Monthly Archives: June 2006

Je m’amuse.

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David Brown writes at the Washington Post that the nation’s hospital emergency rooms are hurting.

Emergency medical care in the United States is on the verge of collapse, with the nation’s declining number of emergency rooms dangerously overcrowded and often unable to provide the expertise needed to treat seriously ill people in a safe and efficient manner.

That’s the grim conclusion of three reports released yesterday by the Institute of Medicine, the product of an extensive two-year look at emergency care.

Long waits for treatment are epidemic, the reports said, with ambulances sometimes idling for hours to unload patients. Once in the ER, patients sometimes wait up to two days to be admitted to a hospital bed

The causes of the crisis are not hard to understand. A law passed in 1986 provides that ERs must at least evaluate and stabilize everyone who seeks help from the ER. However, since 1993 the population has grown, and the percentage of Americans seeking health care from ERs has grown even more, but the capacity of emergency rooms has declined. “In that same period,” writes Brown, “425 emergency departments closed, along with about 700 hospitals and nearly 200,000 beds.”

Brown doesn’t say this, but the number of uninsured Americans using emergency rooms for “non-urgent care” is going up, up, up. The rising number of uninsured Americans results in a rising number of patients with nowhere else to go for medical care. This adds to the stress of emergency room care considerably. And because emergency rooms are supposed to maintain expensive technological gizmos (and staff trained to use the gizmos) to treat catastrophic injuries, heart attacks, strokes, etc., ERs are expensive. Sending the poor to ERs for basic health care is probably the least cost-effective way to provide basic health care, which is a big part of why the United States pays more per capita on health care than any other nation on the planet.

As expensive as emergency room treatment is, patients are dying because they have to wait too long to receive treatment. Brown writes:

The number of deaths caused by a delay in treatment or lack of expertise is especially uncertain, though it may not be small. San Diego established a trauma system in 1984 after autopsies of accident victims who died after reaching the ER suggested that 22 percent of the deaths were preventable, said Eastman, one of the Institute of Medicine committee members.

This is terrible. Yet, I am amused. Why? Because once again, righties conform to my expectations. Last February I wrote in a post called “Obliviousness” —

Try to discuss national health care with a rightie, and the first sentence out of his mouth will be, “You mean like in Canada?” Then he will go off on a tirade about the problems with the Canadian system. (Unless you remind them of the underfunded British system, which is the other good “bad” example of a system with problems.)

Today James Joyner comments on the David Brown article, and what does he do but argue that Canada and Britain have problems, too.

As I wrote in “Obliviousness” and other posts on health care, both Canada and the UK face problems with their single-payer systems. In a nutshell, the British system is scraping by on the cheap (see Figure One; the Brits are spending less than one-third per capita on health care than we are). Canada may have to revise its system to permit citizens to purchase private health insurance if they can afford it.

But as I’ve also written elsewhere, study after study of the world’s health care systems point to France as a nation that seems to be getting it right. Ezra Klein wrote about this last year. Very briefly, France provides health insurance that covers everyone in the nation. But unlike most Canadians, the French may purchase private supplemental insurance, and Ezra says that about 85 percent of the French have done so. Whether they have supplemental insurance or not, French citizens can still choose their own doctors, doctors are not government employees but can establish their practices wherever they choose, and patient-client confidentiality is respected. Further, France has more doctors and more hospital beds per capita than the U.S. does. And France spends about half per capita on health care than we do (see Figure One). You can read more about the French health care system here.

So I’m pleased Mr. Joyner writes that France and also Belgium “do ER care better in the aggregate.” According to WHO,

Belgium has a compulsory health care system based on the social health insurance model. Health care is publicly funded and mainly privately provided. The National Institute for Sickness and Disability Insurance oversees the general organization of the health care system, transferring funds to the not-for-profit and privately managed sickness funds. Patients have free choice of provider, hospital and sickness fund.

