IMPALIN’ — Stop Sarah Palin for President in 2012

In a classic case of burying the lead, a newly posted promo for a campaign tell-all book has a bombshell buried deep within. Remember Sarah Palin’s infamous $150,000 wardrobe from last year’s campaign? The mystery was never solved as to who actually bought her the clothes. Turns out,Martin Eisenstadt is claiming to be the one who bought the wardrobe. Eisenstadt, you may remember, is the very same disgraced former McCain adviser who also admitted to being the source of the FoxNews story that Sarah Palin thought Africa was a country, and not so much a continent. You may recall that when the story of Palin’s wardrobe excess broke last year , it was only noticed by careful examination of FEC reports by the RNC. Most of the receipts were submitted by political consultant Jeff Larson , but Larson always demurred when asked details about the shopping sprees at the Minneapolis Neiman Marcus and elsewhere. McCain senior campaign adviser Nicolle Wallace angrily denounced Fred Barnes when he accused her of being behind the profligate wardrobe. Barnes subsequently apologized and admitted he was wrong to accuse Wallace: “I was rough on Nicole Wallace of the McCain campaign, who was identified as the one responsible for getting the expensive clothes for Sarah Palin and being cowardly and not admitting she was the one. Well, it turns out I was wrong, I discovered. I apologize for my mistake and apologize particularly to Nicole Wallace.” To date, there has never been a full reckoning of what exactly happened at Neiman Marcus, whose idea it was to buy the clothes, who fronted the money, and who thought it would be a good idea to turn in receipts to the GOP knowing that they would come to light before the election. But now, perhaps, the first clue comes at minute 1:40 in this otherwise self-serving book promo for Martin Eisenstadt, where he says point blank, “I bought the Sarah Palin wardrobe” and there is a picture of him in front of Neiman Marcus. So if we can believe that a. there is a book (which some commenters are starting to wonder), and b. that the book is indeed being published by the prestigious Farrar, Straus, Giroux (home to 21 Nobel laureates and an equal number of Pulitzer winners), and c. that it is indeed coming out on Nov. 3 around the anniversary of the election d. that the book is anything other than an amusing, but fictional, must-read political-satire Then this would mean that this is the first comprehensive post-election book to come out about Sarah Palin. Her own book comes out next spring, and it will be interesting to see if and to what extent she refutes Eisenstadt. [Full disclosure: There are those who would argue that I am actually one of the co-creators of "Martin Eisenstadt" and co-author of his upcoming book. Eisenstadt, though, has always disputed this point.] More on Sarah Palin

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Dan Mirvish: Source of Sarah Palin’s $150,000 wWardrobe Comes Clean?

The republicans charge that Democratic health care reform would, in Sen. Charles Grassley’s words, “pull the plug on Grandma.” According to Sen. Jon Kyl, the bills before Congress would ration medical treatment by age. Rep. John Boehner says they promote euthanasia. Sarah Palin has raised the specter of “death panels.” Such fears are understandable. It’s not preposterous to imagine laws that would try to save money by encouraging the inconvenient elderly to make an early exit. After all, that’s been the Republican policy for years. More on Sarah Palin

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Newsweek: Why The GOP Is Gunning For Grandma

I’ve always hated plastic water bottles and dutifully slug a reusable bottle with me everywhere. However, a few years ago, I decided to nix my supposedly environmentally-friendly Nalgene bottles because I found out they were made with a dangerous chemical, polycarbonate, which leached into my water. I ditched the dull gray wide-mouthed Nalgene in favor of the narrow-necked brightly colored metal Sigg bottle. The Sigg was not only designed with shimmering shades of blues artfully wrapped around with a cute little hook screw cap, it was supposedly better for me and the planet because it was made with aluminum, not yucky, leaching polycarbonate plastic. Millions of others joined the Sigg bandwagon after learning about the horrors of many reusable plastic bottles that contain BPA or polycarbonate. However, it seems like well-intentioned consumers, such as me, were duped by Sigg because the company just announced that their trendy Sigg bottles pre-August 2008 were lined with the toxic BPA . BPA is an endocrine disruptor that is found in the lining of plastic bottles, cans, baby bottles and children’s cups. The American Medical Association found elevated levels of BPA “was associated with type 2 diabetes, angina, coronary heart disease and heart attack in adults with elevated levels of the chemical.” I had actually done a bit of my own sleuthing on this matter because a friendly representative from another reusable bottle company had indicated that the Sigg bottles were lined in plastic. My repeated attempts as a regular, but persistent citizen consumer activist failed, though, because the company refused to admit to anyone, including, shockingly me, what was in their products. However, the company publicly admitted to the BPA liner recently after repeated questions were raised as to why the company switched to an eco-liner of its bottles in the past year. I don’t want to necessarily continue to punish a company that has admitted wrong behavior and is now setting the record straight and selling non-BPA products. Especially since companies like Coca-Cola, Del Monte and the Grocery Manufacturers Association were exposed for trying to paint BPA in a positive light earlier this summer. But, BPA is a toxin that unknowing consumers were exposed to under the assumption that Sigg bottles were safe. Many parents, in an effort to avoid BPA-laden kids cups, switched to Sigg. As a consumer, you can take action. I’ve contacted Sigg to ask for a refund (liners@mysigg.com). If you are looking for a safe, 100% stainless steel reusable water bottle and don’t want to get a new BPA-free Sigg, I recommend Kleen Kanteen (they are 100% eco-friendly, BPA-free and a family business). Nalgene does also offer 100% stainless steel bottles. Learn more about how to lead a BPA-free life with tips from the Environmental Working Group. Additionally, citizens nationwide continue to support efforts to ban BPA. The Chicago city-council earlier this year outsmarted the FDA, which continues to argue that BPA is safe, by voting to ban it. There is now pending legislation in California to do the same statewide. Make your voice heard to demand that BPA be banned. I look forward to the day when we can toast each other to living in a toxic-free nation with our BPA-free metal water bottles. Sarah’s Social Action Snapshot originally appeared on Takepart.com

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Sarah Newman: Sneaky Sigg Sold BPA

Greg Sargent simplifies the question : Public, government-run health care was key to not one, but both of Kennedy’s final health care initiatives. One of these, of course, has already gotten lots of attention: The version of health care reform that emerged this spring from Kennedy’s Senate health and labor committee, which contained a public option. But there’s another, oft-overlooked initiative Kennedy championed that makes the point even more strongly. I’m talking about the Medicare for All bill, which was wholly Kennedy’s baby. Kennedy introduced Medicare for All in 2005 and 2007 and it never got voted out of committee. According to the Commonwealth Fund, a respected health care policy group, it was a “universal public insurance program” that would offer compulsory “Medicare type benefits” from cradle to grave. Public, government-run health care. “It would have functioned similar to the way Medicare functions now,” Sarah Collins, a vice president at Commonwealth, told our reporter, Amanda Erickson. “It would have been basically a public health option, a single payer proposal.” Let Senator Kennedy speak for himself, as he did in a press release after the HELP committee passed his bill, which he voted for in committee by proxy: “I could not be prouder of our Committee. We have done the hard work that the American people sent us here to do. We have considered hundreds of proposals. Where we have been able to reach principled compromise, we have done so. Where we have not been able to resolve our differences, we have treated those with whom we disagree with respect and patience,” Chairman Kennedy said. “As we move from our committee room to the Senate floor, we must continue the search for solutions that unite us, so that the great promise of quality affordable health care for all can be fulfilled.” [emphasis mine] Note that none of the “principled” Republicans on this committee voted for their colleague’s bill , including John McCain and Orrin Hatch, those great bipartisans.

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What Would Teddy Do? Part 3

From jeans to eyelashes, Brooke Shields has sold it all. And we know why: she has the power of the mom-a-morphosis. You can check out other “Target Women” segments every Thursday night during “infoMania” at 10 p.m. ET/PT and online at Current.com . More on Advertising

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Sarah Haskins: Target Women: Brooke Shields

Japan has been a one-party oligarchy for a very long time. This may not be a polite thing to say about a democracy and a U.S. ally. But Japan has been ruled by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) for the last 54 years, except for a few nanoseconds after the Cold War when the ruling party temporarily lost its grip on power. Because of this stifling consensus among a small political elite, “Japanese democracy” has an oxymoronic connotation and Japanese politics has been one of the most boring topics in the world. But that may all change on Sunday. According to the polls, the Japanese are likely to give the ruling party the boot. The opposition Democratic Party is expected to capture a two-thirds majority of the lower house of parliament, which would give it control of the entire Diet. In the American context, this would be as if voters kicked out both the Democrats and Republicans and gave a Senate and House majority to the Green Party. Japan’s opposition party has benefited largely from public dissatisfaction with the status quo. The sclerotic LDP presides over a patronage system that no longer delivers the goods and an economy that has been hit hard by the global recession. In February, the former LDP finance minister gave a drunken press conference in Rome in February, proving what many secretly suspected: the people in charge of the Japanese economy are not in their right minds. Prime Minister Taro Aso, his poll numbers edging ever bottomward, has tried to revive his fortunes by accusing the Democratic Party of insufficient patriotism for not displaying the Japanese flag and even, improbably, cutting up the flag to make their own party symbol. Like the Republican Party of Sarah Palin and John Ensign, the LDP is its own worst enemy. Japanese support for the Democratic Party is not all protest politics. There is enthusiasm for the opposition’s promise to clean out the Augean stables of Japanese politics. “The party says it will ban corporate political donations, restrict the ability of retired bureaucrats to find lucrative jobs in industries they regulated and ban hereditary seats in parliament,” reports The Washington Post . It is also promising child support payments to cash-strapped families and more social security funding, both popular policies in a country with a rapidly aging population and a catastrophic birth dearth. Perhaps most intriguing is the Democratic Party’s foreign policy. The ruling party has long hitched its wagon to the United States. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, wants a more equal relationship with Washington. “The era of U.S.-led globalism is coming to an end and we are moving away from a unipolar world toward an era of multipolarity,” argues party leader Yukio Hatoyama. An intense debate is taking place within the party over the fate of Japan’s “peace constitution,” which prohibits the country from having offensive military capabilities. Hatoyama has already spoken out against Japan’s military support role in Afghanistan, and a reduction in U.S.-Japanese military cooperation could be in the offing. Regionally, the Democratic Party would likely guide Japan toward better relations with China . Hatoyama has also vowed not to visit Yasukuni shrine as long as it continues to house the spirits of Japanese war criminals. This could lead to an upturn in Japan-South Korean relations as well. Political scientists have spent a lot of time trying to figure out why Europe, but not East Asia, managed to overcome internal animosities to create a regional organization after World War II. In Europe, Germany played a key role in apologizing and providing reparations for its conduct during the war. It also spent a great deal of political capital to engage East Germany, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union in a multi-tiered Ostpolitik. Japan, by contrast, has continued to be coy about its wartime conduct and, except for occasional forays, has spent very little political capital to build an East Asian community. The bilateral relationship with Washington has always taken precedence. The Democratic Party might change all that. With words, symbolic acts, and behind-the-scenes diplomacy, Hatoyama might steer Japan back to Asia. This is far from a done deal. Because it has promised sweeping political and economic changes, however, Japan’s opposition party may have little time or energy left over to help create a new East Asian community that rivals the European Union, however beneficial this development might be for Japan’s economic and geopolitical power. Also, a reduction in the alliance with Washington might push Tokyo toward building up its own military capabilities as a substitute. And that won’t win any friends in Beijing or Seoul. Still, with the prospect of a Democratic Party victory on Sunday, it is pleasant to contemplate not only a brand new Japan but a brand new Asia as well. This article originally appeared in the Asia Chronicle on 8/28/09. More on Japan

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John Feffer: Revolution in Japan

For all the hysteria regarding “death panels” being established in health care legislation, it’s worth noting that under one major private insurance plan consumers are offered end-of-life planning coverage that is similar to that being put forth by House Democrats. Under the ” Member Rights and Responsibilities ” portion of United Healthcare’s website there is an outline of “exactly what you can expect from your health care experience and how you can improve that experience, too.” The list includes the following pledge: Consumer will be allowed to “Choose an Advance Directive to designate the kind of care you wish to receive should you become unable to express your wishes.” The goal of the provision, it seems, is to offer consumers the type of medical consultation that is often needed (and frequently forgone) to make end-of-life procedures can be smoother and less painful. If it sounds similar, that’s because the House provision that has been derided as creating government-administered “death panels” is very similar. Under the now infamous section 1233 of H.R. 3200 , Medicare would pay doctors to provide voluntary counseling on end-of-life issues. Conversations would cover topics like advance care planning, creating “living wills and durable powers of attorney,” denoting a health care proxy should your medical decision deteriorate drastically, and sharing information about medical and hospice care as well as “the continuum of end-of-life services.” In short, the House bill promises to provide the funds for Medicare to cover the same type of activities that United Healthcare pledges to its customers. Conservative figures like Sarah Palin and Betsy McCaughey have argued that the financial incentives are such that, under the House bill, doctors would be encouraged to “pull the plug” on grandma. But what seems more evident is that instead of just private health care companies offering to cover end-of-life care service, House Democrats are insisting that Medicare do the same. Officials with United Healthcare did not immediately return request for comment. Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter!

