Online Blogintegrity

You're a Big Help, Josh.

Josh Marshall inadvertently makes the argument that progressives should kill healthcare reform.

Considering how down to the wire this is, is it really worth holding up everything else contained in the bill when the point of contention, the public option, is as measly as it is?

Simple answer: Yes.

Or let's put it this way, if the public option is that "measly", then the bill is not worth passing.

I have fought for this bill. I have given money and written emails and made phone calls to my worthless elected representatives. I even made a movie in support of it. But if the public option is so weak that it's not worth putting in the bill, then the bill is not worth passing. There are no other mechanisms in the bill for cost control,  all the other benefits and regulations in this bill are vulnerable to capture in the most easily imaginable way. Mandating that everyone buy insurance without offering them a public option means that the bill will become even more of an obscene giveaway to big insurance then it is now.

Further, if progressives fail on this, it gives democratic leaders a sure fire way to kill any hope progressives have of enacting their policies. They can just just water down every bill for which we advocate until it's toothless, and then use that fact to make sure nothing is passed, and bloggers like Marshall will sell it as the reasonable thing to do.

Big help there, Josh. Sure you don't want to stick to journalism, and leave the movement strategy to someone else?

Put Your Money Where Your Meow Is

The wonderful and dedicated blogueros from First-Draft.com are having their annual fundraiser. Here at OBI, we have been proud to consider the First-Drafters our compañeros for years. Recently they've added a few new voices to the stable, and the result is a readable, linkable, blogfiesta.

Come for the ferret blogging, stay for one of the rants (or, as I like to think of them, textual eviscerations) from the keyboard of the incisive, witty and multiply envoweled Athenae.

First-Draft.com needs your hard-earned dolares to keep the ferrets in chow, so they'll have the energy to run that treadmill and keep the servers humming. Therefore, I am asking everyone to pop over there and put something in the kitty make a donation.

Think of it this way, where else would you send the money that you aren't going to give NPR?