well, Obama is trying to serve four: the corporations (to shift the cost of healthcare away from American business), the voters (because he will need them in 2012), the punditocracy (because they can blather away distracting and scaring the populace), and the healthcare industry (which is a huge source of campaign funds, or, conversely, negative advetising). Oh, and the schmucks in Congress, can't forget about those placeholding time-servers.

The result? A fiasco in the making. A poor bill, much like the hash that was the Stimulous Package, with no coherence and little chance of accomplishing anything substantive. And like the bailouts, it will provide money for the "players" (hospitals, insurance companies, drug companies, HMOs) but no significant regulation or reform.

Our President is probably not a bad man, but he cannot figure where his bread is buttered and who he wishes to serve in his time in the Oval Office. Like Clinton, he wants to please everyone and look clever doing it. Obama will likely wind up pleasing almost nobody.

Because when I read "commonsense" and others like him I don't understand the dynamics. Perhaps they do not understand that people like Roosevelt, Johnson, and Reagan got much of their agenda out there, and a significant part of it passed, in their first six months or so in office. Obama has now passed month number eight with a disjointed stimulus bill and a huge banking/insurance bailout under his belt, and stunningly little else. The first act I can live with, the second was a farce. He has failed to move against the Bush criminals (in fact he's shielded them and adopted much of thier secrecy and contempt for civil liberties), to enact health care reform, or re-regulate the financial sector. He is up to his eyeballs in Afghanistan and the North West Frontier of Pakistan, and has set no credible timetable for withdrawl from Iraq.

Why should I expect anything much from this point forward? How will he regain the momentum that has been lost since January 20? I'm not trying to attack thee man, just ask some legitimate questions.

The best thing about capitalism is its ability to supply stuff to the marketplace, often in huge quantities. The problem is almost always on the demand side, as capitalists want someone else to pay the high wages so that they can sell the stuff they make, extract, or import. Yet capitalist stooges like this author and so many others always want to blame the workers or the poor, when in fact what is almost always needed under capitalism is growing income and prosperity so that excess production can be absorbed and profits grow consistently (which is why the capitalist system has tried to extend endless credit in order to keep purchasing power up).

Why do these dimwits not get this?

A soldier's honor and the respect he (or occasionally she) was granted by society never legitimately derived from his willingness to kill. It came from his willingness to die for his community. That is why the soldier was (and should be)honored. When the chance of being killed approaches zero (as it quite literally has for the people who sit in air conditioned bunkers and direct drones to fire missiles at targets--be they al Qaeda assholes or innocent wedding attendees)are they soldiers any more, or have they crossed a line and become merely killers? And if they are killers, and the war they fight is not just (can anyone say "Iraq"--Afghanistan is at least debateable) are they then simply murderers?

I think so.

The American race for killing at a distance, for fire and forget weaponry, is erroding the status of the soldier and turning them into killers. This is a bad thing, but we live in a society that wants all the attendant deference and respect shown the military while removing the reasons why these people should be shown that respect and deference. It's a hidden but profound problem.

I'm very interested to understand what people mean when they say that Glenn Greenwald is "not a journalist." Why not, and more importantly, if he brings me news and opinions I would not otherwise be exposed to, why should I care?

How about we use the word I learned as a boy 35 years ago--reporter. Is Glenn a reporter? Does he report on what is going on in America and around the world? Does he use facts that can be verified? Does he cite his sources? Is this all common knowledge or is he "bringing us news"?

Greenwald's interpretations and assessments may or may not be on the mark from day to day, but the idea that he does not report news here is not credible.

This echo-chamber crap is nuts. Maybe it's because I'm an historian in a department with no other military historians, but I work alone, research alone, and am lucky if I run into one of my colleagues in the field more than once a year. We do not spend all our time telling each other what "not to miss" or what is "important" on the internet. We do our work, publish or present it, and hope it's good and resonates.

What I see with Klien and this whole Journolist thing is a fear of standing out and a fear of being confronted by one's peers. The need for validation is way too high. It's like something out of the 1950s critiques of the "outer-directed" individual, or "organization man", who has no internal anchor or compass and fears the disapporval of the group like death itself. Is this what Beltway journalism has come down to?

Are others getting this vibe also?