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Private Insurer Also Provides "Death Panel" Coverage

It’s now official, Michele Bachmann, Betsy McCaughey, Sarah Palin, and Lyndon LaRouche are the GOP opposition to healthcare reform. The NY Times has said it’s so, and so it must be. James Fallows : And now we have the New York Times, in a big take-out story , saying that Dr. Emanuel, in his role as Obama health-care advisor, is in an “uncomfortable place” because he is being criticized by*:    1) Betsy McCaughey !    2) Rep. Michele Bachman (look her up) !!    3) Sarah Palin !!!    4) Lyndon LaRouche !!!! McCaughey, Bachmann, Palin, LaRouche — shaping American debate and media coverage about health policy? Was Zsa Zsa Gabor not available? To be “fair,” the story puts the criticisms in “context,” thus: “Largely quoting his past writings out of context this summer, Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York, labeled Dr. Emanuel a “deadly doctor” who believes health care should be “reserved for the nondisabled” — a false assertion that Representative Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, repeated on the House floor.” “Out of context” and “false” are useful caveats. But why is the story about Ezekiel Emanuel being on the hot seat in the first place — and not about the campaign of flat lies by McCaughey, Bachman, Palin, and LaRouche? Why are real newspapers quoting what they say any more?… Maybe because they are the voice of the Republican party. There’s nobody else stepping up with any kind of policy statement, with any kind of solution. Into that void steps the new faces of the Republican party.

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This is Your GOP, Redux

The Weekly Standard has officially abandoned Burke-Hamilton elitism in favor of Limbaugh-Palin populism, which, though a damn shame, was probably inevitable. What’s puzzling is that they’ve enlisted contributing editor P.J. O’Rourke, of all people, to make the final break. O’Rourke’s most recent article takes The Washington Post to task for talking ill of those fellow citizens of ours who have spent so much time shouting things in auditoriums as of late. One Post piece in particular prompts P.J.’s prodigious political, uh, criticism: Then, to add idiocy to insult, the Post sent Robin Givhan to observe the Americans who are taking exception to various expansions of government powers and prerogatives and to make fun of their clothes … Meeting with Givhan’s scorn were “T-shirts, baseball caps, promotional polo shirts and sundresses with bra straps sliding down their arm.” We learn, then, that making fun of other people’s clothes now constitutes “idiocy” according to O’Rourke, who must not recall anything he himself has written over the past quarter century. Luckily, I’ve committed most of it to memory. P.J. O’Rourke once began an article on the 1990 Nicaraguan elections with a multi-paragraph critique of the sort of clothes worn by those visiting American liberals who supported the Sandinistas. He included similar critiques of liberal dressing habits in an article on the 1994 Mexican elections. He spent a good portion of a piece on a general increase in world travel decrying the fashions of tourists in general and the French in particular, and elsewhere took issue with the appearances of those among the Great Unwashed who now fly on commercial airliners. He made fun of those who appeared before the Supreme Court in opposition to a flag burning ban for their general ugliness. He spent much of the ’90s micking youngish leftists for wearing nose rings and black outfits - in fact, he did this so much as to actually ruin it for everyone else through overuse - and did so on at least one occasion in the pages of The Weekly Standard itself. He’s written an entire article in which he and his girlfriend roam around an Evangelical-oriented theme park and make fun of everyone present for their general slovenliness. And he once wrote that Hillary Clinton should stop messing with her own hair and instead “do something about Chelsea’s.” He was right. Aging liberals who run around Latin America and Mexico dress like idiots. Half of the people one today encounters on a domestic flight would have been correctly barred from the plane by the captain in a more civilized age. I don’t even know where to start with the sort of French people who wander Manhattan in August. Earnest young leftists should be wearing suits or at least a button-down shirt instead of whatever the fuck they think they’re doing now. You can probably imagine what a bunch of Middle American Evangelicals look like when they’re at the mall. And Chelsea Clinton’s hair was all nuts way back when. Sarah Palin is elevated to a realm once frequented by Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, and suddenly the most capable among the conservative commentariat must pretend that the masses are above reproach and their passions completely reliable, assuming that those passions happen to coincide with the aims of the Heritage Foundation. Seeing William Kristol pretend to admire the innocent primitivism of the sort of people with whom he would rightfully never associate is one thing; Kristol has never been of value. But O’Rourke was once the greatest political humorist of the conservative movement, as well as a strong advocate of taste back when taste still favored Republicans. [Cross-posted from True/Slant] More on Sarah Palin

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Barrett Brown: Weekly Standard, P.J. O’Rourke Suddenly Opposed to Making Fun of People’s Clothes

In teaching financial literacy to audiences across the country, I often cover the topic of “End of Life Planning.” Included in this part of the course I will inform the attendees of the importance of planning ahead in this arena, and not letting someone else make these crucial life decisions on your behalf. A living will, health care proxy and planning hospice treatments are a few of the areas I cover. Living wills and health care proxies are very critical documents and every independent citizen, young and old, should have these documents within his or her estate plan. Living Will — Advance health care directives, also known as advance directives or advance decisions, are instructions given by individuals specifying what actions should be taken for their health in the event that they are no longer able to make decisions due to illness or incapacity. Health Care Proxy — An instrument (or document) that allows you to appoint an agent to make health care decisions in the event that the primary individual is incapable of executing such decisions. Both documents together are crucial in any estate plan. The living will allows an individual to outline what he/she would want to happen if they are ever incapable of making decisions about his or her life due to illness or incapacity. For instance, if you are ever in an accident and left in a vegetative state, would you want the doctor to “pull the plug”? This decision, without a living will, would be left up to debate by doctors and family members. A living will allows you to outline exactly how you want to be treated. If you know that you would want to be kept on life support for as long as possible as long as there are any life signs, you can write that into your living will. Conversely, if the fear of living your life as a “vegetable” is too much for you to bear you can have your wishes to be removed from life support earlier. The choice is entirely up to you but nobody will ever know that you even have a preference unless you have a living will. The health care proxy, is the document that essentially appoints whom you would want to have carry out the wishes outlined in the living will. So continuing in the same example above, you would have the option of naming your doctor, best friend, mother or another trusted person as the person who fulfills the instructions of the living will. What is important to remember is that whomever you name as the agent with your health care proxy has a duty to make executing decisions based upon your wishes. In my financial literacy courses I suggest that you name your trusted physician as the agent in your health care proxy, especially if he/she has been your physician for a period of time. You should also have regular conversations with your physician that allow you to discuss with him or her exactly how you would like to be taken care of. These conversations are critical because they allow you to make these decisions while you still have a voice. The living will and health care proxy provide you with that voice and the regular conversations with your physician are there to insure that your physician is perfectly clear of your wishes and desires. In a version of the new proposed health care reform legislation, it is proposed the government provide funding for individuals to have one of these critical conversations every five years with their physician. Somehow, there have been many false statements made about the purpose of these conversations. Below are a few quotes that demonstrate how many have been perpetuating misrepresentations (or blatant lies) of this proposed legislation. On a radio show on July 16, former Republican Lieutenant Governor of New York Betsy McCaughey said she had read the bill and made some disturbing discoveries. She stated the following: “Congress would make it mandatory… that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner, how to decline nutrition, how to decline being hydrated, how to go into hospice care… all to do what’s in society’s best interest… and cut your life short.” House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Republican Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) issued a joint statement stating the following: “Section 1233 of the House-drafted legislation encourages health care providers to provide their Medicare patients with counseling on ‘the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration’ and other end of life treatments, and may place seniors in situations where they feel pressured to sign end of life directives they would not otherwise sign,” they said. “This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law.” Former Governor of Alaska stated that the new proposed legislation was an attempt to mask the government’s desire to cut costs by refusing treatment and she stated the following: “And who will suffer the most when they ration care?” Palin asks. “The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.” The specific area dispute within the legislation, of which I have read all 1018 pages of bill HR3200, comes on page 425 in subsection (hhh)(1) where it discusses “Advance Care Planning Consultation”. It states the following: “[T]he term ‘advance care planning consultation’ means a consultation between the individual and a practitioner described paragraph (2) regarding advance care planning, if, subject to paragraph (3), the individual involved has not had such a consultation within the last 5 years.” It goes on to describe what the consultation will consist of which includes an explanation of advance care options, explanations of advanced directives, the roles and responsibilities of the health care proxy, resources available, end-of-life services and supports available, and benefits available for advanced care services. This topic is by far not the most optimistic or cheerful topic to be discussed but is necessary to be addressed so that we can be better prepared for these scenarios that occur in many of our lives. In addition, these conversations should not be restricted to the elderly as in many cases those who are younger have unfortunate accidents or illnesses that require advanced care planning. While many people are focused on page 425 of the bill, I would suggest that they turn to pages 426 and 427 which state the following in section (III) as it relates to the explanation of the orders regarding life sustaining treatment that has so many people alarmed: “(III) the identification of resources that an individual may use to determine the requirements of the State in which such individual resides so that the treatment wishes of the individual will be carried out if the individual is unable to communicate those wishes, including requirements regarding the designation of a surrogate decision maker (also known as a health care proxy.)” The key phrase that I underlined and will state again as it debunks all of the misrepresentations (or blatant lies) that have been told reveals the following: “[S]o that the treatment wishes of the individual will be carried out if the individual is unable to communicate those wishes”. The wishes of the doctor will not be carried out, nor will the wishes of the government be carried out…the wishes of the individual will be carried out. There is no “death panel” when life sustaining treatment is being considered. There are no conversations about how to end one’s life sooner nor are there pressures on seniors to sign end of life directives. While these conversations are not the most fun to have, this bill does nothing more than promote the education of the people about the options that they have, and the resources that are available, in the same way that I educate people in my workshops. If you have a health care proxy, living will, or even a durable power of attorney, you ensure that your wishes will be carried out. Knowing what I know, I am certain that to encourage people to have a living will, health care proxy, and to have regular conversations are wise and a valuable component of ANY financial plan, young or old. Are the politicians ignorant of this information, or are they knowledgeable about the importance of these items but choose to use this time to twist the words of others to insight fear? If it is the former, this is a huge concern of mine, and should be a concern of yours. To have legislators attempting to legislate an issue about which they themselves are not familiar cannot be good for the country. If it is the latter, this should also be a tremendous concern. As we see from the violent, and disruptive town hall meetings across the country there is strong fear brewing throughout the country as people are comparing Barack Obama to Hitler because he apparently is going to start a crusade to kill the elderly or disabled…this far from the truth and embarrassing to even acknowledge. The answer to the politics of fear or ignorance lies within the reason that I am writing this article. We need to have a massive crusade of educating the public starting with you . Barack Obama and the Democratic Party have not been as aggressive as they should be to explain the contents of the proposed health care reform to the American people. In the least, they are definitely not as aggressive as those who are out to play upon the lack of knowledge within America making it easy to insight fear within American people by spreading lies. While we need the President to increase his outreach with more concrete explanations, as this reform may comprise up to 17% of the nations GDP we must all increase our efforts to learn about this legislation and assist to educate our community. You can read the bill for yourself on line as I did, attend town hall meetings, and do what it takes to become knowledgeable enough to help our government spread the message of the true contents of this legislation. Ignorance and fear have no place in the home of the educated and well-informed. No matter your age, if you are an independent citizen you should have a living will, health care proxy, or durable springing power of attorney. You would be wise to have regular conversations with you physician at least once every five years. You need to educate yourself of the resources that are available to you to make sure that, God forbid, you are ever in a position where you are unable to make life sustaining decisions due to illness or incapacity. In the same vein of nobody expecting to lose their job so they should have 6 months of living expenses saved, nobody expects to suffer a severe illness leaving them incapacitated so we all need to prepare ourselves. The essence of financial planning is preparing for the worst but expecting the best. This is not National Socialism, this is good sense. More on Health Care

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Ryan Mack: Policies of Fear or Ignorance?

In 2003, Dave Chappelle debuted his eponymously titled show on Comedy Central and the rest is comedic history. For two seasons, Chappelle entertained audiences with his impressions of musicians such as Lil’ Jon, R. Kelly, and Rick James, political satires such as “Black Bush,” and commentaries on race i.e. the racial draft and racism i.e. Black KKK member . Over the past two years, the country has been rife with social, political, and economic change and turmoil. Which begs the question, where’s Dave Chappelle when you need him? Imagine his satiric parodies of Barack Obama’s ascendancy to the presidency, first as he battled Hilary Clinton, then John McCain to his historic win. How would he impersonate the President now? How would he take on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Obama’s heavily criticized health care plan, Sarah Palin’s political rise, or Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation to the Supreme Court? Or picture, his often time collaborator, the genius Paul Mooney, and his Negrodamus predictions. What would Negrodamus see in Chris Brown’s future? Or better yet, Michael Vick’s? Comedy has always been, among other things, a temporary elixir in times of intense strife. The best comedians (i.e. Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce) have always integrated social commentary into their biting critiques of popular culture, social norms, and politics. I was in graduate school at the time of Chappelle’s show and I must say that I looked forward to the moments of sheer brilliance that that show communicated to its audience each week. But now, I find myself not really moved to laugh and if I do so, its mostly because of some unintentional comedic farce that I just happen to come upon. In his brilliant book “Hokum: An Anthology of African American Humor,” Paul Beatty remarks that the reason he anthologized a book of this nature is “…because I’m afraid that American humor is fading into Bolivian and that Will Smith, the driest man alive, will be historicized as the Oscar Wilde of Negro wit and whimsy”. And indeed, after Chappelle’s short lived reign, no one has truly commandeered social and political critique through comedy with the mastery and skill of Chappelle. African Americans, especially, have always used humor as a kind of antiseptic to heal past traumas that have seeped into the present. Possible jokes that would stem from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s arrest, for example, are relatable to audiences of color especially sense there is a collective reality of this experience. Race, racism, gender, sexuality and class have taken a front row seat to the contemporary American cultural stage but still, the conversations around these issues are strangely not substantive enough, barely cracking the surface. In 2005, Chappelle abruptly left the show during the third season of filming after feeling uncomfortable with some of the images that were being produced, particularly after a crew member was laughing at one of the sketches in a way that made him feel uncomfortable. He felt that the show was moving in a direction that was becoming socially irresponsible. While I supported his decision and his concerns, I find myself every now and then longing for at least 5 or 6 minutes a week I would receive a good laugh at life’s absurdities. Damn, I miss Dave Chappelle. More on Dave Chappelle

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Courtney Young: Where’s Dave Chappelle When You Need Him?

