The Pentagon’s public relations machine is working overtime these days trying to sell a theme of "progress" in Afghanistan to push back against calls to end the war. The message machine behind this push is gargantuan, costing $547 million and employing more than 27,000 people. But, as our latest Rethink Afghanistan video shows, all that [...]

With General Petraeus’ stop on CBS Evening News with Katie Couric now halfway over, it’s worth taking a moment to unpack the unchallenged, false assertions and implications he’s piled up thus far on his media tour. We decided to look into the claims he made about “oil spots” of “progress” during his interview with NBC’s David Gregory. Both claims were absolute fantasies, and the remaining journalists on Petraeus’ tour owe their viewers more rigorous skepticism than what we saw on Meet the Press.

That Americans are not supportive of progressivism is largely a conjured up fear to excuse a failure to advance a progressive agenda and win support from Democratic Party leaders for progressive change. The American people support progressive ideas. They just need real progressive leadership that, independently from Democratic Party interests, promotes a vision and future where these progressive ideas are indeed viable and practical.

Democratic County Conventions are being held today all across North Carolina. Unfortunately, despite his super-human capabilities, Ken can’t make it to all of them. He has asked that the following letter be read to convention-goers on his behalf. Read it. Share it. Sure progress has a voice in this year’s election:

Last night the House passed the Senates version of the HCR bill and the reconciliation fixes that they had bargained for. With that we crossed a line, but it was not the finish line, not by a long shot. While the bill has a lot of things in it that will measurably improve the amount and availability of health care for millions of Americans (more than zero, but way less that all) that is not really the important and historic aspect of the bill.

What changed last night is the framing of the debate about health care in this nation. Up until now it was an undecided question if the goal should be covering all Americans in one form or another. That question has been decided, the answer is yes.

An exposition on the need to re-think action

Of course, all of us have heard about one of the President’s favorite maxims, “the perfect is the enemy of the good,” with its implication that practicality most often calls for us to forego our attempts to reach a hard to achieve or impossible ideal, in favor of acting to achieve a good result that, while not ideal; certainly represents an improvement in our current situation. It’s very hard to disagree with a proposition like that; but while there’s nothing wrong with the idea behind it; the devil is in the details of how you apply it.