Last week, Republican Senator Jim DeMint made it pretty clear why the opponents of health care reform are fighting so hard. As he told a special interest attack group, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Here’s how the President responded:

“Think about that. This isn’t about me. This isn’t about politics. This is about a health care system that is breaking America’s families, breaking America’s businesses and breaking America’s economy. And we can’t afford the politics of delay and defeat when it comes to health care. Not this time, not now. There are too many lives and livelihoods at stake.”

With Congress only days away from finalizing their plans for reform, it’s time to stand up with the President and fight back against this disastrous brand of old-style politics. So we need as many people as possible to publicly support the President’s principles for health care reform and call on Congress to act.

Please watch a 1m22s video of Obama’s response here, and if you wish, declare your support by filling out the form that only asks for your name, email address and ZIP code (presumably so that they can pass this on to your congresspeople).

Do it. It’s a tiny thing, but Obama’s campaign was one of many significant recent events that prove the power of social media and grassroots activism. Do it, please. We need different healthcare, and even if what he’s proposing won’t work, it’ll be something new to try. What we have isn’t just “not working,” it’s appalling. Please spend the four minutes on this.

EDIT: OK, so it takes you to a donation form. I should’ve checked before writing this. You don’t have to donate; your support will still be registered.

In short: Nebraska’s Senator Ben Nelson opposes to Obama’s health care reform work. Obama is all, hey, we got a broken system. Maybe we should rethink children’s health insurance and also how completely unaffordable COBRA is and what we can do about it, and, you know. Health. It’s one of those most precious resources.

And Nelson is all, Obama is trying to hurt private health insurers by making health insurance public! Socialized medicine! What next, THE FROG PLAGUE?

…Huh. What do you know, Nelson has received quite a bit of fundraising money from private health insurance companies. The article I link to here has Nelson attacking back, but he doesn’t seem to refute the donations.

Healthcare is a tricky and complex issue, and I’ve got no rosy sunglasses on about socialized healthcare. But this isn’t about public health insurance, it’s about elections. Frankly, anyone dismissing an organization run by Lessig and Trippi as a “special interest group” running “a fundraising gimmick” is automatically suspect in my book. And the vehemence of Nelson’s language combined with his considerable extremely-special-interest funding makes me want to go march somewhere and put flowers in these people’s fountain pens. It wouldn’t help, though.

So, how about changing election rules? How about entirely publicly funded election campaigns? Can you imagine how things might go when advertising time is roughly equal and people have to really think before they hurl insults at each other? What if no special interests got to financially contribute to a campaign? Wouldn’t that be nice? I think that’d be nice.

(Edited Friday 12 June to add this update from Lessig on the Nelson thing.)

I’ll be telling my children about this day. My goodness, the smiles on people’s faces.

I don’t care if he doesn’t live up to the hype. There’s no way for him to. He’s a person, a politician, a president I want to follow. It’s breathtaking.

Three things worry me. First, where’s the line of mental competency? This isn’t a new question, and I don’t pretend to have an answer, but it’s relevant here. Second, even assuming competency, what about sound judgment? (Ah, but here’s where their responsibility begins, and nobody should stand in their way.) And connectedly, what about physical addiction to stimulants of various sorts? This ties into both competency and sound judgment. But also, successful navigation of the addiction bit heavily depends on education, and that’s what I see as lacking.

So, we need, must have education on this topic that goes along with the freedom to experiment with one’s own brain and body chemistry. And allowing people to do so at will involves implicit acceptance of some incidence of drug addiction. But just as alcoholism is no reason to reinstate Prohibition, addiction to drugs — prescription and otherwise — is no reason to restrict those drugs.

Of course, there are drugs whose addictiveness is so overwhelming that I wouldn’t particularly want those available without a prescription. But, having seen people around me take Adderall and the like for some years, some of them getting addicted, some — not, I think cognitive-enhancing drugs aren’t physically addictive enough to worry. We just need to make sure to get information to people, enough of it that they can make their own informed decisions.

(Edited to add: But I do wish people would stop calling them brain doping drugs. That puts a derisive spin on what isn’t an inherently bad practice.)

Fair enough on saving tax dollars, but how will this create or restore jobs? Does every bit of savings in taxes put people to work?

One, the security team. “Nominees announced today include Senator Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Eric Holder as Attorney General, Governor Janet Napolitano as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Susan Rice as Ambassador to the United Nations, and General Jim Jones, USMC (Ret) as National Security Adviser. President-elect Obama also announced that he has asked Robert Gates to stay on as Secretary of Defense.”

Out of six people, on the security team, three are women. This should be interesting. I’ve heard it said many times that if women were in power, we’d have fewer military conflicts and more diplomatic resolution. I’d like to see this theory tested.

Two: change.gov is published under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Whoa, sanity and openness in practice! Now, if only they’d publish a revision history of the site…

I did not realize it was possible to be simultaneously deliriously happy and bitterly disappointed until tonight.

Why, California? Why do you hate some of your residents so much that you would take away the civil rights they were given enough time ago for you to have seen that marriage between two people who love each other doesn’t hurt you in any way?

*giant sigh of relief and amazement*

(Not that I voted yet; the line totally defeated me this morning, and laughed in my face too, what with being three blocks long. Going to cast my ballot after work, when it doesn’t matter how long I stand in line.)

Today, people are twittering and blogging and talking about hope, and I’m afraid to hope but so, so excited.

Today, like some others,, I’m feeling pragmatic – about the U.S., about the world in all its polluting, genocidal glory, about my own little life and where it’s leading me. It’s leading me in some scary-exciting directions.

I like today. It’s electric.