by Matthew Remski

Of the countless intersubjective graces unfolding in Zuccotti Park and around the Occupy world, the “human microphone” is recapturing something as old as human learning. This is something sacred: a repurposing of voice, ear, and content that may serve no less than the remembering of a more coherent human consciousness.

Watch Slavoj Zizek to see how it works. Every Occupy Wall Street orator, prohibited by permit laws from amplification (and lights when night falls), stands on a box and delivers his sentences one at a time, each followed by a pause, during which the surrounding ring of listeners, perhaps 20 deep, repeats the sentence verbatim. The repeaters, unburdened by the anxiety of creation, actually improve the clarity of the orator’s rhythm and intonation as they fall into a shared pulse. Orators learn quickly that the sentences with the highest torque are simple and well-metered – from the heartbeat of Zizek’s “They tell you we are dreamers” to the rolling of “The marriage between democracy and Capitalism is over.” Michael Moore had to quickly drop his just-a-regular-guy banter, which in human-microphone-land makes him weak and self-deprecating. And Cornel West pulled the oration of Southern Baptism out of another decade and firmly jammed it into the hipster ears. Everyone speaks of spirit, and love. These are no longer ideas through this media but thrusts of embodiment that ripple through the group neurology.

Some orators attract so many listeners that multiple relay rings form spontaneously. This can slow down the oration up to fourfold, as each orbit of 20-deep repeats the sentence, and each ring forms a distinct choir: more men in this one, more women in that, a clear tenor back there, and a rowdier group who always wants to clap and cheer more than the rest. The centrifuge of sentiment and meaning extends to the horizon of the physical gathering, and then meets the threshold of the digisphere, where the Twitter birds listen and then fly. In Zuccotti Park, meaning starts with a heartbeat, and then it accelerates as it flies outward. But its plodding beginning forms a natural control upon the ego-inflation so easily amplified by electricity and then distorted beyond all embodied measure.

Last night, Jon Stewart snagged an exclusive interview with President Barack Obama on filibuster reform which the President supports. A few weeks ago, I visited Washington and dropped in on my New Mexico Congressional delegation. Senator Tom Udall shared his thoughts on The Constitutional Option, a rules change he is proposing at the beginning of the next Congress to reform filibuster abuse. My exclusive video interview of Senator Udall on filibuster and health care reform is posted below.

Cross-posted as a Morning Feature at Daily Kos.

Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann and other luminaries are skewering Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) for crowing about his insertion of a new IRS rule into the Health Care Reform Bill after first voting against HCR. Because he has publicly mocked and blocked HCR (along with other Repubs), and because the importance of his new rule is only appreciated by hospital financing aficianados, his announcement had the loft of a lead comforter.

I love Rachel Maddow. I wake up every weekday at 5:00 am to her podcasts. And I am no fan of Chuck Grassley. But I am ecstatic about the Grassley rule. You will be too, once you understand it.

If you’re like me, you stayed glued to your computer Sunday watching every last hurled insult and suspenseful motion to recommit. You had trouble understanding why a faceless Republican (who was eventually discovered to be Randy Neugebauer from Lubbock, TX) called Stupak a “baby killer” and why Dems seemed happy Stupak’s motion had passed.

If you were like me, you were engaged in life’s other duties for several hours, didn’t know Stupak had reached an agreement with the President and had no idea that his motion to recommit (or whatever) was actually a motion to bring HCR to the floor for a vote.

You eventually exulted with the Democrats and thumbed your noses at sulking Repubs without being quite sure exactly what had happened. Parliamentary procedure is a labyrinthian sport.

Sunday was historic. The bill that eventually passed without a single Republican vote was a Republican bill in many ways, modeled after Mitt Romney’s public-private Massachusetts hybrid. It was not the government takeover I had hoped for. In fact, as many have noted, the bill mandates that all Americans purchase private policies without providing us the option of publicly offered insurance. So why are some packs of teabaggers waving signs threatening Representatives with gun violence over health care reform while others hurl racial or homophobic epithets at Congressmen?

News of progress on health care reform is breaking like a tsunami throughout the Blogosphere.

In the past, industry lobbyists, able to rely, on their ability to lurk in shadowy back room secrecy, cut deals with Senators that sucked the lifeblood from our public sector. The public was locked out of the black box. We had no understanding of parliamentary procedure, no ability to influence it, no say in the process. Congress was like a kitchen overrun by cockroaches. The Sugar Pops belonged solely to them.