Michelle Bachmann : Bachmann repeated the myth, adopted early by Sarah Palin, that the health-care plans being debated in Congress would set up “death panels” to determine which old folks are entitled to health care. “Thank God that Sarah Palin said that,” she told the callers. “These are true.”…. She also suggested that it might be some kind of religious destiny that hardy souls such as herself are in Congress at this time. “We all need to consider that in God’s timing that he may have allowed us, as members of Congress, to be in the position that we’re in just for this specific issue right now,” she said. “Everything that all of us have worked together and labored for over the years, all of it could be undermined with this one bill. President Obama realizes that. The radicals that are on the pro-abortion left, they realize that. They could win it all. And the unborn, and the vulnerable, the disabled and those at the end of life could lose it it all.” But it was Bachmann’s fervent call to utilize prayer and fasting to beat back health-care reform efforts that was the true highlight of the call. “That’s really where this battle will be won — on our knees in prayer and fasting,” she told the listeners. “Remember: faith without works is dead. So we’re asking you to do all of it: pray, fast, believe, trust the Lord, but also act.” Tom Coburn : Yesterday CNN’s Rick Sanchez aired a segment from a health care town hall where a weeping constituent explained to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) that her husband’s health insurer refuses to cover his treatment for a traumatic brain injury. As the woman continued to cry, Coburn told her that his office would try to assist her individually. But, he added, “the idea that the government is the solution to our problems is an inaccurate, a very inaccurate statement.” Chuck Grassley : [T]he ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee and member of the “Gang of Six” tasked with producing bipartisan health care legislation — ” vowed not to vote for an ‘imperfect’” health care bill: “Now is the time to do this right or not do it.” … ” We need to slow down and do a little less ,” Mr. Grassley told another town-hall gathering in Pocahontas, Iowa, Monday afternoon. “We need to fix what’s broken and leave alone what’s working well.” In an interview, he vowed not to vote for an “imperfect bill” that includes a public option or gives the government too much control over end-of-life issues. In March, Grassley characterized himself as an honest negotiator, telling the Kaiser Family Foundation that “everything is on the table. … You don’t negotiate when everything is not on the table…everything’s got to be on the table if you’re negotiating in good faith.” Grassley is hiding behind Steele , Bachmann, Coburn and the rest–i.e., the Republican base. And yet, as of August 19 , this was what we were getting from the White House: White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said today that Democrats are “absolutely not” giving up on a bipartisan effort. “There are several more weeks to go in potential negotiations between Republicans and Democrats,” Gibbs said. “I don’t know why we would short-circuit any of that now.” It’s not too late for Obama not to get punked by Grassley et al. on this. Give up this pretense that there can actually be a bipartisan reform bill that accomplishes anything of value, and help Reid and Schumer go it alone.

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This is Your GOP on Healthcare Reform

In recent years, a tactic of the Right, promoted by Murdoch and his clones, has been to decry the role of the elites in government. The last thing you want in government, according to this view, is anyone with intelligence, education, knowledge, experience, or wisdom, because such attributes make you out of touch with the common man and woman. They, as represented by Joe Plumber and Sarah Moosekiller, proudly know nothing, but know what they don’t like. The less they know, the closer they are to the average citizen, and therefore the more fit they are to govern in this topsy turvy Roveworld. The last thing we want in the complex and challenging 21st century is a Meritocracy. Instead, we see a race to the bottom of a bottomless pit in which the winners are those who are more ignorant (and holier) than thou. And the results of this massive experiment in social and political engineering are in. The evidence to be found in the gun-toting attendees at American Town Hall meetings on Health Care, and the global warming denialism in Australian media. We are governed almost everywhere now not by meritocracy but by idiocracy. But the Watermelon Blog remains, proudly, meritorious. More on Health Care

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David Horton: Clowns to the Right of Me

The problem with the healthcare debate - versus the attempt to actually reform a broken system - can be traced to three simple problems. The first is greed, and I’m not talking about corporate variety. I am referring to the current “haves” who are content to hide behind libertarian ethics so long as Medicare/Medicaid continue to pay in a timely fashion. The second is fear. As you may have noticed, people of all ages prefer the “devil they know” to any change, even if it would make their lives better. The third is lingo. People are batting around so much Kafkaesque sounding health-speak that most of us are simply too confused to react with anything resembling reason. To illustrate my point, I offer you a letter written by Bill Lehr, CEO of Capital BlueCross of Central Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley to The Morning Call , which is presumably something that people are familiar with in the middle of the Keystone State. He starts out clearly enough, reminding us that BlueCross is a private, not-for-profit and that reform without cost control is meaningless. (We already spend 16-17% of GDP on healthcare.) Clear as all this is, Mr. Lehr soon enough leads right back at the Tower of Babel. Before you can exclaim ‘huh’, he’s snapping off bits of health-speak, e.g., “Patient-centered medical homes” and “inappropriate lifestyle behaviors.” And this guy is better than most. In the spirit of encouraging rational discourse, I’ve decided to do my part by removing the rhetoric and sensitivities. Stripped bare, a lot of it makes sense, though I don’t agree with all of it. Here goes… 1. Everyone, stop acting like children and discuss this like grownups! (Or else…) 2. We’re the good guys. BlueCross has no shareholders. (Please like us.) 3. Universal healthcare is good, and we support it. (So should you.) 4. Reform won’t matter if the cost kills the economy. (Common sense.) 5. Coordinated, preventive care saves money by keeping people healthy; it’s also cheaper than withholding care until people get sick. (Didn’t Franklin say something about, “A stitch in time…”?) 6. Currently, individuals don’t understand how their insurance money gets spent, so they don’t object when it’s wasted. (That’s crazy.) 7. Private competition generates innovation. (Government is notable not mentioned.) 8. Being fat and lazy increases the likelihood of getting preventable diseases. (Please lose weight and exercise.) 9. Congress, slow down so that we don’t make needlessly stupid mistakes. (Tom Daschle has “not yet begun to fight” effectively on our behalf.) 10. Please be nice if you see me, Bill Lehr, in Dunkin’ Donuts. (This isn’t my fault.) Note: For the record, I first tried this experiment with Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, but I couldn’t make sense of anything that either of them was saying. More on Health Care

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Michael B. Laskoff: The Healthcare Debate Translated into English - An Example

A week or so ago I suggested that the health care debate was a great opportunity for the beleaguered mainstream media — newspapers, network news — to prove “in a slow and deliberate way” it was still relevant. There is so much disinformation flying around at the moment wouldn’t it be great to have someone in the media who had at their disposal the time and resources, step in and separate fact from fiction. And we mean really separate it in a slow and deliberate way. Have they managed to do so in the interim? If they have there’s certainly no evidence of it. Howie Kurtz hits the nail on the head in today’s column : In many ways, news organizations have risen to the occasion; in others they have become agents of distortion. But even when they report the facts, they have had trouble influencing public opinion… Perhaps journalists are no more trusted than politicians these days, or many folks never saw the knockdown stories. But this was a stunning illustration of the traditional media’s impotence. Emphasis mine. What’s especially scary about this “stunning illustration” is that Kurtz isn’t suggesting the MSM didn’t give Death Panel coverage its best shot; he highlights a slew of occasions where both news anchors and reporters attempted to get the facts out. But mostly to little avail. The death panel meme is still raging. Details of what the health care bill actually contains have yet to permeate the masses. (Could you explain it if you were asked to?) Was it merely too complicated a story to cover properly? Is that even an acceptable line of argument to take? The answer is no. As noted, Kurtz suggests that many outlets did try to dive in and debunk the rumors. The fact of the matter is that they have clearly failed. The only thing worse than the MSM not devoting the time and space that it should to this story, is the MSM devoting the time and space and not having any influence on the public’s understanding of the issue at hand. If we can’t rely on news institutions to rationally explain the complicated (and extremely important) issues of the day in a way that will reach people, than why do we need them at all? Plummeting ad sales and paid content may be at the core of debate over whether traditional media will survive, but it’s becoming ever more apparent that the death panels are just the latest example of whether traditional media deserves to survive, and it raises the question: if the MSM were to disappear would anyone notice? Read more here . More on Sarah Palin

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Glynnis MacNicol: MSM’s Scary Impotence When Faced With Death Panels

Republican Sens. John McCain, Chuck Grassley, and Orrin Hatch played the scare card again on the talk shows Sunday, each claiming a public option would somehow reduce health insurance options. Other scare tactics: Hatch falsely implied Democrats were trying to slash Medicare benefits Grassley partially blamed his “pull the plug on Grandma” comments on discussion of the public option McCain endorsed the substance (if not the language) of Sarah Palin’s “death panel” claim. Watch:

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Sunday Loon Watch: GOP hates public option

For once, mainstream journalists did not retreat to the studied neutrality of quoting dueling antagonists. They tried to perform last rites on the ludicrous claim about President Obama’s death panels, telling Sarah Palin, in effect, you’ve got to quit making things up. But it didn’t matter. The story refused to die.

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Kurtz: Media Was Impotent In Face Of "Death Panel" Rumors

The latest conservative obsession - dutifully spread via Sarah Palin’s Facebook page - is marked by the same alarmism and factual inaccuracy as the hysteria over “death panels.” According to this tale, America’s veterans are being steered into ending their lives via a “death book” distributed by the government. It all started with Jim Towey, the former president of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives under George W. Bush, who penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal describing how the Department of Veterans Affairs was using an end-of-life planning document that was aimed at steering veterans toward choosing death. Towey stated that the message of the veterans’ health-care system to its patients was “hurry-up-and-die” and he contrasted the “death book” with “Five Wishes,” his own advance care planning document. In dramatic language, he wrote: “One can only imagine a soldier surviving the war in Iraq and returning without all of his limbs only to encounter a veteran’s health-care system that seems intent on his surrender.” Soon enough, Palin linked to the piece, stating that “the Veterans Administration encourages veterans to forego care as they make end-of-life decisions.” They failed to mention that the so-called “death book” contains the same advance-care planning required of all health care organizations under federal law, has been in use since 1997 and was developed with the input of interfaith ministers. In addition, Towey seems to have his own axe to grind. He has repeatedly tried to get the government to spend millions to purchase his “Five Wishes” book, which is published by Aging With Dignity, a non-profit group he founded, to distribute to veterans across the country, according to sources within the VA. Towey used his influence with the White House to get a meeting with VA officials, including then-Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson. At one meeting, Towey was informed that the VA could not act on such an unsolicited proposal without violating federal procurement regulations, according to VA sources. The VA’s policy is in accordance with the 1990 Patient Self Determination Act, which requires all institutions receiving Medicare funds to provide information to patients regarding end of life, living will and other advance directives. During the Bush administration, the VA changed its regulation to extend the act to cover all VA facilities. In 2007, after Towey complained that the so-called “death book,” “Your Life, Your Choices - Planning for Future Medical Decisions,” was biased against the right-to-life viewpoint, the VA convened an outside panel of experts to assess and update the booklet. In his op-ed, Towey stated that this panel did not include any representatives of faith groups or disability rights advocates. In fact, according to the VA, the panel included a priest, a rabbi, a renowned disability rights advocate, and the president of the organization that produces “Five Wishes,” the alternative advance care planning document that Towey is promoting and selling. The panel supported the use of the “Your Life, Your Choices” booklet but included some suggestions for revising its content. The plans to update and release the booklet were developed under the Bush administration and it is due for release in 2010. Towey, along with Assistant Secretary Of Veterans Affairs Tammy Duckworth are scheduled to discuss the issue on “Fox News Sunday” tomorrow. Dr. Ellen Fox, the Chief Officer for Ethics in Health Care at the Veterans Health Administration, defended the use of the booklet: Your Life, Your Choices is an educational workbook that was designed specifically for Veterans. The authors went to great lengths to ensure it would be meaningful and helpful to all Veterans, regardless of their religious and cultural backgrounds. I am impressed by the development process they used, which included extensive input and testing by different Veterans groups, religious leaders from 10 different faiths, elderly and disabled individuals, and experienced doctors and nurses. They even made sure to incorporate everyday language that Veterans commonly use to describe medical conditions, while at the same time providing accurate information from the physician’s perspective. Over the past 10 years it has been tested through scientific research, endorsed by many respected professional organizations, and widely used throughout the U.S. health care system. It is one of many educational resources we provide to help Veterans and their families. As a Federal agency we have an obligation to be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars by maximizing the services we provide our Veterans. Providing an educational resource like Your Life, Your Choices at no cost to Veterans is one of the many ways we fulfill this mission. The whole purpose of this workbook is to encourage more conversations between patients, families, and health care teams. Anyone who is seriously interested in ensuring that Veterans receive the best care possible should recognize this. Towey did not return calls placed to St. Vincent College, where he is the president.

