Two disappointing reports in major newspapers on the healthcare debate. In the Los Angeles Times, Noam Levey writes ("Consensus Emerging on Universal Healthcare") that the momentum for real change is obvious in Washington--but that it only goes so far:

The idea of a federal, single-payer system patterned on those in Europe and Canada, long a dream of the political left, is now virtually off the table.

One might well reach such a conclusion if you only talked to the people Levey quoted in his article:

-"Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, or AHIP, a leading trade group whose members helped kill the Clinton administration's healthcare campaign in the early 1990s."
-"Stuart Butler, vice president for domestic policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation"
-Senator Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa)
-"Todd Stottlemyer, president of the National Federation of Independent Business, which was also instrumental in defeating the Clinton plan."

Perhaps for balance, there are two liberals primarily talking about the need for consensus: Ron Pollack of Families USA and UC Berkeley political scientist Jacob Hacker.

And in the no-reason-to-quote-because-they-might-as-well-not exist-department:

At the same time, advocates for a single-payer system, including the California Nurses Association, have vowed to continue pushing the idea next year along with many Democrats on Capitol Hill.

And in Sunday's Washington Post, Ceci Connolly writes under the rather blunt headline: "U.S. 'Not Getting What We Pay For'; Many Experts Say Healthcare System Inefficient, Wasteful." Post readers learn that "among physicians, insurers, academics and corporate executives from across the ideological spectrum, there is remarkably broad consensus on what ought to be done."

But the spectrum of sources in the report are not nearly as broad, and their preferred solutions reflect that-- a focus on preventive care, electronic records and so on. While those ideas have their benefits, what about advocates for a single-payer system? Or what about strong critics of the health insurance giants, whose ideas for reform are given a hearing in the Post report?

These article suffer from the same problem: There is an obvious healthcare crisis in this country, and the solution that has worked in other countries to expand access to services and cut costs as well is one that the political establishment still rejects. Thus the corporate media must reject it as well.

It says something for the weakness of your argument when you have to turn your opponents' argument on its head. Take the L.A. Times editorial today (11/24/08) headlined "An Unfair Litmus Test."

The editorial claims that "some ardent supporters of Barack Obama are aggrieved because the president-elect's emergent national security team includes supporters of the Iraq War," and argues that "making opposition to the war a litmus test for service in the new administration would be both unfair and impractical."

But are the complaints from the left really that supporters of the Iraq invasion are not being treated as "pariahs," as the editorial claims? The link in the last paragraph is from the paper's online version, and it goes to an L.A. Times news report (11/20/08) that quotes FAIR associate Sam Husseini on the names floated as Obama cabinet picks: "It's astonishing that not one of the 23 senators or 133 House members who voted against the war is in the mix," he says. It also quotes Kevin Martin of Peace Action, who worries that Obama's foreign policy team "may turn out to be all pro-war, or at least people who were pro-war in the beginning."

So the source the L.A. Times points to back up its claim that the left wants supporters of the invasion to be excluded from Obama's administration actually features complaints from the left that opponents of the invasion are being excluded from Obama's administration. I guess the editorialists must think that nobody reads L.A. Times news articles--even when they link to them.

New reports of civilian casualties in Afghanistan  (37 dead) were covered in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday. The story provides a decent sense of the death toll, but near the end makes a rather bizarre point (see bold):

Afghan weddings are traditionally large, drawn-out affairs, and wedding parties several times have been the target of errant airstrikes, in part because from the air the gatherings can appear similar to concentrations of Taliban fighters.

In Afghanistan's clan-based society, civilian deaths can cause otherwise peaceable villagers to declare a vendetta against those they consider responsible for killing their kin--in many cases, Western forces.

This isn't the first time corporate media have strained to interpret normal human reactions to violence as uniquely tribal or regional. When an Iraqi family refused a cash payment after their child was killed by Blackwater contractors, the L.A. Times (5/4/08) chalked it up to the "deep disconnect between the American legal process and the traditional culture of Iraq.... traditional Arab society values honor and decorum above all." A New York Times article (8/25/08) about house raids in Afghanistan noted that they "are seen as culturally unacceptable by many Afghans who guard their privacy fiercely," and that detaining hundreds of Afghans without trial have "stirred up Afghans' strong independent streak and ancient dislike of invaders." So I suppose it's no great surprise to read that being upset about civilian deaths is the kind of thing that happens in a "clan-based society."

More intriguing--or perhaps troubling--is that this is happening in Afghanistan. Think about this for just a second: U.S. airstrikes are continuing a war that started seven years ago in response to the 9/11 attacks. Villagers in Afghanistan had nothing to do with those attacks, but they're on the receiving end nonetheless. And corporate media puzzles over the peculiarities of an Afghan "vendetta."

James Rainey of the L.A. Times (10/22/08) quotes a colleague dismissing the size of Barack Obama's crowds as an indication of the Obama campaign's chances in November:

"Fall Out Boy gets crowds this big," Jonathan Weisman of the Wall Street Journal said at the Miami rally, referring to the pop punk band. "But I don't think they are going to end up in the White House.

"You can't learn anything about the outcome based on how big the crowd is," Weisman continued. "These are the people who are already convinced."

Of course, this is silly--you don't compare the size of political rallies to rock concerts, but to other political rallies, and compared to other political rallies, Obama's are quite large. But does Fall Out Boy really get crowds as big as Obama's?

Weisman reported that the Miami rally drew 30,000. A few moments of Googling turned up this from a South African music blog:

And then came FOB. From song one to the last song an hour and a half later, they rocked and rocked and rocked a bit more. They played only one show in SA and last night was it. They also noted that the Jo’burg concert will be the biggest crowd that they play to the entire year. I think there were close to 20,000 people in the audience.

According to the blog, then--and I have no reason to believe that its any less accurate than the Wall Street Journal--the biggest crowd Fall Out Boy played to last year was one-third smaller than the crowd Weisman attributed to Obama--which was not a particularly big crowd as Obama rallies go.

It's reminiscent of the argument made by right-wingers that an Obama rally in Portland that drew 75,000 was preceded by a free concert by The Decembrists, so the turnout didn't really reflect Obama's drawing power. Fans of the band pointed out that a typical Decembrist show will fill a club with a capacity of 1,200.