The internet has enabled average Americans to break open the Congressional black box. We are able to observe procedure. We know who the parliamentarian is, what he does, why it matters. We can initiate public action at the drop of a dime. Four years ago, who could have imagined an overnight calling campaign in support of “the self-executing rule?”

This is why I am taking a brief break from meaningful spiritual dialogue to bring you Senatorial minutae. I think I know why James Joyce an entire chapter of Ulysses to a description of Leopold Bloom enjoying his morning crap.

Plug your noses!

The delightfully wacky HCR (Health Care Reform) circus caravan rolls on.

As of March 11, 41 Senators had either signed or issued statements of support for a letter to Harry Reid initiated by Alan Grayson and the PCCC urging passage of the Public Option through reconciliation. For the first time, the Public Option is looking like a very real possibility.

Only three Dems have come out absolutely opposed (not including Liebermenace who, perhaps as a ploy to reinvigorate his flagging attentometrics, is playing coy). The Dems can lose up to six fence-nesters and still pass the Public Option. “And how,” you might be tempted to ask, “has Alan (The-GOP-healthcare-plan-is-die-soon) Grayson, an outspoken House Freshman, managed to get 41 Senators to support his letter despite White House efforts to back-burner the entire endeavor?”

Simple! The PCCC conducted a series of statewide polls demonstrating tremendous support for “socialized Medicine” among Democratic and Indie voters!

Gotta luv that guy! Maybe Rahm should try to twist his arm in the shower. Or at least poke him in the chest.

Can right wing over-exuberance in the face of their Massachusetts victory have spurred the sudden and vibrant revival of healthcare reform? It has risen unexpectedly, like the miraculous victim of a head injury, from its seemingly permanent coma.

But the best part of the story is the identity of the doctor restoring HCR to life: Anthem Blue Cross! Who says insurance companies can’t fix healthcare?

Life is slowly returning to normal after my birthday and my son’s Bar Mitzvah and it is time to turn my mind once again to blogging. I’m going to try something new. For the past year or more, I have been sending brief political analyses out to my New Mexico list serve. I’ve received so much positive feedback about these posts, even from folks who disagree with me, that I’m going to begin publishing them on Tikkun Daily.

I am happy to report that I see lights flickering on the health care horizon. Obama’s newfound offense appears to be working. Last week, the President energized Democrats when he engaged the entire House Republican caucus in a lively exchange over health care and other policies, and dispatched every interlocutor without once peeking at the wallwriting on his hand.

The President then took to the road in a series of town halls. Today the political tide appears to be shifting. The lights are blinking on.

Thursday afternoon, I presented a resolution to the Board of Rio Arriba County Commissioners urging the President and Congress to speedily pass health care reform. It passed unanimously. I will pdf the resolution and forward it to New Mexico’s statewide papers, and will walk an orginal into the offices of Senators Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall.

The Commissioners discussion revolved around the need for our Senators to pressure Senate leadership into passing a sidecar “fix” through reconciliation to their HCR bill, enabling the House to support it.

Resolutions are often an excellent means of garnering press attention and telling your Congresscritters you are serious. Commissioners, Mayors, City Councilors represent constituencies and votes. Their resolutions matter.

Several years ago, Rio Arriba County became the first local government to pass a resolution condemning the leaked Patriot 2 document revoking citizenship of whomever for whatever. The resolution spurred a storm of statewide press, prompting a personal thank you to the Commissioners from constitutional advocate and then US Representative Tom Udall.

Of course, being a County Department head in a small rural county makes it easy for me to get the ear of my Commission. But you can, too. Try working through your county health department or through a locally well-known healthcare advocate.

I will post the text of the resolution below.

After spending most of my day wondering how the Democratic Party managed to pull off the stunning achievement of losing Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat to a far right wing former centerfold model, I am feeling reassured. The dust is settling and the panorama does not look so bad. In fact, the future looks far brighter to me than it has for weeks.

Obama has acknowledged that White House bears more than a little responsibility for the loss. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that he has scheduled a press conference tomorrow to announce his adoption of Paul Volcker’s strategy to break up and regulate “too big to fail banks.” (No this is not a hoax!)

President Barack Obama on Thursday is expected to propose new limits on the size and risk taken by the country’s biggest banks, marking the administration’s latest assault on Wall Street in what could mark a return, at least in spirit, to some of the curbs on finance put in place during the Great Depression, according to congressional sources and administration officials.

A push to break up and regulate the banks will be extremely popular with both progressives and independents. It will also place the party of “no” in the position of blocking reforms that their tea-party base are clamoring after. Plus, it will fix the economy.