A comprehensive benefit package is available to 99% of the population through compulsory health insurance. Reimbursement by individual sickness funds depends on the nature of the service, the legal status of the provider and the status of the insured person. A distinction is made between those receiving standard reimbursement and those benefiting from increased reimbursement (vulnerable social groups).

Substitutive health insurance covers 80% of self-employed people for minor risks. Sickness funds offer the insured people complementary health insurance. Private for-profit insurance remains very small in terms of market volume but has also risen steadily as compulsory insurance coverage has declined.

The federal government regulates and supervises all sectors of the social security system, including health insurance. However, responsibility for almost all preventive care and health promotion has been transferred to the communities and regions.

The United States is the only industrialized nation on the planet that does not have some kind of universal health care provision for its citizens. The thirty-something (or more) nations with universal health care have come up with many different ways of delivering that care, and some nations are doing a better job than others. Single-payer is one way, but not the only way. It appears that the most successful health care systems allow for private insurance to supplement the public system. This can create inequities — people with supplemental insurance may have a wider range of treatment options than those without, for example — but these inequities are minor compared to the inequities that exist in the United States.

Jane Bryant Quinn:

America’s health-care “system” looks more like a lottery every year. The winners: the healthy and well insured, with good corporate coverage or Medicare. When they’re ill, they get—as the cliche goes—”the best health care in the world.” The losers: those who rely on shrinking public insurance, such as Medicaid (nearly 45 million of us), or go uninsured (46 million and rising).

To slip from the winners’ circle into the losers’ ranks is a cultural, emotional and financial shock. You discover a world of patchy, minimal health care that feels almost Third World. The uninsured get less primary or preventive care, find it hard to see cardiologists, surgeons and other specialists (waiting times can run up to a year), receive treatment in emergencies, but are more apt to die from chronic or other illnesses than people who pay. That’s your lot if you lose your corporate job and can’t afford a health policy of your own.

I think a mixed public/private system like France’s would be a lot easier to sell to the American public than a pure single-payer system like Canada’s, or a National Health Service as in Britain. This is true even though economists seem to like the British system for its cost-control measures. I think it’s counterproductive to get hung up on creating a purely egalitarian system. In the real world, people with money will always find a way to get better stuff than people without. The important thing is to be sure everyone has access to decent health care, regardless of income.

One other thing — Mr. Joyner writes,

The fact that someone else pays most of our medical costs takes away any incentive to cut costs, especially when combined with a tort system that further distorts the economics.

Frankly, I don’t buy the idea that giving people insurance takes away incentive to cut costs. Very few people seek health care treatment for the fun of it, and few of us demand tests and treatments that our doctors didn’t suggest first. And who does cost comparisons for, say, open heart surgery? Who gets on the phone to various hospitals and doctors to get quotes for an appendectomy? The insurance companies themselves act as arbiters of cost, often refusing to pay for treatments they deem inappropriate (even if nine out of ten doctors disagree) or putting a cap on what they will pay for some procedures. This results in a system in which clerks, not doctors, decide course of treatment.

As for tort reform — the Right’s panacea for all health care system problems — in spite of the mighty efforts of conservative think tanks to crank out studies “proving” that rising health care costs are mostly the fault of greedy ambulance-chasing lawyers, the actual impact of litigation on overall health care costs is minor. According to a study published in the May 11, 2006, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine — “Claims, Errors, and Compensation Payments in Medical Malpractice Litigation” (not available online to non-subscribers) — only 3 percent of malpractice claims were found to be completely frivolous — involving no verifiable medical injuries. Claims that turned out not to involve errors accounted for 13 to 16 percent of the malpractice system’s total monetary costs, and plaintants rarely receive compensation in these cases. Rightie claims that the courts are flooded with frivolous claims are way overblown.

