Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Will Genachowski Help Obama Find A Heart, Brain and Courage To Face Glenn Beck and His Army of Flying Monkeys Flinging Poo?

There are several rather astounding things about the current campaign of Glenn Beck against various Administration appointees. Most astounding, however, has been the Obama Administration reaction to date: quick capitulation in the face of relatively small pressure. Indeed, one of the reasons there was so little initial defense of Van Jones in progressive circles was because most of us were unaware of the attack until the Van Jone’s “resignation.” As compared to previous campaigns in the Clinton years or Bush years to oust various officials, pressure to fire Van Jones had not even approached noticeable, let alone “scary.” Indeed, I am sufficiently cynical wrt the DLC/Rahm Emmanuel faction of the Ds that I cannot help but wonder if the Beck-led anti-Jones campaign was merely a convenient excuse for pushing out a smart and effective progressive.

But whatever the reason, the Van Jones firing proved a major strategic blunder. It infuriated the Netroots and younger civil rights constituencies, who felt betrayed, and it emboldened Beck and his following to seek new “kills.” It also demonstrated the truth of Feld’s Rule of Political Power: “Your political power is directly related to your perceived ability to cause pain.” Within a week, Beck was claiming another kill in the form of Yosi Seargant at National Endowment for the Arts, prompting talk of an unstoppable McCarthy-esque crusade (or campaign of freedom, depending on your political perspective).

Among the latest targets of Beck and his followers is Mark Lloyd. I’ve known Mark for some years and consider him friend, so I am hardly the most impartial of defenders here. Besides, my Public Knowledge colleague Art Brodsky and others have written strong personal defenses of Mark and debunked the charges against him as well or better than I could. Nor is my purpose here merely to fulfill my Biblical obligation not to suffer “a tale bearer among thy people, nor stand by the blood of thy neighbor” (Lev. 19:16) by re-iterating the defense of Mark Lloyd.

Rather, I note this is a splendid opportunity for Genachowski to save Obama’s tuchus by showing that you do much better standing up for your own people than caving (one of the few lessons Obama could stand to learn from Bush). Whether the Van Jones “resignation” came from heartless political infighting from the DLC faction, brainless failure to consider the natural consequences, or simply lack of political courage, Genachowski has the opportunity to give the Administration a heart and a brain and — what it appears to need most these days — courage. Because, as the far too lengthy an wonky analysis below shows, this ain’t the 1990s anymore, and the best overall political strategy is to take a page from the Bush Administration and stand firmly with the base by telling these guys to bugger off.

More below . . . .

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My Thoughts Exactly:
Obama's plan: Another corporate bailout?

Representative Kucinich makes good points.

We need to keep standing behind progressives to make sure that the bill reported out includes real reform, not a mere windfall for the insurers and drug companies. As Rep Kucinich says, it’s not yet time to say he’ll vote “no” on the final bill. But he’s not very optimistic.

I do take to heart the advice of my Wetmachine colleague Harold Feld, who constantly reminds us that whining and hand-wringing don’t help. What really matters is getting involved and supporting the people who are doing the right things. As soon as I post this I’m going to call Rep. Delahunt’s office. He’s signed the Progressives letter to President Obama saying he won’t vote for a bill that doesn’t have the American Option (AKA “public option”), and in general I’m very happy with his voting recordd. But his name doesn’t appear on the Progressive Caucus letterhead, so I’m not sure if he’s in danger of “backslidin’”. Now’s the time to dig in, sez I.

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Comcast Channel Shifts — Looking for info.

I’m getting email about Comcast migrating MSNBC and CNN out of its expanded tier to a higher priced tier while keeping Fox News on expanded tier in a number of markets. If this is actually going on, I’m mightily curious.

Such shifts do not happen casually. They are generally the product of fairly intense negotiations among cable operators and programmers. They also require advance notice to viewers. This makes me extremely reluctant to impute a political motive here. If NBC and Time Warner (the owners of MSNBC and CNN respectively) were being screwed against their will over a political agenda, I would have expected to hear it in DC. What mainstream coverage there is of this suggests it is part of Comcast’s general digital upgrade. So we should expect to see all remaining channels migrated off to the higher priced tier eventually. While that will constitute a significant rate increase, it will put everyone back on equal footing. Besides, as the DC Circuit instructed us all last month, cable operators have no market power and cannot influence the programming market, whatever your personal experience to the contrary may be.