While the White House and Harry Reid have announced they will not push through health care reform prior to seating Brown, this does not appear to be the act of capitulation that was initially reported. Barney Frank, who called on the Senate to drop health care reform efforts in the wake of the Massachusetts debacle, has retracted his remarks. He now says he will consider voting in favor of the Senate bill if Congress commits to amending the bill rapidly through reconciliation or other parliamentary procedures.

I’ve spent the last two weeks in a funk, listening to the debates about the future of health care reform. I am pleasantly surprised by two phenomena: 1] public dialogue around health care is both vibrant and incredibly substantive ; and 2] conservatives have absented themselves from discussion.

I grew accustomed to palliatives and drivel during the Bush years. (Remember when plastic sheeting and duct tape were promoted as public health policy? In the event of an epidemic, we were instructed to wrap our homes in plastic!) I am surprised at the enthusiasm and diversity of our civic dialogue. This is a huge positive change and a sign of our improved civic health.

On the other hand, the Republican Party has descended into utter moral and intellectual bankruptcy. They have determined that the only quick route back to power is to prevent legislative action, then brand Democrats as ineffectual. Their most fervent followers believe America is a white Christian nation under attack. As a result, they are opposing anything and everything. Jack Kemp, the Party’s self-described “bleeding heart conservative” passed away in May after a decade of political exile. As long as the far right wages primaries against Republicans who fail their ideological “purity test,” there will be no new Jack Kemp, no ideas, no discussion within the “big” GOP tent. Alert Democrats can capitalize on their failure to build.

Building the Ship of State

Actual dialogue has been confined to two progressive factions, and it is fueled by a structural question. Out of what material do we build our ship of state?

I’ve been reading various healthcare diaries from around Left Blogistan searching for a strategy to salvage healthcare reform. The most interesting so far are a pair dealing with polls that surfaced on Daily Kos.

fladem writes about the sudden collapse in support for health care reform as measured in the recent WSJ/NBC poll.

The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll coming out later today will show opposition to the health care bill growing — mainly from disappointed liberals, who are very much disappointed to see the public option getting thrown out.

The poll has 47% saying the Obama health care plan is a bad idea, to only 32% who say it’s a good idea…45% say it is not acceptable for a plan to not include a public option. But, 58% would find inclusion of a Medicare Buy in acceptable.

Daily Kos diarist arodb writes about a recent WaPo/ABC poll taken after the defeat of a proposal allowing the re-importation of drugs.

This poll also finds a significant drop in support for health care reform in response to the defeat of an amendment which would have benefited the American people.

But Obama and the Democrats have had decidedly less success convincing the public that their health proposals will bring positive change. More than half of those polled, 53 percent, see higher costs for themselves if the proposed changes go into effect than if the current system remains intact.

It looks to me as if the public is getting smarter and is becoming less willing to have smoke blown in their collective face. Chris Bowers at Open Left urges us to swallow our bitterness and help Obama to pass his sham of a bill.

I strongly disagree.

I believe that if Obama and Emanuel believe we progressives will stand our ground and if they begin to fear their ability to pass a bill will become endangered, they will find a new solution. In all likelihood, Lieberman will be thrown to the political lions, and progressive features will find their way into health care reform in some way, shape or form. But this won’t happen if we blink.

Normally I would make this brief post a comment and stick it on the end of my last article entitled,“Send Leiberman a Golem for Hanukkah,” but I’m too spitting mad. I have argued for a long time that an imperfect bill is much better than no bill. However, a useless bill is not.

Several blogs including McJoan at Daily Kos, Jonathan Kohn at The New Republic, and Carrie Budoff Brown at Politico are reporting that Rahm Emanuel is pressuring Reid to lose the Medicare Buy-in to quickly cut a deal with Lieberman.

The White House, of course, is denying it.

I don’t care who’s telling the truth. I say we send our golems to Rahm. And call him too. Tell the White House to grow some cojones.

The White House comment line is 202-456-1111.

The switchboard is 202-456-1414. Call ‘em both. Keep their lines tied up.

And their email is http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact.

To send Rahm a golem, copy and paste the following message: “Rahm. Stop blocking REAL health care reform or we will vote you and all your evil minions out of office. Here’s a golem for you. I hope you get the message you evil effing ba$tard.” Copy the embed code that appears in the top right hand corner of the box after the one-minute golem video has played into the message box.

Here’s what he will see:

Rahm. Stop blocking REAL health care reform or we will vote you and all your evil minions out of office. Here’s a golem for you. I hope you get the message you evil effing ba$tard!

Of course, you can send whatever message you like. You can write to him in Hebrew. Just be sure he gets the point. And the golem.

