Obama was elected with the help of many of the same triangulating, field-conceding, New Democratic forces that elected Clinton. So to find him friendly with Big Pharma from the get go is not all that surprising. And here he is, trying to placate both the progressive base that elected him and the lobbies that helped fund him and staff his administration, becalmed in the middle of the same pond that Clinton was. The result is that he has promised everything to everyone, when it was long ago time for him to say,

Hell yes, a sane and sustainable health care system is going to cost money; we may need to raise taxes. Your kids and grandkids will thank us for it.

Hell yes, this will impact the private insurance industry--and it should; they're complicit in the current crisis. The bottom line for America is not the bottom line for the health insurance companies.

Hell yes, this will harm the bottom line of wealthiest doctors and big health care corporations that run most of the hospitals and HMOs--but it will make working conditions for the medical profession better, over time.

Hell yes, we are giving up any pretense of bipartisanship--the Republican party removed itself from honest debate, so to do otherwise would be an insult to the American electorate.

Can the president divorce himself from the Clinton-derived conventional wisdom at this late date? We'll see, and soon.

The progressive left is the Democratic Party's religious right...a dark vision. And a hell of a legacy for Obama to leave behind him.

First, anyone who uses "Pelosis" as shorthand for "worst imaginable outcome, from my (libertarian?) perspective" is a sloppy thinker. If Nancy Pelosi is the most emblematic liberal we have, we're in trouble and have a deficit of role models on the center-left.

Recent events have shown that it's far easier to drum up really ugly, unthinking, fear-driven mass insanity in today's wired, socially fragmented America than it was in the more sedate world of 1929-41. Sure, there were Townsend, Coughlin, Smith, Huey P. Long, lynch mobs and wars between unions and strikebreaking thugs, but where race, labor issues, and economic strife could work up relatively isolated populations into angry, violent frenzies, today the same emotions (part of our national DNA just as surely as any more positive traits) can be switched on and used simultaneously from coast to coast with a crook of Roger Ailes' finger to block anything approaching rational discussion or civil debate.

The same rationale explains the disappointing Obama strategy on health care. To fix health care, we have to confront how poorly our current system actually does its job--how bad we look compared to much "lesser" countries when it comes to infant mortality, access to primary care, child healthcare, end of life care, etc. etc. etc. To confront these truths might just destroy some of the core illusions about our own superiority that keep America limping along.

Obama's cautious centrism in virtually every area probably stems from his awareness of just how volatile America is right now. We take a relatively civil society for granted (except in invisible places like the inner city), but how solid is the fabric of our society really? Just keeping our crappy financial system semi-functional may be the best outcome Obama could foresee, as much as any sane, compassionate person should wish to junk the entire thing and start over.

I don't like it, nor do I agree with it, but I think I understand the president's rationale for basically continuing the Bush/Bernanke doctrine with respect to the banks and financial sector.

In Japanese, with French subtitles, and got about 40% of the dialogue. What that left me with was the amazing visuals. I have had recurring dreams about the scene where the Double steps Godzilla-like over a miniaturized Japanese landscape for years. I've subsequently seen the film twice, with English subtitles, but this is a film where the characters' body language, blocking, and faces collaborate with amazing visuals to tell virtually the entire story. Who in the West has ever attempted something like this? Into my Netflix queue this goes.

How does one truly distribute the centers of information and power, if (with all the constitutional and technological tools at our disposal) we get such a concentration of power and influence as would make the British of the pre-Reform Bill era blush? And in many, or all, of the state capitals throughout this allegedly decentralized democracy, the same story is replicated in miniature? How many of our states and congressional districts are, in effect, rotten boroughs, with vast tracts of disenfranchised voters? In my own state, white Republicans are able to control the mechanism of government although they remain in the minority, since white and black Democrats seldom unite. Racial paranoia, resentment, and fear are used to keep the minority in power. The sons of the entrenched minority alternate between business and politics, while our severely sub-par public education system keeps new leaders from arising. Thank goodness we've moved beyond that Affirmative Action nonsense, as you point out, Glenn.

I'll leave you four here to get acquainted. I have to see if the guacamole is running low.

and could no doubt have brought just as much relevance to the event. Those black pre-professionals? When they're accepted by law schools at Yale, Harvard, U. of Virginia, etc. it won't be because of anything the GOP did, unless you go waaaay back to 1865 or so.

The artist was Jose Maria Sert. His mural replaced Rivera's.

And, Glennie lad? Neither of them was Italian.