Midday open thread

• Is there anything cooler than Al Franken at Netroots Nation?

  He may be the best speaker at the conference ever.

  So admit it, you want to be there. Register!

• No ambiguity -- MoveOn members want to pass the bill. We spent the last several months fighting to make it better, and we did. It's not great, but it's better. And as Howard Dean wrote yesterday, the fight for better health care reform isn't over.

  Dennis Kucinich may rather make common cause with the GOP and Rush Limbaugh, but sane progressives have to realize that this is a step forward. And once the foot is in the door, tweaks can always be made. But our foot must be in the door, and that's why the GOP and insurance companies are fighting this with all their might.

• Agreeed:

  I dislike the intrusive advertising on Salon, so I don’t read Salon. I dislike Michael Arrington, so I never read anything on TechCrunch (even when they write about me or my products) and have taken technical measures to ensure that I never even land there accidentally and give them whatever tiny profit that one pageview is worth. I don’t like the timebombed, Unicode-breaking Clickability print-friendly view for New York Magazine, since I like reading NYMag-length pieces in Instapaper and Clickability doesn’t work well in it, so I just don’t read NYMag’s articles. I don’t like Ars Technica’s paginated articles, but since I don’t want to pay for a subscription, I just read every page separately, give them all of their separate-page ad views, and save each page to Instapaper if I want to read them that way.

  One reaction I’ve never had is to think that I deserve anything from these publishers.

  Valid point: [Publisher] should consider doing it some other way because this will alienate some readers.

  Invalid point: [Publisher] should do it my way because all content deserves to be free/ad-free/full-RSS/single-page.

• Glenn Beck, religious scholar.

  "I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church web site," Beck urged his audience. "If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!"

  Today, Beck returned to the subject, insisting that the notion of social justice is "a perversion of the Gospel," and "not what Jesus would say." He wasn't kidding.

  He went on to say that Americans should be skeptical of religious leaders who are "basing their religion on social justice," and explained his fear that concern for social justice is a problem "infecting all" faith traditions.

  Beck's condemnations aren't going over well in some faith communities. The Rev. Jim Wallis, a prominent evangelical figure and president of the Sojourners network, argued yesterday, "I don't know if Beck is just strange, just trying to be controversial, or just trying to make money. But in any case, what he has said attacks the very heart of our Christian faith, and Christians should no longer watch his show."

• Yup. The Day Bipartisanship Died was the day the illegitimate Kenyan entered the White House.
• And the fruitless search for bipartisanship has cost Democrats.

  Speaking at a progressive media summit, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) called it a "tragic mistake" that the White House fruitlessly chased Republican votes on health care rather than take advantage of the ripe environment to pass legislation.

  "What is very sad is we had hopes that [the] election was transformational in the sense of bringing people into the political process who have never been in it before," Sanders said. "I tried very hard in Vermont to bring young people into the political process. It is very hard to do. Obama did it. But you know where those young people are now? They are not in the political process. They really aren't. We have lost them. We have antagonized trade unionists. We have not done well with seniors. I don't think we have done well with women. And I think that was a tragic mistake."

  This isn't just hot air, either. The polling is clear on voter intensity. For a party that depends heavily on young voters, this is one of our biggest dangers heading into November.

  And it was all avoidable. Republicans made it very clear, very quickly, that they had no interest in anything but the destruction of the Obama presidency. I'll never understand why Obama and congressional leaders didn't catch on quicker.

• Dodd certainly hasn't learned his lesson. He lets Republicans water legislation down, yet when they back out, he doesn't strip out their bullshit from the legislation. I'll never understand why they keep doing this.