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How Conservatives Got The Facts Wrong On Their Latest Obsession: The "Death Book" For Veterans

On Friday night’s “Real Time With Bill Maher”, Maher laid down some new rules. “New Rule: If Mitt Romney, Karl Rove and Sarah Palin all think America has never done anything wrong, we must be doing something wrong,” he begins, then adds, “if in your eyes America can do no wrong, you should really look into Lasik surgery.” More on Sarah Palin

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Bill Maher: New Rule: No Shame In Being The Sorry Party (VIDEO)

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is challenging his critics on a national health care overhaul, accusing them of making “phony claims” about the legislation. “This is an issue of vital concern to every American, and I’m glad that so many are engaged,” Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address. “But it also should be an honest debate, not one dominated by willful misrepresentations and outright distortions, spread by the very folks who would benefit the most by keeping things exactly as they are.” Obama said illegal immigrants would not be part of the health care overhaul, taxpayers would not be mandated to fund abortions and he does not intend a government takeover of health care – all claims that critics have made at contentious town hall-style meetings with members of Congress. He also took a swipe at “death panels,” an idea former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin introduced on her Facebook page. “As every credible person who has looked into it has said, there are no so-called death panels – an offensive notion to me and to the American people,” Obama said. “These are phony claims meant to divide us.” Obama’s liberal base was angered this past week after he seemed to suggest he would be fine with a plan that lacked a government-run health insurance option. “This is one idea among many to provide more competition and choice, especially in the many places around the country where just one insurer thoroughly dominates the marketplace,” Obama said. “Let me repeat: It would be just an option; those who prefer their private insurer would be under no obligation to shift to a public plan.” In their weekly address, Republicans accused Obama of misrepresenting his proposal. “As opposition to the Democrats’ government-run health plan is mounting, the president has said he’d like to stamp out some of the disinformation floating around out there,” said Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga. “The problem is the president, himself, plays fast and loose with the facts.” Price said that the whole plan should be scrapped and lawmakers should start over with a plan that makes sure patients – not Washington or insurance providers – are the top priority. “We all know that when the government is setting the rules and is backed by tax dollars, it will destroy, not compete with, the private sector,” said Price, a physician. “The reality is, whether or not you get to keep your plan, or your doctor, is very much in question under the president’s proposal.” ___ On the Net: Obama: http://www.whitehouse.gov GOP: http://www.youtube.com/RepublicanConference More on Health Care

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Obama Calls For ‘Honest Debate’ On Health Care

In recent weeks, Democrats have made progress with their leadership management skills. Here is what they have figured out: When your opposition is burning down, don’t get involved. Sit back and allow it to happen. For example, when the GOP floats the story that Obama is building concentration camps to house conservative critics, just hush, sit quietly and let them tell that story. When Glenn Beck goes on the air to tell us about those new Obama concentration camps, don’t interrupt him even when it’s clear that those buildings he’s afraid of are probably mental health facilities. Or when their party leader Sarah Palin suggests that Obama’s health care reform plan includes a death panel that will condemn elderly Americans to die if they require too much medical care, remember; Sit quietly and let the lunatics loose on themselves. In fact, be jubilant when other GOP party leadership stands beside Palin and endorses her as she rambles incoherently about this imaginary ghoulish new death panel. The Democrats have recently figured out that the art of sitting silently when the opposition is so vulnerable requires incredible discipline. When gun-toting healthcare teabaggers are showing up at town hall meetings to shout, scream, and appear unbalanced, Democrats should make sure they schedule as many town hall meetings as possible. Allow it to unfold on the nightly news with regularity. In politics, sometimes silence really is golden. So when opposition leaders like GOP Congresswoman Michele Bachmann tells the media that Obama has youth “re-education” programs in place to brainwash children into becoming liberals, make sure Democratic leadership does not disagree, comment, laugh, or shout … just be silent. If Democratic leadership ever begins to doubt the value of sitting silently as the lunatics define the image of the GOP, they should go online and google these words, “Orly Taitz implodes on MSNBC.” What they will see in that video will tell the backstory about how difficult it has become for Republicans to contain the loon factor within their party. Democratic leadership will easily conclude that Taitz who identifies herself as “a birther spokesperson,” a realtor, and a dentist is helping to seal the fate of a GOP that is developing the image of a deep south regional party destined to wander farther and farther into the wilderness. As Democratic leadership watches wack-a-doodle Taitz implode on behalf of all conservatives, the key will be to ensure that Democratic silence is deafening. The Taitz spectacle is no less of a gift to Democrats than the videos flooding the net that show a black woman being attacked at a teabagger town hall meeting for holding up a Rosa Parks poster. Or the video that shows immigration protesters shouting that illegals should be bused back to Mexico “after we put a bullet in their head.” Public approval ratings of the new GOP are falling to levels that compete with those of Dick Cheney and Ann Coulter. The saying, “Never look a gift horse in the mouth,” is a peculiar one. It simply means to hush, don’t say a word and graciously accept a gift when it comes your way. These days those gifts are too many to count. More on Health Care

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Mike Papantonio: Silence is Golden

The Energy Citizens’ company picnics, such as the one we crashed Tuesday in Houston , have been getting a lot of attention through the Netroots , in national publications, and even last night on Rachel Maddow (where one of our videos was featured, even if credit was not given — thanks Rachel, we love you!!) Though the Netroots has gotten the message loud and clear: these are really just company picnics, not uprisings of real grassroots support, there has still been some hedging on the part of the traditional media — who is still reporting that “many of the people attending the demonstration were employees of oil companies who work in Houston and were bused from their workplaces.” But the truth is that the Houston rally was attended ONLY by energy company employees and retirees (at least that’s the way they wanted it). It’s no big surprise that a few rabble-rousing enviros were kicked out, but when even those that oppose cap and trade were turned away- that should raise major red flags about the true nature of these events. This isn’t even Astroturf anymore, this is asphalt. But don’t take my word for it, listen to the anti-cap and trade folks from Freedom Works that were from yesterday’s rally: Even though we were denied access, our intrepid Citizen Sarah was able to blend in with a crowd walking in and starting talking to energy company employees about climate change legislation. You know, Energy Company Employees Can Say the Darndest Things: Look for: Global Warming Deniers! ( *SHOCKING!*) People Who Have NO IDEA What is actually in the American Clean Energy & Security Act Misrepresentations about the bill–and our energy policy and energy sector– all spouted back like they got the memo of Big Oil’s talking points! And…. a guy from a natural gas company who really understands what made the climate bill bad: too much special interest influence and lobbying! (irony, much? But he does have a point….) And if you want some more firsthand impressions, check out my vlog on the event: For more updates, keep your eye on www.TexasVox.org More on Taxes

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Andy Wilson: WATCH: Front Goup "Energy Citizens" Locks Out Real Grassroots: Why Does Big Oil Hate America?

I don’t think that Britain asked to be involved in our national debate over healthcare reform, but comments from certain members of congress, such as Republican Paul Broun of Georgia who claims that the UK and Canada “don’t have the appreciation of life as we do in our society, evidently,” have put some Brits on the defensive about their National Health Service. I don’t know what personal experience Congressman Broun has with the NHS, but I’d like to share ours. In March of 1990, my family became uninvited guests of the NHS. It wasn’t our plan. My husband, Denis Leary, and I were young, broke and I was 6 months pregnant. We had been flown to London by the BBC because Denis, then an unknown comic, had been hired to appear on a television variety show called London Underground. We were supposed to stay for two nights but — and I wish there was a daintier way to say this — my water broke as we strolled down Oxford Street, the day after we arrived. Denis and I took a taxi to University College Hospital in central London and were immediately seen by an obstetrician and admitted. I was given an ultrasound and an amniocentesis test and it was confirmed that I was pregnant with a 26-week-old fetus. The doctor informed us that our baby’s chances of survival were less than 50%, if he were to be born during the next few days. I would like Sarah Palin to rest assured that there was no “death panel” to determine whether or not our son was worth saving. On the contrary, I was placed in the maternity ward and received outstanding medical care from UCH’s highly qualified and compassionate medical staff. I was given a series of injections of a steroid that had not yet been approved in the United States, but that helped my baby’s lungs produce surfactant — a substance that normally doesn’t develop in human lungs until 32 weeks gestation. Because of these injections, my son, who was born at 28 weeks gestation, breathed on his own from birth, and was never placed on a ventilator. As non-citizens, we were not entitled to receive free services from the NHS, but nobody delayed our admission or emergency medical care to ask how we intended to pay. We had health insurance, but the doctors and nurses actually seemed slightly embarrassed when we brought this up and it was several weeks into my stay at the hospital before an administrator approached me to inquire about the insurance. He assured me that I would receive the same standard of care whether I was insured or not, but if I had insurance, they would like to be reimbursed, if that was possible. Of course we were happy to supply our insurance information and our carrier was more than happy to pay up (you’ll see why in a minute). I was in the hospital for two weeks before delivering, had multiple ultrasounds, the amniocentesis, blood tests, medications and ultimately a caesarian delivery. Our son was in the neonatal intensive care unit for two months, the first weeks in a level one unit where he had 24-hour, one-on-one nursing care. After I recovered from my surgery, I was provided a room in the University College’s student dormitory for a very minimal fee. I was given a hospital breast pump and was encouraged, daily, by the midwives and nurses, to keep my milk supply up. After our son’s discharge from the hospital, he still wasn’t healthy enough to travel by plane so we had a health professional come to our temporary home — as they do to every home in Britain after a baby is born — to see how we were doing. The “health visitor” taught me an infant message technique that she had learned at a seminar in Sweden that was known to improve the muscle development of preterm babies. She taught me how to hold our tiny baby in a way that soothed his colicky belly. She answered my frantic, new-mother questions. She hugged me, because I was a little teary, and so far from home. She gave me her card and told me to call her anytime. She told me where to take our baby for his first vaccinations. Later, she called me to check that our son had received them. Our bill? 10,000 British pounds. At some point we compared medical bills with an American couple that had had a 28-week preemie at around the same time. Their bill was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. But more to the point than the cost of the care, was the value that was placed on our tiny son’s life from the moment we walked, dazed and panic-stricken through the doors of University College Hospital. The goal of every person who attended to us, every moment that we were there, was to save this baby and offer him the best medicine had to offer. In some cases, such as with the steroid injections, this was better medicine than would have been available to us in the United States. I spent many weeks in the neonatal unit and saw many sad cases. Babies with severe birth defects. Babies who were born at 24 weeks gestatation, or even earlier. Some of these babies had been in the NICU for months and months. There was no “death panel” deciding the fate of these most vulnerable lives. No life was considered unworthy of the outstanding care that was being provided. I learned, during our time in the UK, that the British are very proud of the NHS and for good reason. How embarrassing, now, to have to watch our provincial leaders, in the government and the media, try to frighten American voters by making uninformed, extremely negative references to a healthcare system, that, in my experience, far outshines our own. Ann Leary is the author of the memoir, An Innocent, A Broad , (Morrow, 2004) which details her experiences with the NHS, as well as the novel Outtakes From a Marriage , (Shaye Areheart, 2008). More on England

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Ann Leary: Britain’s National Health Service and the "Appreciation of Life"

The wingnuts from far right not only seem to be naive, or better yet selectively ignorant, when it comes to historical fact, but apparently have managed to develop super powers making them impervious to reality. The teabaggers had their tea parties to protest rising taxes, claiming they were doing it in honor of the original Boston Tea Party, which had very little to do with taxes or any rise in taxes, but that doesn’t seem to matter to people like Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin, who ginned viewers up to go out and make asses of themselves by throwing tea bags and calling themselves teabaggers. The tea party was American and by gosh the Teabaggers are real Americans and they do what Americans do. Like come out in clusters, sometimes nearing double digits, which Fox News reported as “massive crowds.” They carry signs that say “Welcome to France” and “Is Obama French?” as if we were approaching the end of western civilization. These signs were held by people who had never been to France. If they had they would have seen the throngs of topless women walking the beaches, cheese lined streets, and wine fountains on every corner. They also forget that without the French , around the time of the Boston Tea Party, they never would have won the right to carry semi automatic weapons to rallies . Michelle Malkin appeared on Hannity last week, in part to pimp her new book, yapping about the “regal” democrats, hardball politics, and slam the government for making the same remarks she defended in past administrations. Hannity, in his Fox Newsy unbiased, innocent, and dejected way asks Malkin, “Is this the first time in our life time we’ve ever seen the government really attack people like this?” Malkin, dejected and aghast, responds with, “I think it is.” Really? She can’t think of a single instance when the government accused people of being anti-American? Is her knowledge or account of history that skewed that she can’t shed a glimmer of truth on anything? Would it really be too much to ask for a little journalistic integrity? That rather than counting on your viewers being complete and total rubes, you show them a little respect and inform and educate them? A more accurate statement from Malkin would have been something along the lines of, “Yes John I do remember the government attacking people and I don’t have to go to back to the dark ages of McCarthyism. Bush/Cheney did it all throughout the WMD fiasco. During WWII we had internment camps for people who … well … people who looked like me John. Michelle Bachman called all liberals anti- American on Hardball , and Palin’s done it so many times it’s not even worth mentioning. But usually they’re attacking commies, tree huggers, and wimps. Not us and it hurts John. It really hurts.” Malkin and her buddies on the right are defending and even inciting people to protest a bill that could help tens of millions of people. American people who drop at a rate of 18,000 every year because they don’t have health care. Many of the same people who are protesting the bill could benefit from it . Malkin’s right though, these people aren’t un-American. They’re uneducated, ignorant, and uninformed and that’s completely American. More on Health Care