(For anyone who does not know what a golem is, and why a golem would mean something to Rahm, see this morning’s diary entitled “Send Leiberman a Golem for Hanukkah.”

I’m considering the possibility that Lieberman is not actually a human. I suspect he is a golem created by the insurance industry to terrorize the general public. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Jewish lore, a golem is a zombie created from clay during times of peril to defend persecuted Jews from Nazis, the Czar, etc. More on this below.

After telling Harry Reid that he would consider supporting a health care reform compromise including an expansion of Medicare, our favorite Senator decided to throw a wrench in the works on the Sunday morning talk circuit by announcing his plan to scuttle health care reform. According to the New York Times Lieberman said:

You’ve got to take out the Medicare buy-in. You’ve got to forget about the public option. You probably have to take out the Class Act, which was a whole new entitlement program that will, in future years, put us further into deficit.

It goes without saying that Lieberman would oppose a Class Act. In this instance he is referring to an insurance policy covering long term care: the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act. In other words, if Reid eliminates every last vestige of reform from the Health Care Reform bill, Lieberman will support it.

There are a number of actions progressives can take to combat Lieberman’s most recent assault on the Democratic Party while saving the health care bill. Senator Olympia Snowe currently objects to the Medicare buy-in because Medicare’s reimbursement rates to hospitals and doctors are disproportionately lower in rural areas, a perfectly reasonable objection for a senator from a rural state. Perhaps it is time to fix this problem.

Next, progressives can sign the 8,868 individuals who have signed a CREDO petition informing Senate leadership that today is a good day to strip Lieberman of his committee chairmanship. Such a move would likely force him into the Republican party which would not go over well with his constituency in Connecticut.

Then we can tune into a Daily Kos diary posted last night by Hlinko to collect pledges for donations to a Lieberman opponent in the next election if he fillibusters HCR. So far, Hlinko has collected $1.6 million in pledges from $30,000 people through facebook.

(You can pledge, too by becoming a fan and leaving your pledge in the comment section. To do this, follow the facebook link in the preceeding paragraph, and sign up for a facebook account by clicking the green tab at the top left hand corner. Tthen follow the link to the pledge page one more time and this time click the blue tab on the top right hand side of the page. Write your pledge into the empty comment bar in the center at the top of the page. Click the share tab below the comment bar and you’ve succeeded! If Lieberman persists in his threat to fillibuster, donate the pledged amount directly to his opponent when the time comes.)

However, there is a particularly Jewish protest Tikkun readers can engage in as well…one that might actually mean something to Lieberman. (Thank you to reader Laura S. for emailing your suggestion!) You can send him a golem of his very own.

For those of you who don’t know, a golem is a gigantic clay monster. According to Jewish lore, Rabbi Judah Loew ben Azalel, Chief Rabbi of Prague in the late 16th century, created a golem to defend his people from vicious anti-semitic pogroms. If you are feeling especially ambitious and are a pious practitioner of Judaism, you can create your own golem to send to Joe Lieberman by fashioning a giant man (at least three stories tall) out of clay and imprinting the name of G-d on his forehead (the clay man’s forehead, not Lieberman’s). Then tell him to go visit Joe. Complete instructions are available at this site. Or, if you are feeling lazy and you may work from the comfort of your own home.

Finally, for readers who do not want to risk dabbling in the occult, send him a pre-formed golem via video. (To do this, copy and paste the URL to the right of the video into an email message. You can reach soon to be ex-Senator Lieberman here.)

Finally, for your own enjoyment, here is a link to an entertaining one minute musical golem video that can’t be embedded. Another good but longer animated video is embedded below. Happy Hanukkah!

I owe an apology to all you Tikkunistas out there for my prolonged silence on health care issues at such an important time. My organization has received two new health care grants through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and I am snowed under with work. Coincidentally, I am also snowed under with snow which knocked out my internet and made it difficult to retrieve children from various undisclosed locations.

However, I’m back. I hope to blog soon about some of my personal adventures in healthcare reform. And about a few little known and very arcane regulation changes that will make a huge difference.

But tonight I will limit myself to a few very brief words about the Senate’s Health Care compromise. Of course, the devil is in the details and I haven’t seen them yet. But I like the bits and pieces that have leaked out.

Here they are:

From the Progressive Change Campaign Committee today:

You may have heard the news. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is threatening to help Republicans block a vote on health care reform if the bill includes a public health insurance option.

But when reporters asked Lieberman if he’d be willing to lose his powerful committee chairmanship as a consequence, he said: “Oh, God no.”

What’s our answer? Hell yeah!