On the other hand,

The primary myth in the medical malpractice debate that needs to be exposed is the myth regarding the effect of those costs on the health care system. Tort reform proponents have bamboozled the public and many legislators into believing that the cost of medical malpractice lawsuits is a significant factor in driving up the cost of health care. In 2003, the U.S. spent $215 million on liability insurance premiums, and doctors, hospitals and other health professionals paid only $11 billion in medical malpractice insurance premiums. That same year, the U.S. spent more than $1.5 trillion on health care. Something that costs less than 1 percent of total health care costs simply doesn’t have any meaningful effect on access to health care. If we want to address the real problems with the cost of health care, we should start with the evidence, not the myth.

“Tort reform” or health savings accounts or other little tweaks are not going to put a dent in our health care problems. What we need is a total overhaul of the system. But until we can get past the righties screaming about “socialized medicine” or fixating on Canada’s or Britain’s systems as the only models for universal health care on the planet, not much will be done.

Bryan Preston Is a Shameless Liar, Too

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The question at hand is whether there’s something about being a rightie and being a pathological liar that tend to go together. Or being a rightie and pathologically stupid; take your pick. Bryan Preston at Hot Air is shamelessly calling ME a liar and then twists facts to “prove” it.

Bryan pulls a sleight of hand by implying that I claimed the audience at Hillary Clinton’s speech had not booed at all, which is a lie. I said they had not booed the troops in the part of the speech presented in the Michelle/Bryan video clip. And then he quotes a bit of a Time magazine article about the boos at the Clinton speech to “prove” that I lied. But the Time article refers to a different part of the speech, and in fact the Time magazine article corroborates what I wrote about the speech last Tuesday. Behold — this is what I wrote Tuesday:

Earlier, Senator Clinton had also spoken on the subject of Iraq. She is opposed to an open-ended commitment of troops, she said, but does not support setting “a date certain.” This inspired some boos, as well as applause.

Time magazine:

But then she came to Iraq. “I do not think it is a smart strategy,” she said, “either for the President to continue with his open-ended commitment, which I think does not put enough pressure on the new Iraqi government, nor do I think it is smart strategy to set a date certain.” Members of the crowd yelled, “Why not?” There was loud booing. It was almost impossible to hear Clinton as she spoke over the crowd to declare, “I do not agree that that is in the best interest of our troops or our country.” After her speech, as Clinton was walking along the stage and shaking hands with attendees who had rushed to meet her, more than a dozen members of the crowd stood and started chanting “Bring the troops home! Bring the troops home!”

Bryan the Dim claims that Time magazine “has our back”; no, dear, it has MY back. Not yours. If you listen to the UNEDITED version of the speech, it should be obvious even to an idiot — which, I suppose one could argue, might leave out Michelle and Bryan — that the crowd was heckling Clinton, not booing the troops. The heckling isn’t clear in the video, but I was in the hall during the speech, and I heard some people yell “bring them home.” Which is what the Time magazine article says, too, although it refers to the end of the speech.

And anyone who is a regular here knows I am no Hillary fan. I might have heckled her myself except that I was wearing a “press” pass and was trying to look objective.

I wrote more about what went on in the hall in another post titled “Booing Hillary” and followed up a bit more in “Take Back Washington.” Clearly, I never said that the audience didn’t boo during the Clinton speech. I had already written three posts referring to boos during the Clinton speech. What I said was that they were booing Senator Clinton, not the troops.

Bryan also makes a Big Bleeping Deal about him being the one who edited the speech, not Malkin. But Malkin claimed ownership of the video clip on her blog — “We’ve captured and posted the video of Hillary getting booed as she asks progressives to support the troops.” So as far as I’m concerned, whether she or Bryan did the actual technical work (and chopped off the video clip to give a false impression of what happened) is beside the point.

For more from someone else who was there, see Susie at Suburban Guerrilla.

Update: Taylor Marsh, who was there too, is a better person than I am. She attempts to walk Michelle and Bryan through the speech to show them where they went wrong. Patience of a saint, I say. I just want to hang bells and warning signs — “flaming liar” or some such — on them just to let folks know to keep their distance.

Update to the last update: We need bells and warning signs for this little wingnut, too.

