I am happy to share the fifth installment of the Driftglass and Bluegal podcast for your listening pleasure. If you missed the previous editions you can find them under our podcast tag as well as Fran's link below.

Blue Gal here: These podcasts are posted at our own blogs weekly, they're available at iTunes, and downloads of past episodes are available here. Thanks much to C&L's Video Cafe for their support.

[The occasional eff bomb while we talk about Republicans may make this podcast not safe for work.]

Keep up the good work guys. I am happy to share with everyone the third installment of the Driftglass and Bluegal podcast.

I recently had a political conversation with a few friends and family members, most of whom are Republicans, and it was nothing short of exasperating. I thought that some of them had progressed over the past few years, but I now know they still have a long way to go.

After George W. Bush was installed in 2000, I told all of my Republican friends and family that not only would he be an abject failure, but that he would take us to war in Iraq and our economy would be in ruins by the time he left office. I was chastised for years after, but I never gloated as time went by and I was sadly proven right. Dubya and his party ran our country into the ground and I thought that many of those conservative friends and family had come around -- but as it turns out, not so much.

Just minutes into the aforementioned discussion, it became painfully clear that the right-leaning narratives put out by our corporate media had indeed sunk in and they had bought into them hook, line and sinker -- and most of these folks admitted they can no longer stomach Fox News so I knew they were getting their talking points from the likes of CNN and other non-Fox media outlets.

No matter what the topic, from health care reform to Wall Street, and no matter how many points we agreed on or how many facts I laid at their feet, someone would invariably turn to me and dismissively say "Yes, but you're so left wing that you..." or "This is a center-right country, and you're so far left that..." In each case I asked them to explain -- please give examples of what makes me, or anyone, "left wing." The only thing they could come up with was deficits! Pelosi and Reid! Beyond that, it was because I didn't hate people like Al Gore and Howard Dean and I watch Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, and EVERYBODY knows they are really "far left."

Head. Smash. Desk.

The irony of it all is that in the end, we agreed on about 90% of everything we talked about. Old habits die hard and they couldn't let go of the old targets they were trained to hate by the right wing media. In their minds, any policy or legislation that comes from Democrats with no support from the right is just far left and that can't be good. We ended up agreeing to disagree ... on all the issues we agreed on! I'm sure I'm not the only one who has suffered through these kinds of skull-numbing experiences so if you've found yourself in the same position, please feel free to use this post to vent.

(Note: That's not me in the picture...at least on the outside.)

More like this please! I thought these two did a really wonderful job and it was too good not to share here at Video Cafe as well, so with the permission of our own Bluegal and part time contributor here at C&L Driftglass, here is the second installment of the Driftglass and Bluegal podcast.

I look forward to the future installments and you guys possibly getting some of your fellow bloggers in on the fun as well. I'd love to see Mr. Amato do something similar here at C&L. A question for anyone who listens -- is it just me, or does Driftie sound like Joe Conason? Anyway, again fine job guys and also this is slightly not safe for work if you don't want your boss to hear some occassional cursing by Mr. Driftglass.

You can catch installment #1 here and here.

Greg Sargent of The Plum Line makes his picks for the top 5 online news stories of the year.

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From State of the Union, National Security Advisor Ret. Gen. James Jones responds to McCain's criticism that he is playing politics with the decisions being made on troop levels in Afghanistan.

KING: But you know you have some critics. Having seen general McChrystal made his case publicly, having spoken to General Petraeus, having been to the region, some Republicans including Senator John McCain say that you, sir, and others in the White House are playing politics with this decision. I want you to listen to Senator McCain.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MCCAIN: It's well known, it's broadcast all over television, that there are individuals, including the vice president of the United States, now, unfortunately, the national security adviser, the chief political adviser to the president, Mr. Rahm Emanuel, who don't want to alienate the left base of the Democrat Party.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Is that a factor in the White House, rising Democratic opposition to sending more troops to Afghanistan? Do you, sir, say, "Mr. President, no more troops because of politics," as Senator McCain says?

JONES: Senator McCain knows me very well. I worked for Senator McCain when he was a captain. I've known him for many, many years, and he knows that I don't play politics with national -- I don't play politics, and I certainly don't play it with national security, and neither does anyone else I know. The lives of our young men and women are on the line.

This is -- the strategy does not belong to any political party, and I can assure you that the president of the United States is not playing to any political base. And I take exception to that remark.