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Richard Zombeck: Ignorance Isn’t Anti-American

We’ve all seen the ugly images. Angry citizens shout down opposition, offer slogans not substance and bring debate to a screeching halt. But, hey, say their promoters, it’s just “community organizing,” taken right from the playbook of Lefties. What’s wrong with this picture? First, this is not “community organizing,” and, second, it is anathema to freedom and democracy, whether done by the Left or Right. FreedomWorks , a lobbying group headed up by former Republican congressman Dick Armey, is openly working behind the scenes to get anti-reform advocates to pack townhall meetings and community forums. Adam Brandon, a FreedomWorks spokesman claimed in April the group studied Saul Alinsky, widely viewed as the godfather of community organizing. Speaking of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals , Brandon says: “[E]verything that we’ve been trying to do here comes straight out of those pages.” Trouble is, Brandon misses Alinsky’s core principle, and that of the many effective community organizing groups who are evolving Alinsky’s legacy today: The point is to build the power of regular citizens to gain a seat at the negotiating table. That takes research, discipline, vision, training and courage. It means coming up with real solutions yourself, so community organizing is the opposite of simple protest; and it’s also distinct from “mobilizing” — merely exhorting people to sign on to your pre-set agenda, as the Right is now doing. Since Alinsky’s death in 1972, the Industrial Areas Foundation , (IAF) with bipartisan networks of affiliates - religious congregations and unions and others — in over sixty cities has been developing sophisticated strategies to achieve solutions. In Massachusetts, for example, IAF-affiliate Greater Boston Interfaith Organization played a key role in devising a compromise health care reform enabling this state to attain near universal coverage. In Texas, IAF affiliates have been key to school reform and, in San Antonio, to a job training program called QUEST that is so effective it’s become a national model. In a broader sense, of course, solutions-oriented “community organizing” has been essential to social advances protecting civil rights and the environment, or bringing abusive priests to justice, and so much more. And note the beautiful irony. On the campaign trail, Far Rght heroine Sarah Palin sneered that Barack Obama was merely a community organizer. But now that “community organizing” has gotten a makeover in Republican circles, FreedomWorks brags of a “grassroots juggernaut capable of going toe-to-toe with the unions, extreme enviros, and the MoveOn.org’s of the world.” Sadly for our democracy, the far right has also stooped to distorting community organizing strategies associated with progressives. Take an August 6th editorial in Investor’s Business Daily which noted that “President Obama spoke then as the community organizer he was — a true disciple of Saul Alinsky who worked with and for ACORN in the days when they were storming banks and government meetings to force them to ditch creditworthiness as a criteria and forcing them to issue loans to those who couldn’t afford them.” In fact, ACORN — a network of roughly 300,000 low-income Americans independent of the IAF and other such congregation-based groups — worked diligently for years with citizens to counsel them about responsible homeownership and to fight predatory lending practices. Letting the Far Right malign community organizing is a setback for democracy. So I was dismayed when, in a recent interview New Yorker staff writer Ryan Lizza agreed with NPR host Bob Garfield that Alinksy was “Machiavellian,” and said “he would go into a public meeting with an official and would not think twice about humiliating them or staging a very loud angry protest. He had no empathy for the public official. The idea was to gain some attention for your cause.” In fact, the legacy of Alinsky is quite the opposite. Today, through the IAF, citizens learn why it’s smart to “make no permanent enemies” for, of course, you may someday need that very same person on your side. At the foundation of IAF’s philosophy is the building of “public relationships,” often through one-on-one meetings where citizens learn to listen for the values and interests of others; and that approach extends to building relationships with public officials. Sure, Alinsky-inspired organizers have staged public actions they consider “polarizing.” For example, an Alinsky-style community group in Chicago staged a “bank-in” in 1971 in which activists showed up to make withdrawals in pennies or tried to deposit pennies, as recounted in Credit to the Community by Dan Immergluck. But their goal was not to stop the bank from operating. It was to get enough attention so that the bank’s board of directors would negotiate community lending practices. They succeeded in getting to the table and the bank pledged to make its policies fairer. What a contrast to today’s flooding of meetings and wailing about the loss of “their America,” without specifying what one has lost and what positively can be done to fix the problem of health care. Real community organizing is a central tool of democracy. We need not less but much more of it: organizing that encourages and trains us to engage in our own research-based, spirited and disciplined dialogue that leads not to shout-downs but to real solutions. Frances Moore Lappe, of the Cambridge-based Small Planet Institute , is the author or co-author of sixteen books, including Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and Courage in a World Gone Mad.

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Frances Moore Lappe: Lying with Alinsky: Don’t Let the Far Right Malign "Community Organizing"

Did you see the woman shout “Heil Hitler!” at a Jewish guy who was extolling the virtues of Israel’s health care system? I love her so much I wanted to hug her. And I’m a Jew! She has as much grasp of health care as she does of history. And probably any other concept. Why, she’s Sarah Palin with a little less glitter body cream and and little more class! And she’s the core of the Republican’s opposition to the health care proposal. And I say keep ‘em coming! You couldn’t ask for better examples of the truth about the opposition than what’s been popping up in the news on a daily basis. I mean, Orly Taitz? “Get your government hands off my Medicare”? “Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the UK where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.” My nipples are like the snaps on a western shirt. Like a pissed-off army of dimwitted drones, they sally forth to their appointed town hall meetings and news segments, spewing all the names for bad people they remember from their glory days in junior high. Oh, and the reason they usually arrive late is that they stop to peck at their own reflections in the hubcaps of parked cars. They’re real patriots, people! Every lie, every canard, every obfuscation has been refuted and laid to waste ad infinitum. And yet the Charge of the Lie Brigade continues its unholy attack on reason, sense and the majority of citizens in this country who want an end to the price gouging, soul crushing health care system. And as the fuel for their fire burns hot and fast and needs constant replenishment, they are—merely by saying and doing what they’ve been told by their clueless corporate PR shills—burning themselves into extinction. So all you good folks who think Obama’s an illegal alien who falsified his birth records in order to grow up and kill your grandma, please: look into that camera, lick your lips and let fly.

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Steven Weber: Vox Ignoramus

In the spread of two hours you can see a stage shared by Sarah Silverman, current cast members of SNL, a man dressed as Yoda wearing only a Speedo, and an improv team who just got off the plane from Finland. “It’s the Woodstock of improv comedy” comedian Doug Benson explained to me as we stood outside the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre at three in the morning. It’s now halfway through the Del Close Marathon in New York City. “It’s like comic-con for theatre nerds”. Doug Benson goes on to explain the unique one of a kind experience that is the Del Close Marathon, “It’s a three day marathon where you can see various improv groups performing 24/7, all day and all night. They are only given half an hour to perform (as opposed to the usual hour-hour and a half), so they’re really scrambling to make you laugh before their time’s done. It’s a high pressure situation and since the performers are usually intoxicated at this hour (3am) it makes for a unique viewing experience”. This marathon of non-stop comedy is what over two hundred New York City locals line up around the street to see. The temperature is up to ninety degrees but dedicated fans still wait in line for their chance to see this rare three-day comedy spectacle. The Del Close Marathon brings a great blend of seasoned veterans, well-known comedians, and up-and-coming improv teams (both local and from around the world) to one underground black box theatre. However the Marathon wasn’t always a three-day long, alcohol-fueled, improvised comedy Super Bowl. Backstage at the marathon I talked to Matt Walsh, Ian Roberts and Matt Besser, who are three-fourths of the original founding members of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. They explained the trajectory of the Del Close Marathon to me. It was 5am Friday morning. How long has the Del Close Marathon been going on? Eleven years ago when the theatre was on 22nd street, it used to be only 24 hours. Now it has evolved into a three-day event. It started a year after Del Close passed away. He was a huge influence on modern improvisational theatre and the marathon was a way to keep his memory alive. How do groups get into the Marathon? We have groups from Japan to Finland applying. Getting a diverse group of improvisers is something that’s really important to us. We get over a thousand applicants and it’s whittled down to three hundred. We make sure that we end up with a unique mix. What’s your favorite aspect of the Marathon? Improv doesn’t get a lot of exposure. Sketch and stand-up dominate television. Improv doesn’t have a lot of media attention. This gives people a chance to see some of the best improv from around the world, at one location. It’s a great experience and the crowds get bigger every year. There is a reason this dark theatre under a Gristedes grocery store is packed with over eighty people at five in the morning on a Saturday: everyone here has a passion for watching improvised comedy and wants to see the best improvisers from around the world perform. And, why not get drunk in a basement while they’re at it? The Del Close Marathon combines a “best of” show for improvised comedy with the atmosphere of your friends’ living room during the last hour of a New Years Eve party. More important, the marathon offers a very progressive opportunity for the comedy community. Doug Benson went into detail, “The giant magnitude of the Del Close Marathon lets lesser known groups get really good spots and gives them the opportunity to perform in front of a sold out crowd. This isn’t something they can do every day. I think the Marathon is a lot like that Randy Jackson MTV show, “Americas Best Dance Crew”. Just like Randy Jackson has dance crews that no one has ever heard of perform in front of a giant audience and get great exposure. UCB Theatre does the same thing for up and coming improv groups, except without the break dancing”. While the Del Close Marathon may come off as a giant party, it offers more than just intoxication and laughs. It’s a growing force in the improv community; an opportunity to see shows like “Yoda Hot Tub” where two comedians in Speedos interview a man dressed in green face paint about his love affair with his Asian mistress, Moda, and his sexual adventures with her. It’s a rare environment, one that successfully combines live theatre with a never-ending supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

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Max Fox: Improv fans flock by the hundreds to see a 72-hour comedy binge

Two things irritate me about what Sarah Palin falsely labels “death panels” in the Democratic health plan. First, how bogus that the news media turns Palin’s Facebook blather into a national debate. But that aside, what’s really irritating about the proposal itself is that we have to have a law to reimburse doctors to talk to their patients. What? Doctors won’t talk to families about end-of-life issues without getting paid? They’re not getting paid enough for their medical services? It’s like a mechanic charging extra to explain what he did to your car. Who wouldn’t be outraged by such a thing? But doctors have conditioned the marketplace to think that they don’t have to talk to us without getting a tip mandated by Congress. What a joke. Craig’s personal home page: craigcrawford.com More on Sarah Palin

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Craig Crawford: The Real Outrage of ‘Death Panels’

