In the United States, slavish adherence to “moderate” positions is often construed as exhibited “pragmatism” that’s in distinction to the more “ideological” views of people with less centrist views. In fact, moderation can reflect ideology ever bit as much as extremism can. I’ve had occasion to observe in the past that they best model for recapitalizing distressed financial institutions is provided by Sweden’s response to the early-1990s Nordic banking crisis. And nobody seems to seriously dispute that the Swedish model worked very well. But it’s too left-wing for the United States for basically reasons of ideological correctness.

Similarly, the Commonwealth Fund has a write-up of some Lewin Group analyses of different congressional health care bills. Here’s how much they do to expand coverage:

Pete Stark’s bill, the most left-wing of the lot (it’s sort of a “Medicare for many more” proposal) covers the most people. And here’s their impact on health care costs:

Stark’s is the best again. And yet there’s no chance whatsoever that we’ll actually do this because his plan, though the most practical, is also the most left-wing. Far too left-wing for the United States of America

Some folks, of course, will oppose the Stark plan because they’re right-wingers who don’t want to expand health care coverage. And some folks, will want to focus their energies on other, worse, plans because those plans have a better chance of passing. But what’s incredibly frustrating is that a lot of people who claim to want to change public policy to expand health care coverage and better control health care costs will nonetheless fail to embrace Stark’s plan or anything similar for no real reason other than ideological posturing. It just can’t be the case, as a matter of centrist dogma, that the best solution is actually the most left-wing solution. It’s a far more ideological stance than anything you’ll ever hear from Pete Stark or from me. But the people hewing to it will insist on being called pragmatists.

I’ve been observing for a while that for all the hype about people scoring big windfalls renting their apartments or houses out for inauguration week, there’s little evidence of people actually closing the deal on this kind of thing. Now The Washington Post takes a closer look and concludes: “The inaugural housing market has gone bust in record time.”

CAP graph:

Heather Boushey wrote words to go with it.

Onion: “Tim Gunn Takes Wizards Shopping For Less Hideous Uniforms.” Of course the Wizards already have non-hideous standard uniforms. For some reason they decided that they needed to add the ugly gold ones to their arsenal.

I know you’ll find this shocking, but The Weekly Standard Michael Goldfarb is lying about J Street. And of course The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg likes to misrepresent what people write, too, though of course that’s nothing compared to his whoppers about Saddam and al-Qaeda.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve heard references to the idea that Hamas is so dastardly that rockets kept getting fired at Israeli territory even while the cease-fire was on. And, you know, that’s true but the people putting the point that way are deliberately trying to deceive you:

A four-month ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza was in jeopardy today after Israeli troops killed six Hamas gunmen in a raid into the territory.

Hamas responded by firing a wave of rockets into southern Israel, although no one was injured. The violence represented the most serious break in a ceasefire agreed in mid-June, yet both sides suggested they wanted to return to atmosphere of calm.

Point being, the cease-fire was imperfect and imperfectly observed for a variety of reasons. It was an inherently difficult situation since neither party to the agreement would recognize the other side’s legitimacy. But the problems with the cease-fire, and the violations of it, are in no sense reflections of some kind of inherent perfidy either of Arabs generally or Palestinians more specifically or Hamas in particular any more than Israeli incursions indicate a fundamental untrustworthiness of Jews or Israelis or the Kadima Party. It was a difficult situation and not one the United States chose to involve itself constructively with.