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Rick Sanchez who's show is generally a mixed bag between trying to act like an actual journalist and just the usual CNN hackery, did something I don't see enough of on CNN, or any of the cable "news" networks for that matter, when interviewing Rep. Anthony Weiner. He asked him about the money flowing from the health care industry into the campaign coffers of politicians.

I'm sorry the conversation didn't lead to a discussion about public financing of political campaigns, which would put a stop to politicians feeling the need to chase after money from wherever they can get it to continue being re-elected. If our system of legalized bribery doesn’t change, I don’t see things getting any better for the average citizen out there any time soon.

SANCHEZ: I don't know what to say.

It appears that you, as a Democrat, as a guy who likes this public option, who likes getting the government involved in this thing, you're losing. And it may be because you began five yards behind the finish line. I mean, didn't you give the health insurance companies a huge big start by beginning the debate with universal health care off the table and the public as something we might do, but we really don't want to do it?

WEINER: Well, one thing for sure is, everything the health insurance industry has asked for in the Finance Committee up to now, they have gotten. It's a good playing field for them. We in the House are going to keep pushing for a public option. And frankly the president, who's our cleanup hitter, ultimately I believe is going to wind up mediating this dispute, and he says he wants a public option.

But you're exactly right. The real easy answer here is Medicare for all Americans. We give it to people who are 65. Why not 55? Why not 45? Why not do it? It's a low-overhead program. Sure, it has a financing problem, but so does all insurance at this point.

But at least we know it has very low overhead. We're not putting any into profits or advertising. So, that really was the smart place to start. We didn't. But we are going to try to get closer to that in the final product.

SANCHEZ: Let me just be real blunt with you real quick.

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It looks like Tom Ridge's lastest revelations in his book have given Keith a chance to say he was correct when he did his series on the Nexus of Politics and Terror. John Dean weighs in on the criminality of what Ridge has admitted to in his book. He thinks Ridge gave himself some wiggle room since he said he only believed the terrorist threat level was being manipulated for political reasons, and did not say he knew it to be a fact.

It's so nice to see all the dirty f@%#king hippies were right about this, huh? It will be interesting to watch the Villagers try to explain why they didn't report on something as plain as the noses on their faces back when this was going on. Other than Keith, I don't recall any of them speaking out about it other than to repeat the government propaganda. I'd also like someone to ask Tom Ridge why he didn't resign when he first knew this was happening.

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(1971 - the brief respite between the World's Longest Party and Our Great National Nervous Breakdown)

Hard to imagine that 1971 was a sort of resting point in our rather skewed history. At the time of course, it didn't seem that way - in 1971 Campuses were still hotbeds of disturbance, Vietnam was still grinding on, cities were falling apart. But we were optimistic all was going to be okay with the world and prosperity was just around the corner.

Sadly, no.

This documentary, part of the NBC Radio series "Second Sunday", aired in April 1971 was concerned about our place in the world. A reassessment of who we were as a society - the old "who am I, what am I doing and where am I going" mantra that was so popular during those years.

And questions are posed to a number of people - Ralph Nader, newly elected Governor Jimmy Carter, Senator Howard Baker, Gunnar Myrdal, Jean-Francois Revel, John Gardner (founder of Common Cause) and Dr. Milton Eisenhower who offers this interesting observation:

Dr. Milton Eisenhower: “We do seem to have a new kind of violence in this country, we have some people who are actively advocating revolution, which I think is relatively new in America.”

Question: Where do think this will lead? Do you think this is a self-defeating thing?

Eisenhower: “ First let me say that there are nihilists, there are revolutionaries; most of them young. Many of them, in our colleges and universities. But it’s terribly important that the American people understand that they constitute a very small minority. They make a lot of noise and I may say the mass media give them a great exposure to the American people, but they can’t be more than one, two or three percent of the total. Yes, this is something new.”

Question: “How do you answer the argument that we engage in violence in Vietnam, so violence is warranted here in America. And those who argue that the system is so rotten and has such basic defects that the system itself is not worth preserving and hence you need revolution in this country to purify the government.”