(Note: A version of this post originally appeared at PinkoMag.com .) Health care reform is in trouble. Rachel Maddow handed the Obama administration its ass last night , while the New York Times - in the single most depressing thing I’ve read all month - reported that the young people, first-time voters and 2008 volunteers who ensured that President Obama won the election last November are sitting out the most important single policy fight of the Presidency itself. It’s frustrating, and we’re letting fear and inaccuracy dominate the debate. Yes, it’s a debate that the President has mismanaged . Too bad. If you voted last year, gave money last year, obsessed over the blogs and debates and Sarah Palin last year, this is the whole ball game. So: Here, in ascending order of difficulty, are five things you can/should do right now to help push healthcare reform. Here goes: (1) Ben: I’m sick of this whole thing. If I sign a petition will you leave me alone? Fine. Here is the best one right now: CREDO Mobile (my awesome progressive phone company and brave e-organizing venture) has a petition up that gets to the heart of the matter this week: Tell Obama the public option is not optional . You can opt-in to additional mobile alerts, but right now the big fight on health care is the left urging the President to stand firm and offer a robust public health care option. No, this doesn’t mean you have to switch phone companies. Time: 49 seconds. Additional time to Tweet, post on Facebook and suggest an intern should do it too: 27 seconds. (2) That was easy! Can I send another email? Totally. Democracy for America has a good effort going to thank House members who support the public option, and target members who don’t. Their “Healthcare Heroes” effort is an online petition with the same message as #1 (we need a good public option) but a different target (Members of the House of Representatives instead of President Obama.) It asks your elected officials to draw a line in the sand and insist on a strong public plan as part of healthcare reform. Sign it! After you’ve signed, it will give you the opportunity to call your own Representative as a followup. Again: www.DemocracyforAmerica.com/HouseHeroes Time: 1 minute, 6 seconds. Add on the phone call and it’s 3 minutes, 4 seconds. (3) Ben: I want healthcare too! Can I call someone? Totally. A phone call to an elected official SOUNDS scary but it’s actually painless. You’ll either be leaving a message or talking to an aide who will just note your contact information and tally your call. So easy. For this action, lets use an organization you may have heard of - MoveOn.org. Maybe they’ve sent you an email? They just emailed me with a message that’s the same as #1 and #2, but a new target - the Senate: Have you read the stories this week declaring the public health insurance option dead? Well, it’s not. The public option has the support of 83% of the American people, and enough progressives in the House to block any bill without it. And contrary to what you may have read, the White House has said repeatedly their position hasn’t changed. But there is real danger in the Senate, where conservatives have stepped up efforts to kill the public option. Can you call Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer right away? They have spoken out in support of the public health insurance option. Can you call and thank them for their support and make sure they know voters are counting on them to go to the mat for the public option right now? That’s designed for me to call my Senators, but if you go to their website you can call your own , and they will give you a script and the number. It’s good too because they have you call a District (local) office instead of DC, which freaks out your Senators more. You don’t even have to watch MoveOn - The Movie to do it. Time: 5 minutes. Total time to do #1-3? Under 10 minutes, and I’ve already contacted President Obama, Congress and the Senate. (4) Can’t I just give someone some money? Yes. ActBlue.com is taking your cash , which they will (a) use to support and defend the courageous progressive members of Congress who are pushing real health care reform, and (b) go after members who won’t. They have set up an effort that specifically rewards progressives who have formally pledged to vote against any health care reform bill that doesn’t include, at the minimum, a robust public option. So you’ll be helping those elected officials. Another good organization, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee , is taking donations to help them keep this ad on the air in states where Democrats in Name Only like Ben Nelson (D-Lobbytown) are being intransigent: Time: 7 minutes. (5) Okay I emailed everyone. I called everyone. I gave someone some cash. I want to go to a rally and scream at some tea-bagging racist crazy person. [Uhm ...] Sorry sorry. It’s been a long month. Lets try this: I emailed everyone. I called everyone. I gave someone some cash. I want to get more involved locally, either by attending an event or organizing one myself. Great! Two ways to do it. If you want to attend a meeting near you, Health Care for America Now has a good online tool to help you find the closest meeting , with some suggestions on how to conduct yourself, what to do if you run into crazy astroturf protesters, and how to report back afterwards. If you want to have a meeting yourself - even a small thing for family and friends - Firedoglake.com tells you how and gives you everything you need. (Warning - PDF! ) Time: 3-4 hours to attend a meeting, 20+ to organize one. Great! So Ben, why haven’t you mentioned President Obama’s own political outfit, Organizing for America? Good question! OFA is the offspring of the Obama 2008 campaign. In simpler terms, if you gave Obama cash or your email as a candidate, you’re on their list. Organizing for America is running a big effort (to mixed results - see that Times story again ) to get people involved. Honestly, though, I didn’t include their actions on the list because we’re not sure we can trust the President right now - part of the campaign is to push him to hold firm to his campaign promises about a strong public health insurance option. That said, they are trying a new tactic they just announced: a live online strategy meeting on Thursday at 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time with President Obama. Essentially the President himself will walk you through strategies to win healthcare reform. It’s a good idea and it could be interesting; sign up and find out more here . Is there a good site that debunks common myths about healthcare reform? Yes - this covers the basics . Great. What is the “public option” though? Watch this. It’s under 5 minutes and breaks it down: So, I can get unlimited, taxpayer funded abortions with Obamacare right? Ugh. No . Illegal Immigrants? They all get unlimited universal free healthcare right? Sigh . My grandmother is a pain in the ass. She has a disease or two … can we STOP What? Come on. No euthanasia. No death panels . Not true. As long as we get a strong, progressive plan through Congress, your grandmother will die some normal old-fashioned way. Great. Since we’re talking about medical care, can I see the sex tape with that guy from Grey’s Anatomy? It’s a medical show … you can’t blame me for going off topic … Did you do one out of the five things above? Yes. Fine . That should be everything you need. If you’ve found other ways to get involved (especially emails to family members debunking health care myths - I’d love to see those!) leave suggestions in the comments. More on Barack Obama

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Ben Wyskida: Five Things You Can Do About Healthcare, In Ascending Order of Difficulty and Commitment

If Charlie Crist was hoping to fill a Senate vacancy and make his 2010 plans a little easier, his plans just went a little awry : “I have informed Governor Charlie Crist this evening that I will not be submitting the Questionnaire for appointment to the Senate he kindly asked me to consider submitting. It was a great honor to be considered by Governor Crist for appointment to the United States Senate. I thank him for his kind gesture of confidence. After giving the Governor’s request serious consideration and deliberation, I have decided to remain in the U.S. House of Representatives fighting for the causes which I deeply believe in.”‬‪ Pity poor Charlie Crist. It all seemed to be falling into place for the Florida Governor (and Senate aspirant) last week. With Mel Martinez pulling a Sarah Palin and leaving office early, much speculation fell on Crist, and his appointment powers to fill this vacancy. He couldn’t pick himself–that would look awful. The frontrunner appeared to be former GOP Governor Bob Martinez , but there are some problems there, too. Could a Republican Governor already routinely derided as a RINO really name a GOP Senate replacement who had donated to several Democrats ? Then, over the weekend, a new name emerged: longtime South Florida Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart. As James L. at Swing State speculated yesterday, this might lead to an ingenious game of Republican musical chairs, whereupon Lincoln Diaz-Balart would go to the Senate, his brother Mario (in a less amenable district) would head to Lincoln’s FL-21, which would open up FL-25 for none other than Marco Rubio. Which would eliminate Crist’s primary opponent for the 2010 Senate seat (this, of course, presumed that LDB would not run for the seat again in his own right). Now, with those plans torn asunder, it’s back to the drawing board for Governor Crist. Bob Martinez continues to be the presumptive frontrunner, but a new name emerged earlier today: longtime Congressman Bill Young . Young, nearing 79 years of age, would perfectly fit the caretaker role. But he would also put FL-10, the most vulnerable GOP seat in the state, up for grabs, with Democrats already having an established candidate in Charlie Justice. The only thing that is clear at this point is that Crist has a pretty sizeable mess on his hands, where he could take some fire no matter who he appoints.

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FL-Sen: Diaz-Balart refuses Senate appointment

The Senate Finance Committee may strike end-of-life consultation reimbursement from their version of the health care bill, so maybe the hysteria will die down. But it’s sure to rise again if the provision survives in the House version. Will Congressional leaders summon the courage to deliver an adult response or cave in to hysterical attacks? It’s remarkable how easy it’s been to gin up a frenzy of fear and anger with scary messages that remind people death is inevitable. Most politicians say they support advance directives for end-of-life planning and encourage their use. At least they did until a few days ago. That’s when the idea took hold that it’s highly dangerous and tyrannical to encourage doctors to talk with patients about what kind of treatments they would want if they were terminally ill and unable to speak for themselves. That’s why the provision to reimburse doctors for the consultation can’t be part of health insurance reform. Apparently this would be the first step to a Nazi regime, where doctors somehow profit from euthanizing their paying patients and panels meet to decree the death of granny and disabled children. The national dialogue leaped from modest proposal to outrageous hyperbole so fast it’s clear something profound and quite apart from advance directive consultation was at work. International professionals in end-of-life counseling joke that in America people think death is optional. It certainly seems true, to judge by the public’s tantrum after being reminded it ain’t so. Hello America! We are all mortal! God made us that way. Adults know this in their hearts and the wisest among us live every day conscious of life’s impermanence. A mature society would have handled this differently. One of my favorite poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay , wrote, “Childhood is the kingdom where no one ever dies.” Apparently that’s the fantasy some of our national leaders want to promote. “Terry Schiavo will be kept alive even if it takes an Act of Congress!” “No one need ever discuss with their doctors how their life might end.” Such attitudes treat American citizens like children, too young to come to terms with their own mortality. Why should we be surprised to see town hall displays of childlike temper tantrums? Treat people like children and they will act like children . Playing into America’s pathological denial of death is to treat mature individuals like children, and very young children at that. Researchers and clinicians tell us it’s normal for children 3 to 5 years old to deny death is final. Telling a very young child Granny is “asleep” or “on a long journey” supports the denial. Between five and nine years old children come to accept that death is final, and can think about it’s happening to others. By about age ten a child is usually ready to start thinking about her own death. National leaders deliberately sparked fear and anger over a consultation about death and sensational media threw fuel on the fire . They would have us remain a nation of five year olds, stuck in an infantile refusal to acknowledge, grieve over, and plan for, our own deaths or the deaths of those we love. For shame. Certainly that’s no way to come into our greatness as a nation. Certainly such stunted psychological and spiritual development is not what it means to be a human, created, as many believe, in God’s image. No, coming into the fullness of being means living a life of thoughtful judgment and conscious decisions. And that includes decisions about the end of life. Recently the New York Times carried a story of the care and intention with which the Sisters of St. Joseph manage the individual deaths of their aged nuns as the entire order gradually dies out. They are thinking about their dying and they are talking about their decisions. “We approach our living and our dying in the same way, with discernment,” Sister Mary Lou Mitchell told the reporter. “Maybe this is one of the messages we can send to society, by modeling it.” In Adulthood — a kingdom still distant from our shores — leaders will foster dialogue and pass laws to help their constituents on that very human quest to discern and embrace both life’s sweetness and death’s certainty with a similar quiet grace. More on Health Care

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Barbara Coombs Lee: Hello! We are Mortal! Grow Up and Plan Accordingly!

Frequent readers of these comments know that I am an ardent devotee of Sunday morning talk shows and of the New York Times . This morning’s talk shows and various Times articles of the last week have put the problem of the debate over health care reform into clear focus for me for the first time. Note that I said “the problem of the debate” and not “the problem with health care reform.” The difference is important. Frankly, I am not expert enough to solve the health care problem. But I have some pretty clear ideas on the debate. First, as has often been noted and was repeated by Ron Brownstein on This Week with George Stephanopoulos (without George) this morning, the Obama administration learned the wrong lesson from the defeat of health care during the Clinton administration. In 1993, President Clinton and Hillary put a complete package before the Congress; they and their package became an easy target — and they lost. The Obama team vowed not to make that mistake, allowing the various congressional committees to work on their own bills, hoping to reconcile differences in conference. The problem with that strategy is that the Administration has not provided the public, hungry for health care reform, with a specific bill behind which to coalesce. The opposition has taken advantage of the lack of one bill to target one section of one bill and another, in another. The result has been that the majority favoring health care reform has been transformed into a majority against the Obama approach. Second, the Obama team lost control not only of the message but also of how it has been delivered. The volume has been turned on “high” but both sides. Evan Tracey, COO of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, a non-partisan enterprise that tracks television ad buys, reports that proponents and opponents of health care reform have spent nearly $60 million already , more than at this time on any other issue. Sarah Palin has moved the debate with a blatant lie, that the bill will create “death panels,” but that lie — probably the most egregious of the debate — does not stand alone. Democrats have inflated what the bill will do and underestimated its cost. And the President bears some of the blame for those exaggerations. Liberal Democratic groups have attacked Democratic moderates who have counseled moderation in the proposal — and the White House was slow to clamp down on them. Third, both sides have sought to turn this into a battle defining success or failure of the Obama administration. South Carolina’s Republican Senator Jim DeMint wants this to be ” Obama’s Waterloo .” President Clinton has rallied Democratic forces, saying his experience, referring the GOP gains in 1994, taught what can happen if the Democrats lose on a key promised initiative and embolden the opposition. Is the opportunity for needed health care reform lost? Perhaps not. The Obama administration needs to recall why he appealed to so many people early in the presidential campaign. Skeptics were not won over just by his rhetoric and certainly not by his promises. The key factor was his desire to change the tone of the debate. The President’s op-ed in the New York Times and his tone at this week’s town hall meetings are steps in cooling the debate, in looking for solutions not victories. The next steps will be to continue working with moderates, particularly those in the Senate, who are looking for proximate solutions, for win-wins, not win-losses. In a recent column, David Shribman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette referred to Maine’s Olympia Snowe, who is right at the center of the efforts to find a bi-partisan compromise, as a combination of two of her predecessors, Margaret Chase Smith and Ed Muskie. Snowe is smart, understanding both the interplay of personalities and the power of numbers. Obama and his team need to look to congressional leaders like Snowe, on both sides of the aisle, if they are to succeed. Finally, as David Brooks has commented in a number of different venues, major social policy cannot be accomplished on a partisan basis. The Democrats might have the votes to force through a health care reform bill. They would be making a huge mistake to do so without significant Republican support — and most importantly, without widespread support for a specific package among the electorate. They do not have to win over the Jim DeMints of this world — but they do need to capture the moderate center. We are in the dog days of August. Even those areas of the country for whom summer has been an illusion are now sweltering in 90 degree heat. Washington is, of course, unbearable. Congress is out of session. The President is about to go on a vacation. Good for him — and good for all of us. Let’s take ten days off from this heated debate, let tempers cool, and see if it can be approached afresh come September. L. Sandy Maisel is director of the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement at Colby College.

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Sandy Maisel: Reclaiming Control of the Health Care Debate

Yet another one for the you-can’t-make-this-up file: This morning, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) called in to MSNBC’s Morning Meeting to discuss health insurance reform. During the interview, host Dylan Ratigan asked Grassley about the so-called “death panels” in the House reform bill.  Grassley, incredibly, responded that the fervor over end-of-life counseling is the result of “a distortion coming from the far-left.” Did Grassley forget who started this lunacy? SARAH PALIN: The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil. A lunacy that has been embraced by many notable Republicans, including Grassley himself: There is some fear because in the House bill, there is counseling for end-of-life. And from that standpoint, you have every right to fear. You shouldn’t have counseling at the end of life. You ought to have counseling 20 years before you’re going to die. You ought to plan these things out. And I don’t have any problem with things like living wills. But they ought to be done within the family. We should not have a government program that determines if you’re going to pull the plug on grandma. And while Grassley is quietly walking back that bit of idiocy, the fact remains that it was Republicans who created and pushed the lie about death panels. And this is who the Democrats are negotiating with on a so-called compromise on health care reform.

