -- once said:

Intellectually dishonest career "progressives" -- sorry for the redundancy -- have been pushing the talking point that Obama's big shit sausage solved the pre-existing conditions problem in posts and on various comment threads. Well, sure, it does. Just not for adults. Susie has the predictably disgusting details:

Showing a clear bias toward bodied persons. The site slogan:

Tits on a bull. As usual.

It was 3.14.

Especially when it's used to describe performance on transparency that's worse than the Bush administration's:

The agencies cited exemptions at least 466,872 times in budget year 2009, compared with 312,683 times the previous year, the review found. Over the same period, the number of information requests declined by about 11 percent, from 493,610 requests in fiscal 2008 to 444,924 in 2009.

The administration has stalled even over records about its own efforts to be more transparent. The AP is still waiting—after nearly three months—for records it requested about the White House's "Open Government Directive," rules it issued in December directing every agency to take immediate, specific steps to open their operations up to the public.

The White House on Tuesday described the directive as "historic," but the Office of Management and Budget still has not responded to AP's request under the Freedom of Information Act to review internal e-mails and other documents related to that effort.

It would also be interesting to know why the number of information requests declined:

The only question with the guy isn't if he's going to fold, but when (and will it be a crane, or a fish, or a frog?

Heh.