Update to the update of the update before that: BTW, the little wingnut linked above seems to think the U.S. won the Vietnam War.

Michelle Malkin Is a Shameless Lying Bitch

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Malkin says progressives booed Hillary because she asked them to support the troops. If you play the clip she linked to, you can hear people starting to boo when she talks about the troops — something to the effect that the troops are the best we have — but then the clip cuts off suddenly.

What Malkin cuts off is that people were shouting “BRING THEM HOME!”

They were not booing the troops. They were booing Hillary for not supporting the troops.

I sat in that hall and know good and well no one in that crowd booed the troops. In fact, as I recall, during other speeches (like John Kerry’s, to the same audience) the same audience applauded expressions of support for the troops.

Malkin’s blog is all about targeting the people she wants her readers to hate. Hate is what Malkin is all about. It’s her reason for living. She lies and distorts and smears, and she cultivates hate.

Right now I’m so furious (that’s anger, not hate) I wish I believed in hell so I could imagine Malkin in it. At least, we’ve still got karma.

I’m home, by the way.

Update: Crooks & Liars found a clip of Clinton’s entire speech. The section in question starts at the 24:35 mark. I can’t hear the shouts clearly, but it’s obvious people in the crowd were shouting, not booing. Then a couple of beats later when the Senator spoke about providing better body armor, etc., people applauded.

Update update: See more updates to this post here.

Take Back Washington

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In today’s Washington Post, Dan Balz discusses the booing Hillary incident I wrote about yesterday. The communications director for Take Back America / Campaign for America’s Future, Toby Chaudhuri, sat with some of us exhibits and told us he didn’t know about any special agreements that had been made with Code Pink. Indeed, he said, no one would have had the authority to make such an agreement. He didn’t know where Code Pink got the idea there would be a Q & A after Senator Clinton’s speech. He said that he was unaware that anyone had prevented Code Pink from handing out fliers. However, he said, they had a firm rule about no signage in the ballroom during the speeches. This rule applied to everyone, including Hillary Clinton’s people, who were prevented from bringing signage into the ballroom also.

I speculated yesterday that it may have been the Hilton Hotel, not Take Back America, that prevented Code Pink from handing out fliers. I still think that’s a possibility. Yesterday I asked some Code Pink people I saw in the hall if they could send a spokesperson to the bloggers to talk about what happened, but none materialized.

The Take Back America conference is winding down. The final luncheon is about to start. I’m eating a sandwich in the Exhibit Hall, getting in some blogging time before they kick us exhibits out.

On the whole, this is a pretty depressing place. I just came from a panel that was allegedly about building progressive media. After a lengthy presentation of poll numbers that seemed to be the same poll numbers I’ve been reading about for several weeks, it was brightly suggested that progressives/liberals ought to develop a media infrastructure. And then people introduced themselves — lots of earnest people from earnest Democratic organizations earnestly working on their little issues and projects — the panel ended. Time for lunch. I swear, I want to bang heads together.

Kathy Kiely from USA Today reports that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are launching a new platform called “New Directions for America.” I take it this platform is about policy proposals. Like any of this will wriggle through the media filter and actually reach voters who aren’t politics nerds.

Russ Feingold spoke to an enthusiastic audience this morning. “It’s not enough to be in the majority,” he said. Democrats have to stand on principles. Dems can’t expect to win by default or by running out the clock.

Biggest applause line — after talking about Bush’s breaking of FISA law, Sen. Feingold said Bush’s actions amounted to “what the founders meant by high crimes and misdemeanors.” (Audience stands, cheers, applauds.) Feingold says it is important to censure Bush even if he is a lame duck. We have to do it for history.

Time to leave the Exhibit Hall. See ya later.

Last Lap

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This is the last day of Conference-a-thon. I’ll be home tonight, to my own bed. And home to Miss Lucy the cat, who reliably wakes me up by 5:30 every morning. Sometimes earlier. Maybe I should stay another day and get some sleep. I can still speak in complete sentences, though, so I’m not licked yet.

