Superficially about the non-existent “feud” between Paul Krugman and Obama, Lambert deftly transitions to a deeper examination of the current political landscape, the rise of the Conservative Movement, and a strategy for defeating it and instituting a real Progressive agenda. Here’s a hint, we aren’t going to get anywhere by being “concilitory”:

Obama presents himself as a change agent, but weakens the forces that bring about change. You can’t win a mandate with a content-free platform, and conflict-free is content-free. And if there’s no mandate for change, then there’s no change.

This is exactly right. We have huge problems to deal with in this country, from Iraq to health care to global warming and resource depletion. The entrenched interests that got us into the current mess we find ourselves are not going to voluntarily start working against their own interests to tackle these problems. Change will only happen if it is forced. That means Progressives need to forcefully counter Conservative Movement rhetoric and ideas while engaging in, gasp, partisan politics to force through legislation.

The next President needs to be willing to brawl with the Republican party and the corporate interests they represent in order to get any meaningful changes instituted. Trying to be “bipartisan” at this point just works to the advantage of the Conservative Movement and results in weak, hollow “victories” like the pathetic energy bill just recently passed.

I am not doing this essay justice. It is among the best political essays I’ve read all year and truly a must read.

From the article:

The document (with a title printed in a pale gray suitable for something nonexistent) was intended as a template for what the United Nations hopes will, by Friday night, be a two-year road map for talks leading to a meaningful update to the faltering 1992 climate treaty, the Framework Convention on Climate Change.

But late Tuesday, Bali time, the United States bluntly refused to consider language — even in the non-binding preamble — that included any specific numbers for how much overall emissions from wealthy countries would need to be cut to have a chance of avoiding the worst climate dangers.

For over seven years now, the United States has actively undermined any chance for our civilization to collectively respond to the dire threats posed by global warming. And, despite soothing words from the administration about how they take climate change seriously, their actions demonstrate that they still have not joined the rest of us in the “reality-based community”.

I know my family and friends are getting tired of me saying this, but we are facing multiple, simultaneous, deadly threats to our civilization and species. If global emissions are not brought down quickly and drastically, global warming will continue to accelerate with potentially catastrophic consequences.

At the same time, we are facing the imminent peaking of world oil and natural gas production. But, as these fossil fuels dwindle, the only readily available, relatively abundant substitute will be coal. But, burning coal is a primary cause of global warming and we would only make it worse by going that route. And, I haven’t even mentioned the financial collapse that seems to be occurring in the U.S. right now which might undercut our ability to raise capital and make it nearly impossible to marshall the resources necessary to deal with these problems.

My point is that our problems are tremendous. It may even be too late to fix them or even substantially mitigate their consequences thanks to all the time we have wasted for decades, but especially during this last decade. However, it is worth trying to avoid catastrophe and the rest of the world seems to be forming a unified front to tackle these issues, while the U.S. steadfastly refuses to cooperate.

It looks like we don’t have any chance of seeing a change in U.S. policy until the next administration comes into office. I’m very worried that by the time our national priorities change, it will be too little, too late.

Here are my results:

Okay, I’m being a bit facetious. I actually applaud the effort to leverage technology to connect people with a political system that seems designed to grind the optimism right out of us on a daily basis. I, too, am interested in how technology can help us tackle the myriad problems we face as a democractic society. I just hope people don’t take these quizes too seriously. They are a nice shorthand method of finding candidates who share your general point of view, but they should only be used as a starting point for further investigation, not as the definitive answer of who to vote for.

The Glassbooth site helps in this regard by offering more than just another political quiz. At the end of the quiz, you are presented with “find out why” links for each of the issues that you rated in the beginning. On these pages, you find cited quotes from the top candidate that provide evidence for why he was rated as he was on your quiz.

The Glassbooth Blog is also worth a look as it provides insight into the how and why of the site. The creators are certainly not political flacks. There was a lot of good research and many late nights devoted to creating a tool that hopes to help people cut through the horse race nonesense and general muck of much political reporting to the heart of the matter, what do these candidates stand for? It is a noble experiment and I hope they succeed. In the future, it seems that the creators will be offering some more direct access to the trove of data they gathered that make up the backend of the quiz software. Once that data is available, I think the site will become much more useful. For now, a person who is very busy and doesn’t have a lot of time to research candidates themselves can find an effective shortcut in this site.

However, while voting and voting wisely is vitally important, real democracy demands much more of us. While sites like Glassbooth are very useful, they do not address the urgent need we have in this country for people to take direct action beyond the voting booth. Organizations and sites like MoveOn.org and Step It Up help connect people together in direct action movements trying to address grave threats to our society that go well beyond who sits in the big chair in the Oval Office.

So, after you have figured out which candidate to vote for at Glassbooth, I hope you’ll take some time to explore the variety of ways you can get involved in more direct action to make a real difference in the world, whether or not it is a Presidential election season.

Are you a complete socialist or only a little b it [sic] socialist?

I gather from this editorial that you’re in favor of taking my hard-earned money in taxation and distribute it to others who didn’t work for it. Get out of college and into the real world, Pointdexter, and you’ll change that tune real quick.