You and 90,000 others signed our petition to Democratic senators asking them to strip leadership titles from Lieberman (or others) if they block reform. Can you help us get to 100,000?

Oh yeah, I remember signing that! Will you join me and sign the petition here? Here’s Rachel on the topic:

I posted an action diary yesterday morning telling readers how they can become involved in the fight to pass a public option (with links). I encourage my readers to pressure Harry Reid to pass a public option.

Deborah Phelan asked a great question in the comment thread that merits a complete response. She asks:

One other issue I think needs addressing in this is why none of this legislation (correct me if I’m wrong) is going into effect until 2013….. That is 4 years away! Am I wrong? Are there just sections that don’t go into effect? And if this is true, why is there this rush to get legislation passed this year?
UN:F [1.5.4_809]

First of all, we need to pass the bill now because we can. We have the votes. Let’s not wait until the opportunity passes.

Secondly, insurance regulation will go into effect immediately.

Ezra Klein states that the delayed start up allows Congress to allocate $140 billion per year as opposed to $100 billion. Because congress and Obama have arbitrarily set a ceiling of $1 trillion over ten years, a start up date of 2013 allows Congress to spend more in perpetuity.

I believe there is a second at least equally important reason as well. The federal government is a huge bureaucracy and the infrastructure required for a program of this size is not in place. There are huge gaps in our delivery and information technology infrastructure.

I have noticed from comments on this and other blogs that many people seem to believe we have an excellent health care system that is only available to wealthy people. This is not true. We do not have an excellent health care system. We have no system at all.

To give you a few examples from my own experience:

The battle for health care reform remains fluid. Various proposals have been working their way through Congress. At each stage of the process, a different sort of concerted action is required to insure a meaningful bill and a robust public option. We have reached another critical juncture, and your help is badly needed.

After sitting on its hands for months, Senate Finance finally passed a bill out of committee last week, enabling the process to move forward. At this point in the Senate, the Finance proposal (which is the weakest and perhaps most expensive of all the draft bills) must be merged with the bill drafted by the Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) Committee. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will be key to our success.

Here are some facts, links and tools that will help you to contribute to our effort.

1) The bills will be merged behind closed doors by a small team composed of three Senators and a few top White House Aids. Politico reports that Reid is limiting participation to Senator Chris Dodd (who helped usher a bill through HELP), Senator Max Baucus (of finance), himself and the White House. Senator Dodd has been outspoken in his support for the public option. Senator Baucus has been notable for his obstructionism and chumminess with insurers. If we want to influence the bill, we need to focus on Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid.

2) There is already an organized means of doing so. Reid is currently polling poorly in Nevada which has been hard hit by the recession, and which is ranked among the bottom ten in terms of health care provision. Congressman Alan (“the Republican Health Care Plan is to die quickly”) Grayson recently delivered a petition with 90,000 signatores (and presumably, 90,000 potential donors to a primary challenge) to the office of Harry Reid. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), a project of ActBlue and the originators of the petition, are raising funds to air television ads for the public option in Nevada. Here is one of their ads:

You can donate in order to air this ad in Nevada here.

And, if you have a few moments, you can watch Alan Grayson and PCCC deliver their petition, which demands that Reid revoke the chairmanship of any democrat who does not vote to block a fillibuster of the public option:

You can also call Harry Reid’s office directly to inform him, that if he does not produce and pass a bill with a robust public option, you will donate money towards a democratic challenger in the next primary. His phone number is 202-224-3542.

Happy calling! (And don’t forget to pass this link along to all of your friends!)

So, it turns out that the fabled “total reexamination” of Afghanistan strategy is another by now all-too-familiar example of the Obama shell game. Why can’t leftists, progressives, and critical intellectuals face what a fraud this man is, and how snookered they have been?

Obama’s strategy toward the left is obvious. He cannot ignore the left, which after all secured him the nomination. He knows that if he simply follows his obviously rightist and neo-liberal policies, eventually there will be an explosion from his left. So periodically he arouses the left’s hopes by floating the possibility of a really progressive shift, a change in “mindset” as he put it during the campaign for the nomination. Examples of this include “the public option” and “the Biden strategy in Afghanistan.”

I had the good fortune to travel to Washington, DC., and interview Senator Jeff Bingaman on September 18 about Medicare for All, the Baucus Bill and other topics related to health care reform.

Everybody’s favorite diarist, Land of Enchantment, was kind enough to edit my video and post it on YouTube.

Thank you LoE for putting up with me and editing the video which is embedded after the fold. A summary (not a transcript) of Parts One and Two follows the videos for the YouTube impaired.