Eisenhower: “Well I think that’s a terribly specious argument. If we lived in a dictatorship, and the dictatorship had proclaimed and carried on the war, and therefore citizens could do little if anything about it, one could well argue that in these circumstances revolution, internal revolution would be the corrective measure to take. But once the people themselves have taken possession of the basic social power, which is the situation in our free democratic society, and we exercise this power through a representative form of government, then the only way, the only reasonable way to get action is to work through these political procedures. All other methods are illegitimate and are self-defeating. Margaret Chase-Smith made a speech in the Senate that was worth the attention of the American people, in which she said that, if the left-wing extremists, who are causing a good share of the trouble don’t look out, they are going to drive America to the right. The danger in America is not going too far to the left – the danger in America is going too far to the right.”

That last quote is particularly telling considering where the country would wind up in the next decade.

Of course, at the time no one suspected a thing . . . .

From The Onion:

In The Know's new live internet poll feature revolutionizes how pundits shamelessly cater to what viewers want to hear.

I'm reading Will "Attytood" Bunch's new book, "Tear Down This Myth: How The Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future" about how deeply ingrained the Reagan mythology is in our country's political culture (with the help, of course, of a complicit media).

Fascinating book, really thorough. (There are things in here I didn't even know, and I'm more informed about Reagan than the average bear.) The Reagan myth is so large, so unquestioned that he even gets credit for the things he didn't do: Star Wars! Stopped the Cold War! Made the economy hum like a top! (If you have a Reagan-loving in-law, this is the book you want to read before your next family get-together.)

From the first chapter:

[...] The Reagan myth isn’t just a political problem for the GOP. Increasingly, as the idealized Reagan took hold in the American imagination, Democrats seemed to struggle even harder with the question of just who was Ronald Reagan – and whether political success going forward depended upon undercutting Reagan’s legend, simply ignoring it, or embracing all or part of it. That’s why it was a political bombshell when Sen. Barack Obama made it clear in early 2008 that Reaganism was playing some role in his thinking as he mapped out his own more progressive route to the White House – but the specifics of what Obama was getting at were open to debate.

"Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not, and a way that Bill Clinton did not," Obama told the editorial board of the Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal in January 2008. Seeking to elaborate, the Democratic senator said that "[w]e want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing." Obama’s comments caused a scramble among his Democrats: Was the presidential frontrunner simply praising the political style of the twice-elected Republican, or was his comment also intended to voice support for some of Reagan’s policy ideas? Obama advisors stressed the former – that he was merely seeking to remind voters of Reagan’s “hope and optimism.”

Obama’s statements seemed to flummox the Democrats in 2008 almost as much as Reagan himself did circa 1984. John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator who was appealing to the party’s more progressive wing in those early primaries, said Reagan “openly did extraordinary damage to the middle class and working people, created a tax structure that favored the very wealthiest Americans and caused the middle class and working people to struggle every single day…I can promise you this: this president will never use Ronald Reagan as an example for change."

And yet just a couple of weeks later, it was Edwards who was gone from the presidential race, and Obama who was soldiering on – leaving the unanswered questions of whether even a progressive Democrat in the White House could tackle not just the immediate problems of Iraq, record-high gasoline prices, a skyrocketing federal debt but the more ominous issues of world energy supply and climate change without doing so under the deepening shadow of the legacy of Ronald Reagan.

How did we get to this point in American politics? It would be easy to give all the credit to the Ronald Reagan myth machine, to the neo-conservatives and tax-warriors-turned-lobbyists behind the move to seemingly pave over and rename one long Ronald Reagan Boulevard from sea to shining sea. But no myth would be possible without the man. And if there was ever a man who instinctively knew how to write that screenplay – who rode in from Hollywood to create a new kind of presidency that would focus on strong words and cinematic images that would last long after people forgot the policies sometimes loosely attached to them – it was Ronald Wilson Reagan.

As a rule I hate looking back. The trouble with looking back is you tend to stare at it a long time, and nothing really good ever comes of that.

I'm also not a big fan of "nostalgia". I think of nostalgia and think "fond remembrance of events that never occurred" - time tends to blow small events out of proportion and large events into heart stopping defining moments which, at the time didn't amount to much.

So why look back at all?

The idea of putting together a site like Newstalgia is to help put history and current events into perspective. Some things never change, some people never change - only the names and situations and outcomes. Sometimes history consists of the same set of events and circumstances over and over until the lesson is learned or the methods changed.