Wow… you have no idea what you are talking about. Paul is about freedom, limited federal government and letting the states local governments decide what best for that state. Get your facts straight before reporting. People need to take some personal responsibility. If New Orleans would have had keep their own money rather than paying tax to the feds… then they would have been able to protect themselves.

You get the drift.  And, these were just from the first ten or so comments.  

Some of these commentors remind me of those Chick Tracts where the message is always the same, accept their “truth” or you are a “sinner” and will go to hell.  In this case, you are branded a “socialist” and are exiled from further political discourse because, of course, a “socialist” cannot hold a rational point of view.  It is an easy way to shutdown conversation without having to defend your position.

With any overly enthusiastic group trying to push a particlar agenda, the good ideas can be drowned out by the cacophony of the more extreme members.  I see a bit of that happening with Ron Paul supporters.  I also think many Paul supporters have a real blindspot for how some of Paul’s positions could be considered very unpalatable to many perfectly rational people.  

Beyond all that, I just fail to see how acting like a jackass in a comment thread on a opposition opinion piece is going to win over many converts to your cause.

I have to disagree with the Professor on one point, though.  He says that if we focus more on the economic issues surrounding the health care system from the employer perspective, it could potentially lead to a shifting of the battle field and get business on the side of major reform.  While, I agree that the economic argument is important, I think it has been well discussed in debates about health care in the past, while the moral issue of health care as a right does not often get a lot of attention.  While Professor Oberlander is right to suggest that moral outrage only gets you so far, I think it is an essential component of any real reform strategy and it is that very outrage that is missing from the mainstream debates about this issue.

However, I don’t want to give the wrong impression about my opinion of the interview.  It was fantastic and Professor Oberlander did an excellent job explaining the history of our current system and fairly discussed the limitations and trade-offs of single-payer systems.  I especially liked his comment about how the U.S. does ration care, just as single-payer countries do,  but in the U.S. the 40 million people with no insurance have care rationed to a far greater degree than the universally covered people in the rest of the developed world.

It was a great discussion and I suggest that anyone interested in this topic download the podcast today.  It is one of the better examinations of the health care debate that I have heard.

SiCKO is a film that will make you very, very angry if you are unfamiliar with the darker side of the health care system in this country. For me, it was a captivating enumeration of information that I already knew, but had never seen so eloquently examined. Refreshingly absent most of the usual Moore shtick (Yes, yes, there is that Cuba thing, I said “most”), the film’s real heart revolves around examining a simple question, “Why?”

Why do we allow the kind of health care horror stories, detailed in SiCKO, to occur in the richest nation on Earth? Why do we spend so much more of our GDP on health care than the rest of the developed world and have so little to show for it? Why do we allow our political system to be hijacked by the health care lobby? The history of the situation we find ourselves in may be complex, but Moore provides a simple solution to our dilemma, a single-payer system, like in France!

When I talk to people about the film and as I have done for years, bring up examples of single-payer systems working in other nations, including our neighbor to the North, they are inevitably overcome with a pained expression and go into a litany of problems these countries allegedly have with their systems, from wait times for elective procedures, to lower doctor pay, and always there is the background assumption that government can do no right and we are better off taking our chances with the current system than daring to put our medical fate into the hands of a government bureaucracy (as opposed to the private, unaccountable bureaucracy we have now). But, I think these critiques really miss a fundamental point of difference between America and these other countries.

Moore may glaze over the problems these single-payer systems have (and they do have many), but that is in service to a greater goal. He is attempting to re-frame the health care debate in this country to that of a moral choice. The people of Canada, the UK, France, and the rest of the developed world chose to create health care systems, which far from perfect, at least treat health care as a right and not merely the privilege of the rich.

What Moore accomplishes in his film is a good slap in the face of the American people. After viewing the film, it is impossible to deny that our health care system is broken. But, I think in order to fix it, we must begin to admit that our current situation is not just the result of bad luck or the nefarious acts of an evil Nixon-led cabal (as suggested in the film). We supposedly live in a democracy and that means, we need to take responsibility for the situation we are in.

We listened to the corporate shills who said a universal health care system would be the end of freedom and we elected representatives who were more interested in lining their campaign coffers with health care industry donations than working in the best interests of their constituents. We, the people, let things get this bad, and it is time we fix our mistake.

The upcoming election, still so far off, is our best chance since the early nineties to change the frame of the health care debate in this country and maybe even achieve some real progress. What to do about health care is more than an economic question or even an ideological one. This is a moral question, one that is long overdue a healthy, open, examination.

I have been thinking for a long time now, myself, that progress is never going to be made on any of the issues I am concerned about like IP, energy, global warming, etc. until the fundamental problem described quite thoroughly in The Assault on Reason, is addressed. I, too, am looking for a way to focus my energies and skills in addressing the problem, but haven’t quite figured out what to do yet. I’m glad Lessig is joining the fight. He was and continues to be an inspiration to me and a major influencer of my views on IP issues and I have no doubt that he will continue to be so on these new issues.