So if anyone has more info on this and would like to either comment below or talk to me, I’d love to hear about it.

I suppose I should add that unless Comcast failed to give proper notice to subscribers before changing their channel line up, their is nothing the FCC can do about it, so don’t bother complaining.

Stay tuned . . .

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Robert Reich Makes Best Public Option Video I've Seen To Date.

I’ve been a Robert Reich fan for some time, and was terribly disappointed that he did not end up in the Obama Administration. Here, he gives the best 3 minutes on what the public plan is and how to get it passed I’ve yet seen.

Of course, in pointing out that good policy doesn’t just happen and that it needs work, he is singing from a hymn book I’ve been using myself for some time now.

Stay tuned . . . .

Inventing the Future:
Google My House

A little experiment. I’m trying — again — to sell my house(1). In looking to buy or rent a house now, I always google the address to see what I can find. So now my wife is blogging about her experiences in having it professionally staged, which gives us a chance to talk about all the neat features that are hard to bring out in a walk-through. Hopefully, someone interested in the house will search for more info, and they’ll find the info we provide.


1. The folks who were going to buy it and were renting it out until then never got theirs sold.

Inventing the Future:
Discrimination Fades? Who Do You Want to Be Today?

The virtual world is fertile ground for exploration of social and identity issues. Like the crucible of competitive sports controversies, synthetic worlds let us burn away irrelevancies to reach abstract truths about, e.g., gender and sexuality. The computer-as-laboratory lets you control the environment and change one variable at a time, and every possible interaction and gesture can be recorded for examination.

Social worlds are the most numerous and have the most users, and so provide the most opportunity for study. Although the examples are still from social worlds, this article is the first I’ve seen that addresses avatar gender in the workplace. My take-away is, “On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog of the wrong gender.” Men can be women if it helps a sale. Women can be men if it helps a negotiation. Otherwise, it’s just not a big deal.

I suspect, though, that we can do even better. I think we’ll see a Village People effect in which we will become both more aware and more comfortable with differences that are now still scary to many people.
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My Thoughts Exactly:
Hey Verizon: You hijack my url, I hijack your customer support

If you get Internet from Verizon (as I do) you’ve probably mistyped an URL from time to time and been redirected by Verizon to their “did you mean” spamo site. If you’re like me, this has probably pissed you off.

Well, Dennis Jerz is like me, and over on his Jerz’s Literacy Weblog he’s written an amusing account of how he got rid of the Verizon intruder, and cost Verizon a few dollars for so doing, just to make things fair.

The blog is generally interesting on other topics as well. Check it out.

My Thoughts Exactly:
Hanging out on Martha’s Vineyard with Barack & Michelle

As all six of my regular readers know, I live on Martha’s Vineyard, where, among other things, I’m a volunteer firefighter. So today, on facebook, I put up a tweet about the Tisbury Firefighter’s Association Dinner last night.

Almost immediately I got a private message from my pen pal the Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam, who distilled the hard-won wisdom of his decades in the journalistic trenches into two pithy sentences:

Be posting on Obama, bro!

that’s what the people want

Well that made me laugh. What the hell do I have to say about Obama? That my wife saw three helicopters flying over our house on the day the “First Family” arrived? That I know where Blue Heron Farm is, where Nancy’s is? Other than that I got nuttin, Honey, I wrote back to Mr. Beam. I suggested that maybe I should go interview Cindy Sheehan instead. But Beam was having none of it.

let me rpt: all obama, all the time.

Well, it’s not every day that a distinguished professional curmudgeon like Alex Beam swoops into my life to give me free wisdom bits, and upon reflection I realized that Beam was right: since I have been hanging out with Barack & Michelle I do have a story to tell, and The People not only want to hear it, The People have a Right to hear it. They are, after all, The People.

And so, below the fold, the true story of my recent time with Mr. & Mrs. President on the little bit of Paradise that I call home: Martha’s Vineyard.


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