Morning news:

Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports in the New York Times that President Bush is still turning corners.

In visiting Baghdad on Tuesday, President Bush was trying to deliver a carefully calibrated message to Americans: that Iraq and the administration’s strategy there appear to be turning a corner, but troops will not be withdrawn anytime soon.

They have a strategy? Wow. Who knew?

The headline for this article, btw, says that “Bush seizes on a step forward.” He steps forward, he turns. Some kind of dance?

From a New York Times editorial on the President’s visit to Baghdad:

By now, Americans surely know the difference between a presidential publicity stunt and a true turning point in this ever-lengthening war. If they had any question about which one this was, Karl Rove provided some guidance in New Hampshire, where he delivered the campaign talking points to the Republican faithful: the Democrats could never have summoned the will to kill Mr. Zarqawi. For an administration that is supposed to be rallying a nation at war, it was a revealingly nasty, partisan and divisive moment.

I’m having a hard time understanding how much “will” it takes for someone in Washington to give an order to kill someone on the other side of the planet. I mean, if Karl Rove had been there to kick the door down or light the fuse or whatever they did to kill Zarqawi — I haven’t paid attention to details — I might be impressed at how much “will” he had to “summon.” But I ‘spect the little hothouse flowers of the White House would, in a truly dangerous spot, mostly summon the will to wet their pants.

These are the same weenies who still haven’t summoned up the will to kill Osama bin Laden. Never forget that.

It took ’em long enough to summon up the will to kill Zarqawi, for that matter. And by many accounts Zarqawi was a minor figure whose importance to al Qaeda was blown up way out of proportion by the White House. See, for example, Mary Ann Weaver’s excellent article on Zarqawi in the July/August 2006 issue of Atlantic Monthly.

One can only imagine how astonished al-Zarqawi must have been when Colin Powell named him as the crucial link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime. He was not even officially a part of al-Qaeda, and ever since he had left Afghanistan, his links had been not to Iraq but to Iran.

“We know Zarqawi better than he knows himself,” the high-level Jordanian intelligence official said. “And I can assure you that he never had any links to Saddam. Iran is quite a different matter. The Iranians have a policy: they want to control Iraq. And part of this policy has been to support Zarqawi, tactically but not strategically.” …

… “In the beginning they gave him automatic weapons, uniforms, military equipment, when he was with the army of Ansar al-Islam. Now they essentially just turn a blind eye to his activities, and to those of al-Qaeda generally. The Iranians see Iraq as a fight against the Americans, and overall, they’ll get rid of Zarqawi and all of his people once the Americans are out.”

“Even then—and even more so now—Zarqawi was not the main force in the insurgency,” the former Jordanian intelligence official, who has studied al-Zarqawi for a decade, told me. “To establish himself, he carried out the Muhammad Hakim operation, and the attack against the UN. Both of them gained a lot of support for him—with the tribes, with Saddam’s army and other remnants of his regime. They made Zarqawi the symbol of the resistance in Iraq, but not the leader. And he never has been.”

He continued, “The Americans have been patently stupid in all of this. They’ve blown Zarqawi so out of proportion that, of course, his prestige has grown. And as a result, sleeper cells from all over Europe are coming to join him now.” He paused for a moment, then said, “Your government is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Western and Israeli diplomats to whom I spoke shared this view—and this past April, The Washington Post reported on Pentagon documents that detailed a U.S. military propaganda campaign to inflate al-Zarqawi’s importance. Then, the following month, the military appeared to attempt to reverse field and portray al-Zarqawi as an incompetent who could not even handle a gun. But by then his image in the Muslim world was set.

I must have missed the April WaPo article, and right now I’m a little short on time to look for it. If anyone can find a link, please add it to the comments.

Booing Hillary

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I mentioned this morning that Sen. Hillary Clinton was booed for saying she did not support setting a firm date on withdrawal from Iraq. I was sitting on the opposite side of the ballroom as the boo-ers and didn’t see anything amiss, although I heard at lunch that some of the boo-ers were escorted from the hall by security.

