Technical Difficulties

I’m having computer issues and am having to work on an old s-l-o-w computer that I keep for emergencies. I hate slow computers.

This post by Greg Sargent is the best thing I’ve read today. He points to a bobblehead calling for a third party to take the middle ground between the Dems and Republicans … but this mythical third party looks a whole lot like the Democratic party we have already.

Matt Yglesias weighs in on the same issue, quoting an article by Matt Miller. Here is Miller

Or take health care. Republicans say the answer is to repeal President Obama’s reforms — but they won’t offer plans to insure more than 3 million of the 50 million Americans who lack coverage. Yet Democrats want to micromanage providers, protect the trial lawyers who bankroll their campaigns, and fully insulate people from the costs of their own care, assuring that there’s no consumer brake on runaway costs. Again, Democrats and Republicans can’t solve the problem.

Matt:

Democrats wrote and passed a major health care bill back in 2010. It they wanted to “fully insulate people from the costs of their own care” that would have been a good opportunity to do this. But they didn’t. I’m not sure how people with centrist views expect to see the political system respond to them if they fail to acknowledge it when their views are adopted. There obviously are important ideological litmus tests in American politics, of which the absolute prohibition on Republicans raising taxes strikes me as the most consequential, but it’s hard to talk about them if you won’t identify them precisely.

Scott Lemieux:

Daydream believing about a third party from the left is at least understandable. Indeed, Naderite critiques of the content of policies favored by moderate Democrats are largely correct, although I think they underestimate the structural roadblocks to progressive policy in the United States, and they’re completely wrong about believing that third parties have any chance of solving the problem. But at least the critique is coherent in its own way. The Miller/Friedman dream for moderate Democratic policies to be advanced by a billionaire dreamboat who would be able to get his policies enacted in every last detail through sheer force of centrist wisdom, by contrast, it just pathetic.

Pathetic, and possibly channeling the ghost of David Broder.

NYPD Still Going by Guiliani Time?

I’m reading about the (note: those at work should turn off the volume before clicking) so-called violent protests in lower Manhattan yesterday, but it sounds to me as if the only ones who got violent were the police. And get this video —

A cop uses pepper spray on a woman for no apparent reason and walks away while she screams. The Village Voice has her side of the story.

The thing is, the financial district on a Sunday usually is about as deserted as anyplace ever gets in Manhattan. Even many of the bars and restaurants close on Sunday. So who’s it going to hurt if some people get a bit rowdy? I haven’t seen any accounts that the protesters were damaging property or doing anything menacing.

I also understand the group marched north to Union Square, but on a weekend there’s always a big crowd protesting something at Union Square. It’s traditional.

The thing is, this kind of overreaction will likely give the group a focus it didn’t have before.