Hamsher circled the wagons around the Netroots and then filled them with teabags:

At no time do the synapses firing in their brains make the connection that both the “lazy progressive bloggers” and the tea party activists are saying almost the exact same thing about the Senate bill.

via Jane Hamsher: Left/Right Populist Outrage Will Defeat Senate Health Care Bill.

This comparison is ridiculous. The tea baggers say no bills should be passed that interfere with the “free market” aka “gov’t hands of my medicare” nonsense. Progressives want health care reform, the ones against the current compromise who jumped in to say “kill the bill” want to make sure that private insurance companies receive no windfall from health care/insurance or any other legislation. If this is not possible, they either advocate starting over with the senate bill and creating a senate public option as the minimum step toward single payer health care OR stripping any health care reforms out and enacting health care rights for citizens and regulations to guarantee that, essentially allowing access to coverage but through much lower cost regulations.

The “kill the bill” mantra was already a poor articulation of progressive goals regarding repairing the Senate Health Care Bill and it was a mantra that fueled the “everyone is against reform, now” theme to be kicked around the news media before the historic Christmas Eve senate vote to pass health care reform. It never represented the even “almost the same thing” that teabaggers wanted.

Now Hamsher has teamed up with Grover Norquist to demand accountability from Freddie Mac’s board of Directors in 2000 and 2001 when earnings were misstated. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel was a member of that board and is directly named in a letter addressed to US Attorney General Holder from Norquist and Hamsher. Hamsher’s goals are to stop the siphon of tax payer money to corporate bailouts through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being able to buy crap mortgages from banks who were largely responsible for offering garbage mortgages to use as filler for specialized securities. Norquist’s goal is to stop taxes and starve government to a military industrial complex. The ACLU and other groups have done excellent work filing FOIA requests and pursuing them to achieve open government. Why wouldn’t Hamsher team up with one of these groups and leverage her FDL community to fund an effort?

Remember those environmental issues commercials where a lefty and a righty got together and said: we know something needs to be done about climate change so we are gonna chum it up on a bench in a eye pleasing black and white commercial?

Liberals thought they were demonstrating how settled science had settled the issue for everyone. These far right Republicans did these spots to launder their histories of being climate change deniers and promoters of garbage science used to debunk studies of climate change. Newt Gingrich chummed it up with Pelosi in that ad, and then he helped Pelosi by testifying before congress against progressive climate change legislative agenda. Now he denies he is against climate change legislation, he just wants climate change legislation that allows the free market to fix the climate change issues on its own. Do you think Al Gore and Pelosi may regret promoting Gingrich as someone who is serious about climate change?

I doubt Norquist disagrees with corporations engaging in creative accounting to obscure losses, he just disagrees with them having to account for anything to anyone except to their board of directors. He also disagrees with any government or psuedo-government entity created to promote empirically fair markets or support a middle class. Hamsher will probably end up regretting validating Norquist as someone who is serious about ending government corruption, when in reality he just wants to end government regulations and or public vs private competition. If Norquist can use this as a “Death Panel” cry to cripple the financial reform agenda of the Obama White House by formally accusing a high ranking member with (at the least) creative accounting and at the worst some sort of fraud, he will.

Even if you take Norquist at his word, that he really is upset by what Emmanuel’s role may have been with Freddie Mac, agreement on one issue is not foundation enough to make a coherent alliance. I hope Hamsher has a grip on where this whole thing will lead.