Now there’s an article up at Common Dreams that says the boo-ers were from Code Pink.

Fearing that CODEPINK would openly confront Clinton on her pro-war policy, the organizers of Take Back America entered into negotiations with CODEPINK a few days before the conference. “We had lengthy discussions where they pleaded with us not to protest during her keynote breakfast address,” explained Gael Murphy, one of the cofounders of CODEPINK. “Instead, we were told that we could distribute flyers explaining Hillary’s pro-war position to the crowd inside and outside the hotel, and we would be called on to ask her the first question after the speech. We agreed.”

However, when CODEPINK showed up on Tuesday morning in advance of Clinton’s speech, the security guards refused to allow them to pass out flyers, even outside the hotel. “Take Back America violated the agreement from the moment we arrived,” said Ms. Murphy. “Even though we had a table inside the conference, burly security guards blocked us and informed us that it was a private event, that we were not welcome, and they escorted us out of the building. We telephoned the conference staff who then told us that we couldn’t enter the hotel, couldn’t leaflet the event, the hallways—anywhere. They went back on their word and tried to quash even peaceful, respectful dissent.”

A few CODEPINK women did manage to get inside the breakfast, however, as they were legitimate ticket holders. Once inside, the CODEPINK women soon realized that they had been deceived about the second part of the agreement: They would not be allowed to ask the first question, or any question, because Hillary Clinton would not be fielding questions from the audience. “We were really upset that we had been lied to by Take Back America, and that there would be no space at this ‘progressive conference’ to have a dialogue with Hillary Clinton about the most critical issue of our time—the war in Iraq,” said Katie Heald, DC coordinator for CODEPINK. “We got up on our chairs holding up our hands with the peace sign, and were pulled down from the chairs. We tried to take out our banner that said “Listen Hillary: Stop Supporting the War” and it was grabbed from us. And when Hillary started talking about her Iraq strategy, criticizing Bush but not posing a solution, we shouted ‘What are YOU going to do to get us out of Iraq,’ but she ignored us.”

The only banner I saw said “impeach Bush,” but as I said I was on the other side of the ballroom. The “impeach Bush” banner was a product of Veterans for Peace.

Ann Wright, the army colonel and diplomat who resigned over the war, was appalled by the actions of the conference organizers. “They took away leaflets supporting Jonathan Tasini, the anti-war Democrat who is running against Clinton in New York. They searched people’s bags for banners; they even took away an ‘Impeach Bush’ banner from Veterans for Peace. Free speech needs to be upheld by progressives and trying to curtail dissent undercuts the whole purpose of this conference,” said Wright.

Many of the attendees agreed with the position of the protesters, and as Hillary Clinton left the podium, they joined in chanting “Bring the troops home; Stop the war now.” The next speakers, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and Senator John Kerry, got thunderous applause when they called for the troops to come home.

Schmoozing in the hall with other attendees, one senses a lack of interest in a Hillary Clinton candidacy. The MSM has been telling us for years that Hillary is a “rock star” with party activists, but I’m not seeing that here. “She can’t win” seems to be conventional wisdom. Yes, she got an enthusiastic standing ovation at the beginning and ending of her speech, but so did Pelosi and Kerry. And, as I said, the crowd got a lot more fired up by Kerry’s speech than by Clinton’s.

Back to Code Pink’s gripes with the convention — I’d like to hear TBA’s side of this before I get too riled up. It’s very possible the Hilton people, not TBA, were the ones who didn’t want Code Pink handing out leaflets outside the hotel. On the other hand, I don’t see why Code Pink wasn’t allowed to hand out leaflets in the convention area. And I can’t see tossing ticket-holding attendees out of the room for holding up a banner.

Update: See also Hit and Run.

Oh, those silly kids

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One of the comments to my post about the HPV vaccine mentioned that it was nice to see a “younger” voice on this blog, so that’s what I want to post about now, while the maha-in-chief is still in Washington.