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Grassley Joins the "Far-Left"

“A recent report from the New York attorney general’s office said nine banks that received government aid paid bonuses of nearly $33 billion last year - including more than $1 million apiece to nearly 5,000 employees.” ( Wall Street Journal at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125018847622029839.html?mod=googlenews_wsj ) “CitiGroup told the U.S. Treasury Department that energy trader Andrew J. Hall, with a pay package of $98 million, and a second unidentified trader who was paid more than $30 million, were exempt from [Pay Czar] review.” (Reuters at http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090815/bs_nm/us_finance_citigroup_payczar_2 ) “I don’t think the American people begrudge that people make big salaries.” White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs referring to Wall Street bonuses and salaries. ( Wall Street Journal at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125013107528528167.html ) Speak for yourself Mr. Gibbs. I got a whole lot of begrudging in me and here’s why . We basically own those nine large banks. Without the trillions of dollars of bailouts and loan guarantees we provided, they all would have gone belly-up — each and every one of them. There would have been no profits, no bonuses, nada. We saved their butts because at the time it seemed like the only way to stop another Great Depression. Even with the enormous bailouts and stimulus funds, presently over 25 million Americans are unemployed or forced into part time work because of the lack of full-time jobs. I wonder if they are or are not begrudging those “big salaries,” which actually are nothing more than welfare checks. I voted for Obama and hoped he would do the obvious: put a lid on Wall Street’s excesses including its sense of entitlement and astronomical salaries. I was hoping against hope that he’d do something sensible like cap all Wall Street salaries at $500,000 at least until the unemployment rate came down to 5 percent. Such an effort would have been a sign of social solidarity. It would have been fair. It would have been just, since it was Wall Street’s gluttonous embrace of baseless fantasy finance that set the stage for the recession in the first place. (For a guide to this history and the workings of the casino see The Looting of America .) Here’s what I’ll never forget: During the three years leading up to the crash, nine of the largest commercial banks made a whopping $305 billion in profits. Approximately half of that was doled out in bonuses. Since the crash these same institutions lost all of that and more when the world discovered they were raking in profits by selling toxic assets. The bankers and traders, to be sure, didn’t pay back any of their gains or make up for the enormous losses. Now that Wall Street is getting on its feet again and we forget that it is doing so because we are bailing it out each and every day. The bonus money they are earning right now is our money. Yes, Mr. Gibbs, I begrudge giving it to those who wrecked the economy. I would rather drop it from an airplane over Detroit. So why the lack of nerve on the part of such able politicians? First of all, they seem to truly believe that Wall Street profits and high salaries are necessary for our economic survival. Here’s how Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner put it: “The fact that the core parts of the U.S. financial system look like they’re profitable is overwhelmingly good.” It is “a necessary precondition to a stronger economy.” ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125018847622029839.html?mod=googlenews_wsj ) They believe that profitability leads to investor confidence, and the vibrant capital markets needed for a revived economy. But all this assumes that the “core parts of the financial system” don’t again turn into a fantasy finance casino. Second, they worry that the best talent will flee if they don’t get the kind of rewards they are accustomed to - which means paying them what they “earned” when they were milking the fantasy finance casino. But the Administration has itself to blame for this trap. Had they instituted a wage cap across the board, there would be no place to run to. That would have knocked the living crap out of reckless risk-taking because the rewards would have seemed paltry to our over-privileged bankers and traders. Finally, the Administration seems to believe that its tepid reforms can separate the high salaries earned for necessary banking functions from the high salaries earned for rapacious rip-offs. As Mr. Gibbs says, “The president continues to believe, as he has long before he got here, compensation has to be based … not on reckless risk-taking , but on value that you’re providing and doing so in a way that doesn’t jeopardize your firm or taxpayers.” That’s like believing in the tooth fairy. Please someone tell me how an entire sector that is on taxpayer life-support is creating value that justifies high salaries and bonuses? I’d like Mr. Gibbs to explain to unemployed manufacturing workers how Mr. Allen’s $100 million compensation package from Citigroup added value to the U.S. economy. I too want to believe in the tooth fairy. I want to believe that all of this will work out - that the financial sector will revive, that compensation will be severed from reckless risk-taking, and most importantly, that there will be more than enough decent jobs for the 25 million who are suffering today due to no fault of their own. I want to believe all of this because I worry about a right wing populist revolt catching fire among all those who do begrudge these ridiculously high salaries. I can easily imagine a clever demagogue (or a not-so-clever one like Governor Sarah) going from unemployment office to unemployment office waving a copy of Mr. Allen’s $100 million check: “Here’s what Obama did for Wall Street. What did he do for you?” But most of the time, instead of the tooth fairy, I believe in power. And the bankers are strutting their stuff. They’re taking our tax dollars and using them to lobbying against all of Obama’s reforms. They’re selling synthetic derivatives again. They’re making the pay Czar look like a wimp. They’ve even got Mr. Gibbs championing their cause for high salaries. But Mr. Gibbs, you’ve got it wrong. The American public does indeed begrudge the bailouts and the lavish salaries going to those who milked the system at our expense. We’ve got every right to do so. We’d be crazy not to take exception to being ripped off so badly and baldly. It’s high time the Administration sided with legitimate populist anger rather than with the well-rewarded elites. Unless it does so it a hurry, all of its reforms will crumble at the hands of those with fewer scruples and more determination. We will lose health care reform. We will lose financial reforms. And we will lose the best chance we’ve had since the Great Depression to make the system work for working people. Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street’s Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It , Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009. More on Barack Obama

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Les Leopold: Why White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs is Dead Wrong about Wall Street Pay

At a recent town hall meeting on health care, a tearful woman demanded: “I want MY America back.” The Republicans insist that the protesters at these gatherings are not the product of an organized conservative movement or fears aroused by the false claims of Sarah Palin or Charles Grassley about death panels, but rather are the result of grass roots opposition to the intervention of government in their lives and the fear of creeping socialism. Apparently, they long to continue the days of insurance companies denying coverage, refusing to pay when it exists or finally, terminating a policy if forced to pay. When called upon to explain why the government is acting like “Nazis” or the president reminds them of “Hitler,” they point to the bailout of the banks as an example. So I was envisioning a cartoonist who displays in a bubble what a person is thinking. What were those good old days without government interference when we had those freedoms the Constitution promised us and before the government took them away?….Let me think — (as nostalgic harp music plays): Why can’t we go back to the time when we just let banks fail and people lost their money without these bailouts and FDIC insurance? What about those happy days when we could employ 10- and 11-year-olds in our sweat shops, before those child labor laws? Or stop or bust labor unions without those pesky labor laws? How about the time when you could take advantage of employees before the minimum wage laws spoiled it? Remember those good old days when old people couldn’t buy food or pay their rent without Social Security or could not get health care without Medicare? Or when poor people starved without welfare and couldn’t get health care without Medicaid? And what about the greatness of G.I.’s coming home from the wars, many of them wounded, who couldn’t get a college education, and now that damn government comes along with this G.I. Bill. And how about guns. 30,000 people could get killed every year and 70,000 wounded and we could have automatic weapons. Oh, wait a minute. We still have that. Forget that. Remember when lazy, unemployed people would have to shift for themselves and just get a job, before unemployment benefits came along. Remember when we could keep “those people” out of our neighborhoods, clubs, restaurants, and jobs before those damn civil rights laws were enacted. We could get lung cancer from cigarettes, take defective drugs and eat poisoned food before that meddling FDA began telling us what was good and what was bad for us. And we wouldn’t have had that inefficient postal service which has been delivering our mail for more than a hundred years. Any fool could have seen that e-mail was coming and now look how much money the government is losing. And now they want everyone to have health care. I want MY America back! “Those were the days, my friend.” More on Health Care

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Judge H. Lee Sarokin: I Want MY America Back: The Good Old Days

I’m not sure the man who popped off and tweeted that Sonia Sotomayor was a “Latina woman racist” is the best Henry Higgins for the Eliza Doolittle of Alaska. But Newt Gingrich was a professor. And he does know something about pulling yourself up by dragging down others and imploding when you take center stage — both Palin specialties. More on Maureen Dowd

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Maureen Dowd Rips Palin: "Sarah’s Ghoulish Carousel"

The Huffington Post went to President Obama’s town hall in Grand Junction, Colorado on Saturday to learn what makes health-reform protesters really tick. In an effort to get beyond the virulent sound bites heard on TV, we asked those against reform pointed questions based on what HuffPost readers told us they wanted to know more about. Below is a video slideshow of our day spent in the crowds. As it turned out, the anti-reform protesters were greatly outnumbered by those supporting reform. Both sides became excited. There was shouting. Organizing for America, the successor to the president’s campaign apparatus was out in full force with a concert, free drinks, snacks and many signs. The contingent against health care reform hugged a corner opposite those for reform, shouting loudly to drown out their counterparts’ chants. One thing was clear throughout the day: People against reform were troubled by more than just Obama’s health care plan. Almost every anti-reform demonstrator we talked to expressed fear of what they perceived to be increased government control, spending and invasion into their daily lives. A number of people told us that this isn’t just about President Obama. Some have been angry since the Bush administration, others don’t trust government at all. A few people spewed out remarks against the president that were reminiscent of those seen at campaign rallies for Gov. Sarah Palin last year. We even met two Birthers — obviously misinformation was strongly represented. When we asked people for evidence or to clarify their positions with the facts they just continued with their talking points. The rhetoric is nothing new. The president took time during the town hall to rail against “dishonest” arguments. However, what is new is that many of the people against the president’s agenda — “dishonest” or not — are using the health care debate as a vehicle to campaign against him. After eight months of a new administration, we’re hearing language similar to what dominated the airwaves during the final months of the election. So much for change, at least for those who didn’t want change brought by Obama in the first place. More on Health Care

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Katharine Zaleski: Inside The Mob Outside The Grand Junction Health Care Town Hall (VIDEO)

What a decade it’s been! Having had our collective IQ sufficiently lowered to enable the election of a slew of undereducated, incurious, underachieving Neo-Republican apparatchiks, whose sole aim is to prove “government is bad” by sucking at their jobs (and at lobbyists’ teats) and finally reaching the pinnacle of pinheadedness with the placement of George W. Bush in the highest office in the land, we are now hearing the thud of all the swollen, low hanging fruit borne from the sowing of so many bad seeds smashing on the ground at our feet. The rampaging wrath of the idiocracy from the still reverberating crypto-fascism of Cheney through the stultifyingly incendiary narcississism of Sarah “Duh?” Palin to all the physiognomically challenged scribes and screechers from O’Reilly to Levin to Malkin to Goebbals (oh, he’s still got an office somewhere), it is a bumper crop of cranial crap, calcifying around intellectualism like so much scum around a bath tap. Oh, and guess what? You think what I’m saying is bad? You should hear what your representatives say about you when they get their talking points memos. Would you would be shocked to find that they regard you with even more contempt than the cranky, commie, liberal twerps do and that they have less sympathy for you (if they have any at all)? They love your unflinching loyalty to the idea of “conservative values” and the fact that “you lost” because that makes you more vulnerable, more malleable. Your anger is their strength. And they think they’re better than you. They laugh at you. Call you names. Yep. They do. Do the words I just said make you mad at me? You should be mad at yourselves. You know why? BECAUSE 70 YEARS AGO YOU SAVED THE WORLD!!!! You. Your heart and faith and guts…and smarts…helped stop the world from falling into the hands of TRUE fascism, of REAL government control, of ACTUAL death panels. Your pride and sense and unalterable courage SAVED THE WORLD! You trained hard, you fought hard, you tasted what the world would mean without freedom. You had humility. You valued education. You knew what it was like to work. To band together. To believe in your country. And you won. And now look what’s happened. A glut of angry, displaced, power-mongerers streaming a glut of backward ideas that a once intelligent, discerning people now swallow hook, line, sinker and row boat. And, in an unintentional example of liberal existentialism (and a favorite theme of that voile, treasonous Noam Chomsky, to boot!) if enough people agree with an idea regardless of its patent falseness even when checked against irrefutable truth, the falseness becomes—POOF!—the “truth” and by golly, that’s good enough fer the angry, vulnerable, malleable mob. Am I an elitist snob? Yep. I am. An elitist snob for Smarts. Forget diamonds and pearls and penis-cars. Gimme brains every time. And for those who may bristle (that means “get pissed off”) at my sentiments (”what I said”) then by all means continue on your path of blind self-destruction. Bring guns to health care town halls and by doing so shoot yourselves in the foot. Make references to Nazism. Continue to believe the guys who tell you Obama will kill granny and that the health care you have right now is just fine while they get paid by the health care and pharmaceutical industries. Believe the propagandists who hate that their days as profiteers are almost at an end. Continue to spout their lies and engage in divisive tactics that they label as patriotic but are really idiotic. Keep going. Breed down. Please. The rest of us are smart enough to wait.