Much of history is a series of repeats: (India/Pakistan war over Kashmir - 1951)

Much of history includes investigations, exhaustive, scathing,combative:
(Senate Crime Committee Hearings headed by Estes Kefauver, 1951)

Some history involves people - in a certain place, in a certain time:
(first general election in Ghana after Independence 1957)

All of these are issues I plan to present, by way of audio, some video and what other documentation I can find from my lifelong collection of news and current events to convey the continuing nature of history - what it did to us then, and what it means to us now. Some things never change and some things are destined never to be the same again.

That's what I'm trying to do. I hope you enjoy the ride.

Gordon Skene - The Gordon Skene Sound Collection
(Algeria, 1957)

Newstalgia

This is a subject close to my heart, since I've spent at least half of the past decade as a member of the uninsured class. Right now, I'm unemployed again and paying COBRA out of reader donations - donations which run out next month, with no job in sight. Oh well!

When Obama announced Tom Daschle as his health czar, my heart sank. After all, Daschle worked for a law firm whose lobbying arm represented the insurance industry, and that didn't bode well for actual reform. Instead, it seems to point toward corporate-friendly incrementalism.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress are focused enough to produce legislation which actually solves this massive problem. But voters will certainly have to stay vocal if they want to make their own interests the priority in this national healthcare debate:

Karen Goroncy, a home health aide in Washington, Pa., has taken care of people for 25 years but can't afford health insurance to take care of herself.

A reader has promised to buy Goroncy insurance after she was profiled this fall in The Inquirer, and she hopes to have hernia surgery in the New Year.

But short of the generosity of readers - not a good national solution - Goroncy and millions like her are awaiting the sweeping health reform now being considered by President-elect Barack Obama.

Obama's plan, which has not been formally announced, could mark the biggest change in health care in 40 years. A central goal will be to cover 50 million Americans who don't have insurance. It is conceivable that all Americans will be required by law to have health insurance.

A principal architect of Obama's reform - Tom Daschle, nominated to become secretary of the Health and Human Services Department - has written at length about creating a powerful new board that would control health-care spending much like the Federal Reserve Board influences the nation's monetary policy.

The Chesapeake Bay area is one of the most beautiful places in the country, and the inability of officials to control upstream pollution is a sad tale:

Government administrators in charge of an almost $6 billion cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay tried to conceal for years that their effort was failing -- even issuing reports overstating their progress -- to preserve the flow of federal and state money to the project, former officials say.

The cleanup, which had its 25th anniversary this month, seems doomed to miss its second official deadline for achieving major reductions in pollution by 2010.

The goal of rescuing North America's largest estuary was formally entrusted in 1983 to a group of federal, state and local authorities under the loose guidance of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The task: controlling runoff from 4.8 million acres of farmland, installing upgrades at more than 400 sewage plants and managing the catch of more than 11,000 licensed watermen.

But the agencies charged with the cleanup have never mustered enough legal muscle or political will to overcome opposition from the agricultural and fishing industries and other interests.

Instead of strengthening their tactics, though, they tried to make the cleanup effort look less hopeless than it was.

It's always hard to know where to begin with Tasers. I mean, they're a nightmare for the citizens against whom they're used, the lawsuits will end up costing millions of taxpayer dollars and they inevitably suppress freedom of speech and assembly. Why are they still in such widespread use?

I suppose it didn't hurt that right-wing heroes Rudy Guiliani and Bernie Kerik were so heavily involved in marketing them to police departments around the country. (Did you know the police officers recruited to demonstrate them to their departments receive stock options and/or payments? That explains a lot.)

On Sept. 24, in Brooklyn, N.Y., a 35-year-old man named Iman Morales fell to his death after a 22-minute standoff with New York Police. Morales, who was described as "emotionally disturbed," had climbed onto the fire escape of a building in Bedford-Stuyvesant, naked and waving a metal pole. Unable to talk him down, one officer, under order from his lieutenant, shot Morales with a Taser gun, at which point he fell to the sidewalk, head-first.

He was taken to the hospital, where he was declared dead.

One week later, the officer who gave the order, Lt. Michael W. Pigott, drove to Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field, a former air base used by the NYPD, took a 9mm Glock from a locker room, and shot himself in the head.

It's hard to know which are more ubiquitous at this point: stories of accidental death by Tasers, or stories of police brutality involving bullets. Just this week, in New York, a Bronx man was shot and killed after he allegedly waved a baseball bat at police officers who entered his home. In theory, these sorts of confrontations are the reason such "non-lethal" weapons as Tasers exist. But news reports tell a different tale. In the United States and Canada, more than 400 people have died after being Tasered since 2001.

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