This is a transcript of the chat I had with Matthew Kerbel about his new book celebrating the "netroots," including groups like Daily Kos and Open Left which he considers to be part of "the Left." In this chat I tried to pin him down more specifically about what he meant by "the Left" and "progressives." First I'll post the Firedoglake summary so you can get more of an idea of what his book is about, and then the chat.

Crooks and Liars has the audio from Nancy Pelosi's conference call with some bloggers on the House health care bill.

Kudos to Chris Bowers for asking about the Kucinich amendment.

Chris' question was whether the Kucinich amendment was in the bill.

Short answer: No.
Longer answer: The Republicans supported it, and "this is probably one of those issues that they would like to use to take down the bill."

I'm really and truly happy whenever Democrats reject bipartisanshit, but golly gee whillikers. I can see why there seems to be no love lost between Kucinich and Pelosi [Kucinich has been critical of her move on the Weiner amendment].

Then there's this on the Weiner amendment...

Neo-Broder-ite Mr. Chris Bowers burbles:

Its About Who Runs The Country
In one camp, there are conservatives and private health insurance companies who oppose the public option in all forms.

In the other camp are House and grassroots progressives. Their basic argument is exactly the same as the first camp: a public option, even in its current form, would offer lower-priced health insurance than private companies.

Single payer advocates -- the only legislation on offer that can actually be shown, by evidence, to actually save lives and money -- are unpersons to Mr. Bowers, as he attempts to create his own reality.