A few links. Sadly, some of these are behind subscription walls.

My mother has said to me that the feminist movement is effectively dead, but, although I think the movement has lost some of its oomph for sure, I like to think it’s still flailing and kicking somewhere. Perhaps on college campuses: Salon’s Broadsheet reports that an organization of anti-feminists is opening up chapters on campuses all over the country:

These young women read Danielle Crittenden and Christina Hoff Sommers, attend conferences key-noted by Ann Coulter and Elaine Chao, spread jittery but false gossip that Lynne Cheney is a donor, and host 80’s dances in honor of Ronald Reagan’s birthday.

Kinda sends shivers down your spin, dudn’t it?

Broadsheet crows that this is a sign that women’s movements are enjoying a “a vibrant, exciting renaissance” among college-aged women. I hope that’s true; certainly when groups emerge to oppose you, it’s a sign that you’re doing something right.

But, so, young people. There’s a vicious cycle at work wherein young people don’t participate politically and therefore their interests aren’t represented or talked about and therefore they don’t want to participate. It means us 20-somethings get slandered a lot for being lazy or entitled.

Young women in particular are left out of the conversation. A friend of mine recently pointed to MoveOn‘s most recent campaign as an example. Ten issues were voted on and narrowed down to three big ideas: “Health care for all, energy independence, and restored democracy.” Worthy goals, certainly, but of the ten issues originally presented to us, not one of them dealt with the eroding rights of women — access to abortion and birth control, which you may think is a pet issue, but which I think is key to women’s autonomy and equality, and that’s a hell of a big deal to me. Or equal pay, for that matter. Or better family policies, like access to childcare and better maternity/paternity leave… and these are “women’s issues” in the public discourse, I guess because “family” still falls in the women’s sphere — that’s some progress, eh? All that is right up there with health care for everyone and whatever “restored democracy” means, for me. (Energy, too, insofar as I’d like for us to find sustainable and renewable alternatives before we all bake, but I don’t own a car, so “gas prices are too high” is not really a motivation for me to advocate anything.)

Ah, but how do you get those pesky kids to vote?

One last link, while we’re talking about gender issues: Everyone’s favorite cabbage argues that girly books make boys not want to read. And we’re back on the whole “male and female brains are wired differently and so boys and girls excel in different subjects” nonsense debate. Last I checked, Brooks was not a scientist, so I don’t see how not liking Jane Eyre gives him the authority to make suppositions like that. And the whole debate ignores how kids and their teachers are socialized. But why am I so angry? I should not expect so much from the produce aisle.

Tired

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Maybe it’s me, but I’m not feeling the energy here in Washington that I felt at Las Vagas. Yearly Kos was a revival; this is more like an auto show.

Thanks to the news coverage of Yearly Kos, bloggers have arrived. Nobody knows what to do with us, however. Somebody gave today’s blogger panel the provocative title “Blogs: The Insurgent Voice.” To which the panel responded, not really.

The question at hand is, how do we liberal bloggers interface with the Democratic Party? How do we interface with the establishment media? Most of us support Democratic candidates, sometimes actively. On the other hand, we bloggers do not want the leftie blogosphere to become the Internet auxiliary of the Democratic Party. Individual bloggers may wish to break into “mainstream” media, but we want our blogs to be free of the influence of corporate ownership.

The value of bloggers lies in our independence from parties and in the way we enable political discourse outside mass media. Yet, as Peter Daou argues, participation of the party and media establishment are necessary if the netroots are to change conventional wisdom.

And I’ve been asking myself where The Mahablog fits into this equation. Many bloggers are into election strategy, and others are very good at building coalitions and initiating useful projects. My thing is looking beneath surfaces to see why things are the way they are, and then explaining it. I’m a bit envious of those who are builders and initiators, but my brain doesn’t seem to be wired that way.

Well, at least I make a pretty good exhibit.