In what I would consider a different tack of the same argument, Andrew Sullivan flags a piece that speaks to the utter uselessness of cable news. The point here, I think, is that the availability of individual news items on the Internet obviates the need for some blowhards arguing back and forth over what that news item actually means. Sullivan's comment is that "All I see of it now is on the web, The Daily Show or Colbert. I feel far more informed because of that choice."

This sort of pulls the argument in two different directions at the same time, but they're not really contradictory. People like their filters. Sullivan either wants a smart filter (which is more like a meta-filter, but I'll get to that in a minute), or no filter at all. He'll just drink from the firehose.

Chicago DJ James Van Osdol made an interesting observation that's pretty essential to this while talking about travel writing, saying:

I've made my peace with both the nightly news and the watered-down and politically safe album reviews that Rolling Stone publishes. I treat radio "travel times" as educated guesses, rather than fact. I'm an information consumer, circa 2010, who uses the media as a "gateway drug" to further learning.

Beats listening to NPR 24/7.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. It used to be the reporter's credo that "if your mother says she loves you, check it out," but now the onus falls on the consumer of that reporter's work. That percentage of people who live on Fox News don't even consider that they're not seeing the entirety of the story. So it comes to these sort of meta-filters like Colbert or the blogosphere to interpret the interpretations of what actually happened, and not everyone realizes that this extra semantic layer (a) exists and (b) has become necessary to cut through the bullshit.

Of course, none of this even addresses the quality of the meta-filters, which, on the Internet at least, can vary wildly, since any jackass with an Internet connection can write a piece on how meta-filters sit on top of filters that sit on top of...hey, where are you going?

The generous view here is that the scales are starting to fall from Tumulty's eyes, and she's investigating the issue thoroughly and providing proper context instead of just repeating the talking points she's getting from one side or the other. The dim view is that, if you're on one side or the other, this looks like one of those "giving the opposing view equal consideration even when it doesn't deserve it" exercises the mainstream media are so good at. I'm in a hopeful mood today, so I'm going with the former.

As for other cool uses of data, Nate Silver -- a data analysis rock star in his own right -- built a couple of "word clouds" off of open-ended questions in a recent health care poll. It does a really good job of breaking down the two sides of the debate.

It still doesn't necessarily tell the whole story, though, as some of those against reform are actually against what shows up in the first cloud as opposed to what shows up in the second cloud. Not all, but some, as evidenced by a report of a town hall meeting between a Blue Dog Democratic house member and some Tea Party folks.

Except, of course, that it doesn't. What the article says is that some of President Obama's advisers are set to make a recommendation that the plan for a civilian trial be scrapped. One would assume Attorney General Eric Holder disagrees, and still has the President's ear on this, and the article does not say that Obama has made any kind of decision.

The left is predictably up in arms over this, which makes me wonder what happens if Obama rejects this recommendation and stands by Holder. The article cleverly puts the words "likely" and "Obama accepts the recommendation" in the same sentence, but does it in Cheney-esque fashion, giving the illusion that Obama is likely to accept, rather than that his advisers are likely to make the recommendation.

On the other hand, this is coming from more than one source, and part of the story is that the switch may be necessary to get Congress to agree to shut down Guantanamo Bay. So, I'm not sure if this might actually happen. Of course, neither are Anne E. Kornblut and Peter Finn, who wrote the piece, but that's not going to stop the blogs and the news networks from talking about this like it was an announcement that the decision has been made, which is why it makes me mad.

Last night, I watched Howard Dean on Olbermann, and his comment about it was that the best way to pass a public option through reconciliation would be via an expansion of Medicare. My question is, if the current reform package can make it through as it stands right now -- which, admittedly, is still an open question -- what's to stop an effort to expand Medicare down the road?

Ezra Klein, widely considered one of the most knowledgeable writers on health care issues, yesterday:

I've long wondered why Obama didn't promise this a while ago. A bill offering a public option and Medicare buy-in to age 55 would be a popular bill, and a good bill, and could be done after health-care reform had passed. The administration and others like to say that the Senate legislation is just a start, and they should begin acting on that belief. Pass the start, and then begin trying to make it better with smaller, discrete bills that are easier to message and pass.

Now, I don't read Klein as much as I read other people who read Klein, so maybe he's said this before. But I take arriving at the same conclusion as a good sign that my critical faculties are still working.

Presidents, in order to convince others to do the things that the president wants them to do, must figure out what the people who will administer a program can actually do (which, of course, differs from what they might say they can do -- reading clues is hard). Presidents must figure out who really needs to support something so that it will pass, and know what they will accept (think public option. Who can you afford to lose -- Ben Nelson or Jane Hamsher? And will the inclusion or not of a public option really make one of them walk? What about Howard Dean and Blanche Lincoln, same questions? The answers are not obvious, nor were they at the time).

The bit in parentheses at the end is huge, in my opinion, and particularly refreshing among all the ADD-fueled second-guessing that's gone on through the process. And seeing the complexities and the interdependencies of all the different organs of the body politic that Bernstein then goes on to talk about and figuring out which buttons to push to get the desired outcome is one of those things I've always seen as a strong suit from President Obama. Consequently, it's a huge blind spot for an instant-gratification culture, and a large part of why the 24-hour news cycle can be so consistently unkind to him.

Last night, I watched Howard Dean on Olbermann, and his comment about it was that the best way to pass a public option through reconciliation would be via an expansion of Medicare. My question is, if the current reform package can make it through as it stands right now -- which, admittedly, is still an open question -- what's to stop an effort to expand Medicare down the road?

The obvious answer, of course, is the midterms, but while everyone seems to assume the Democrats will lose Senate seats in the fall, it's a lot less likely that they'll lose the chamber altogether. Plus, if they hold more of their seats than they expect -- a possibility if jobs start coming back by early summer -- they can spin that as a mandate to continue the work they've started.

This comes down to a fundamental difference in strategy between camps on the left. On the one hand, you've got those who think that, if we don't do it now, we may not ever have the chance for a public option. On the other hand, you've got the more pragmatic view that, if we don't do it now, we may not ever have another chance for any health care reform at all, and including the public option increases the likelihood of nothing getting done now by a number bigger than zero, so it's not worth the risk.

Which, in turn, is why 23 signatures from members of the Democratic caucus supporting the public option via reconciliation strikes me as largely irrelevant, because until you have 50 signatures, the uncertainty simply is more than I think the White House will tolerate. And I'm not a policy expert by any means, but, again, I don't see why you couldn't do something like drop the minimum age for Medicare after the fact.