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When we lost on health care in 1994, and then lost Congress in the elections because our base was so discouraged that they didn’t turn out, it made Clinton and Democrats in general hyper-cautious about trying to do anything big or bold the rest of his Presidency. If we had won on health care, we would have kept Congress, and we would have emboldened Democrats to try other big things. It is one of the most basic laws in politics: victory makes you stronger, and defeat makes you weaker. You can fault Obama for some of his specific policy proposals, and for being too ready to compromise on some things, but one thing he has been willing to do is try to do big things, and if health care goes down, the attempt to do big things will probably will stop- climate change probably is given up on as too hard, financial reform gets weaker, efforts to create more jobs probably is given up on, immigration reform very likely gets shelved. If a health care bill is passed, as Bob argues, it will create the possibility of doing other big things.
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Social Security: […] when it was first passed, it was far weaker than today, and had many flaws progressives of today would have been rightfully upset about, but that it was a platform future progressives could build on. I think that’s how we have to view this health care bill, the climate change bill, and at least some other legislation coming down the pike.

Also, I’ll add that if we step back and look at it from a broader perspective, the health care bill passed in the House and the bill about to go under debate in the Senate really aren’t as bad as they quite easily could have been.

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SPIN METER: Did Obama grovel?

Nov 17, 6:48 AM (ET)

By FOSTER KLUG

WASHINGTON (AP) - Some conservative commentators seized on President Barack Obama’s deep bow to Japan’s Emperor Akihito over the weekend, accusing the U.S. commander in chief of groveling before a foreign leader.

So did he?

Short answer: no. Following normal diplomatic protocol isn’t groveling.

Former President Richard Nixon, a Republican, can be seen in a Life magazine photo from 1971 bowing to Akihito’s father, Emperor Hirohito, who ruled when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941.
[…]
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters Monday that the bow was “a sign of respect to the emperor.”

In an online State Department posting from 2007 titled “Protocol for the Modern Diplomat,” envoys are advised to be aware of greeting rituals such as kisses, handshakes or bows and to follow a country’s tradition. “Failure to abide with tradition may be interpreted as rudeness or a lack of respect for colleagues,” it says. It’s not clear whether the guidelines apply to the president.

John Park, a senior researcher at the U.S. Institute of Peace think tank, said it is a respectful tradition for visitors to bow to the emperor in a formal setting.

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I never blog about these things, but Tiffany and I just went to see this movie tonight at a free advance screening (it should be opening in limited release soon it is in limited release now). Boy, was it funny– the entire audience was pretty much laughing the whole time. Go check it out if you’re into that sort of thing.

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Dammmmn!

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A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment for this article.

“No intelligence organization worth the name would ever entertain these kind of allegations,” said Paul Gimigliano, the spokesman.

Note that he didn’t say “No, there is no truth to this,” he said “I am not even going to comment on this,” which is exactly what they say when they know they probably can’t deny it flat out.

Some commentators are saying that Afghanistan is going to end up Obama’s Vietnam. This is a long stretch and the parallels aren’t there, period. It’s hyperbole.

That said, there are a lot of similarities between what’s happened in Afghanistan and the way things are leaning there, with US involvement in certain Latin American countries though… The original circumstances (robust presence of NATO and various other non-NATO countries as part of the coalition, plus the justification of 9/11) would seem to mitigate those comparisons at least at first, but even with that original broad-based coalition (the vast majority of which is no longer there), it’s turned into a situation where the net effect of our presence is propping up a narco-infiltrated corrupt regime with a thinly-veiled cloak of Democracy.

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