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Steven Weber: Project for the New American Century 2: Rise of the Dopes

By PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Apparently ready to abandon the idea, President Barack Obama’s health secretary said Sunday a government alternative to private health insurance is “not the essential element” of the administration’s health care overhaul. The White House indicated it could jettison the contentious public option and settle on insurance cooperatives as an acceptable alternative, a move embraced by some Republicans lawmakers who have strongly opposed the administration’s approach so far. Officials from both political parties reached across the aisle in an effort to find compromises on proposals they left behind when they returned to their districts for an August recess. Obama has been pressing for the government to run a health insurance organization to help cover the nation’s almost 50 million uninsured. Sebelius said the White House would be open to co-ops instead of a government-run public option, a sign Democrats want a compromise so they can declare a victory on the must-win showdown. “I think there will be a competitor to private insurers,” she said. “That’s really the essential part, is you don’t turn over the whole new marketplace to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing. We need some choices, we need some competition.” Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said co-ops might be a politically acceptable alternative as “a step away from the government takeover of the health care system” that the GOP has assailed. Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate’s budget committee, pushed the co-op model as an alternative, saying it has worked in other business models. As proposed by Conrad, the co-ops would receive federal startup money, but then would operate independently of the government. They would have to maintain the same financial reserves that private companies are required to keep to handle unexpectedly high claims. Republicans say a public option would have unfair advantages that would drive private insurers out of business. Critics say co-ops would not be genuine public options for health insurance. Meanwhile, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said he would return to the bargaining sessions to find a bipartisan solution to a health care problem that has long vexed Washington. “I’m always ready to go back to the bargaining table,” Hatch said. “Heck, I’ve probably helped pass more bipartisan health care legislation than anybody I know.” That legislation, however, seemed likely to strike end-of-life counseling sessions. Former Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin has called the session “death panels,” a label that has drawn rebuke from her fellow Republicans as well as Democrats. Even so, Sebelius said the proposal was likely to be dropped from the final bill. “We wanted to make sure doctors were reimbursed for that very important consultation if family members chose to make it, and instead it’s been turned into this scare tactic and probably will be off the table,” she said. “And that’s not good news for the American public and not good news for family members.” Sebelius spoke on CNN’s “State of the Union” and ABC’s “This Week.” Shelby and Conrad appeared on “Fox News Sunday.” Hatch was interviewed on “This Week.” More on Health Care

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Sebelius: Public Health Care Option "Not The Essential Element"

Some of us progressives mistakenly thought that when Barack Obama and his campaign and mandate for change won overwhelmingly last November and we picked up seats in the House and when Al Frankenbecame the 60th Democrat in the Senate that the new government would enact the change that was the substance of the election. Americ’s whacked out radical rightwing, however, has not given up on their agenda to create greater and greater income and wealth inequality, to make the country’s public policy a captive of the bizarre free market ideas of novelist Ayn Rand, and to continue to have our healthcare determined exclusively by insurance corporations for their own profit while 50 million of us lack healthcare and its cost continues to drag down our economy. So the August congressional recess has been a bizarre season of rightwing brown shirt tactics of real thuggery led by Dick Armey, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and Newt Gingrich. Wow! What a revelation! Just as Hitler’s brownshirts and Mussolini’s blackshirts intimidated the good people of Germany and Italy in the 1930’s, America’s radical right is attempting to shut down healthcare reform and change by intimidation and force and the power of the Big Lies–death panels, socialism, government healthcare doesn’t work. If you oppose the public plan in the healthcare proposal and you are intellectually honest, then you must favor destroying Medicare and Medicaid and the Veterans Administration and the several other completely government run healthcare systems. In the most hypocritical tactic yet, the right has compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler. I think some folks in the mental health profession would call this last tactic projection. They are projecting their own feelings on others. This is not the time for handwringing and worry and trepidation for those of us who know how desperately our people need real progressive change, the kind of change that can raise living standards and the quality of life for average Americans and strengthen and enlarge our middle class and create an economy that works for all. Now is the time for us to fight for our vision and our promise and for change, to fight for a healthcare system that ensures quality healthcare for all and checks the insane greed of the insurance industry, to fight to restore workers rights and restore the fundamental freedom in any Democratic society to freely form unions and bargain collectively. When I say fight I don’t mean the thuggishness being used by the right. I mean peaceful, nonviolent mobilization that counters the Big Lies of the right, gives cover to weak Democrats and demonstrates convincingly that our ideas and policies are in the interests of a stronger, healthier, freer, and fairer America.

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Stewart Acuff: FIGHTING THE RADICAL RIGHT

We truly are through the looking glass, people. Sarah Palin, the original Queen of Hearts , has doubled – nay – tripled down on her “death panel” Facebooking this week. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who drink her crazy up, and some of them carry guns . FSM help us if they ever get their hands on blue face paint .

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Sunday Talk - They’re All As Mad As Hatters

Sarah Palin’s wackadoodle “death panel” fantasy got me (and everyone else in the world) Tweeting the other day. And then the Tweeting got me back on CNN.com. I’ve got no format or plan for presenting them to you. They came to mind, got Tweeted, and lived and died as Tweets should. But what the hell, right? It’s nearly time for Netroots Nation, and at this point, we’re just happy to have something to laugh at. So here it is, in as naked a form as I can think of: 20 Tweets & a Video on Death Panels: 1: In the feverish dream where “death panels” terminate the unproductive in society, Sarah Palin’s baby isn’t even the first Palin in line. 2: OUTRAGE! Palin “Death Panels” will exterminate the merely languid! 3: I demand the names of the officials in Palin’s “Department of Death Panels” 4: I can see “Death Panels” from my house! 5: Do you know the difference between a hockey mom and a “death panel?” Dipstick! 6: The good news is that most of the members of Palin’s imaginary “death panels” will probably quit, anyway. 7: How about in honor the American “death panels,” ya quit makin’ stuff up? 8: I don’t believe in the “death panels” until I see a death certificate. 9: Bush “death panel” kills 4,200 healthy American adults in Iraq. No complaints. 10: Never go in against a Wassillan when death panels are on the line! 11: Maybe she meant “meth panels.” 12: Palin/What’s-the-frequency-Kenneth?-guy in 2012. 13: OUTRAGE! Health care plan won’t cover alien probing! 14: OUTRAGE! Health care plan to cover mandatory Muslimification operations! 15: 3PO! Shut down all the death panels on the detention level! #obamawars 16: I’m thinking of death paneling the kids’ basement playroom. Maybe oak. 17: As a bipartisan compromise, rather than death panels, I propose some kind of malicious wounding commission. 18: More disturbing, still: Obama’s wedgie panels. 19: Death panels really is a horrible messaging mistake in terms of marketing them, isn’t it? Should be USA PATRIOT Panels. 20: I’m changing the name of “preexisting conditions” to “butterscotch.” Problem solved. And it was with those Tweets in mind that I went in to do CNN.com’s “Live” show again. Twenty minutes is a long time to sit there and smile about something as ridiculous as whether or not Sarah Palin was out of her mind in cooking up these “death panels.” She was. End of segment! But to smile through it, too? Thankfully, our good friend Gina Cooper was there too, to deliver the message of what health care reform actually is about… at least on this planet. Though I must admit, it gets easier to smile through it all when you have someone trying to play coy the way Matt did. Oh, it’s unfortunate! Oh, she might have gone overboard. And I’m not saying it’s as she says. But… gee whiz, it’s such a legitimate concern and all. All very amusing, if not particularly good for, you know, America and stuff.

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Death Panels: 20 Tweets & a Video

Paul Begala and Newt Gingrich have decidedly different views on whether former Governor Sarah Palin can make a political comback. Gingrich outlined his strategy for Palin to reemerge on the national scene to Politico, but Begala remains deeply skeptical any such strategy would be effective. In an interview with CNN , the Democratic strategist slammed Palin as “flaky and an intellectual lightweight,” and “about half a whack job.” While Begala respects Gingrich’s political skills, saying Palin would do well to listen to him, the Democrat ultimately sees Palin as a lost cause: Here’s the problem. He is trying to treat her like a serious person. She is not. OK? She is about half a whack job. She does not have the intellectual heft of Newt Gingrich or almost anyone else in the Republican Party, and I think she has proved that. WATCH: Embedded video from CNN Video More on Video

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Begala Rips Palin: She’s "About Half A Whack Job" And A "Flaky Intellectual Lightweight" (VIDEO)

I attended my local Tea Party yesterday, and it clarified for me, well, nothing I didn’t already know, or at least assume, or at least fear. It was an unusually hot day in downtown San Francisco, and Justin Herman Plaza was swarming with hundreds of mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-accept-the-results-of-last-fall’s-election-anymore wingnut faithful — not the thousands that KSFO radio host and marquee speaker Brian Sussman would claim on the air a few hours later, but a robust gathering just the same, pumped up on rabble-rousing rhetoric, pimped out in coordinated red shirts and witty placards, and above all pissed off; their very palpable anger, lacking a living, breathing, stammering, backpedaling town hall-cornered Democratic legislator to focus on, floating instead amorphously around the open plaza, looking for an animating principle and finding it in the inevitable Republican focus here in these first days of the Obama Age: the word “NO.” NO to health care reform. NO to “big government.” NO to “creeping socialism.” NO to this President. NO to gay marriage. NO to new taxes. NO to cap and trade legislation. NO to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. NO to modernity… Well, okay, maybe only half the crowd would still subscribe to those last two, but as one speaker after another traipsed on-stage and barked their frothing way through the faux-Gipper stations of the faux-libertarian cross, I wandered bewildered around the crowd’s periphery, trying numbly to decipher just what exactly it is that everyone was so heated up about. The experience was, let us say, disheartening. You know this already, but it bears repeating: a lot of Americans simply perceive reality much differently than, um, other Americans do. Did you know, for instance, that: Everyone who joins national health care will be issued a national I.D. card! or that: Federal bureaucrats will have perpetual access to our bank accounts! not to mention that: Obama’s going to herd us all out of our private insurance plans! Oh, ‘herd us,’ will he? you mutter under your breath, because by then you’ve lost your patina of reportorial detachment (which, to be honest, was pretty freaking fragile to begin with) and just start blatantly arguing back: Obama has said plain as day on numerous occasions that anyone who likes their current plan can stay in it as long as they want! (Incredulous stare.) “You actually believe that?” Seniors will all have to appear every five years before “death panels” who’ll decide whether they live or die! Come on, that’s just a willfully conspiratorial misreading of that one Medicare provision for voluntary end of life counseling — “Yes, you see?” — which they’ve already removed from the Senate bill anyway! “Ha! Exactly! Thank you, Governor Palin!” It’s ex-Governaaarrrrggghh… Because by then you’re literally gasping for air and desperate to bolt out onto the Embarcadero, where you imagine a soul-cleansing fog might drift in off the Bay and erase your pained knowledge of the fact that so many sentient human beings actually believe that Our health care will be rationed, like in England and Canada! Yeah, great, except that both England and Canada spend less per capita on health care than we do and their citizens have higher life expectancy. “No they don’t.” Oh, yes they do. “According to whom?” The World Health Organization. (Brief pause, then, with absolutist, pre-civil-war finality:) “You have your facts, I have mine.” Sigh. I mean, come on, buddy — nobody really “has” facts, do they? Facts exist in their own right, and we just tout them or shout them or flout them, in accordance with the dictates of our personal knowledge base and perceived ideological imperatives. “There was this guy with a sign that said ‘No Government-Run Health Care,’ and he had to be 75 years old,” marveled one corporate type who’d wandered over on his lunch break. “I asked him if he was on Medicare and he said yes.” Did you point out the contradiction? “Sure.” And? “He just walked away.” Which was so not a surprise, the Medicare recipients who want nothing to do with government-run health care being one of the more amusing right-wing cliches of this long hot August. There were no doubt plenty of them yesterday among a crowd that was predominantly older, overwhelmingly white and, I’d wager, heavily evangelical, a combustive demographic that didn’t exactly cotton to the gutsy girl who kept pacing around trying to yell “Health care for everyone!” loudly enough to drown out the repeated death threats and off-topic anti-abortion catcalls that greeted her homemade “Who Would Jesus Insure?” sign. Her question, in fact, was quite a bit more piquant than the ones I was asking. So I switched over. If Jesus Christ returned to Earth, would he advocate free medical care for the poorest and sickest among us? “Yes, he would,” said a pleasant, Jesus-placard-toting man named Dave Ward. Wouldn’t He have endorsed the public option if He’d seen fit to address health care issues specifically in the Sermon on the Mount? “Yes, I agree with that,” said the lady with the ‘Meet the New Face of Community Organizers’ sign. , And, finally, “I think he would be for it,” said Bay Area Patriot volunteer Gina White, making it three straight ‘Yesses’ in my survey of whether Tea Partiers are willing to acknowledge the philosophical contradiction that has marked their movement ever since Reagan seduced both Wall Street and the Bible Belt. “But let me just” — she tried to continue, and when I rudely cut her off in order to launch into a lengthy condemnation of her conservative perfidy (yes, by then I’d completely lost it), she politely but firmly asked me to listen. Which I did, and wound up talking at length with a smart, compassionate opponent of (come on, let’s own the name already) Obamacare who was willing to embrace progressives’ core moral argument for universal coverage while also questioning our specific strategy for achieving it and offering alternative insurance-reform suggestions that would probably require a few hours of diligent net-surfing in order to counter. All of which made me like Gina White in particular quite a lot and Bay Area Patriots in general maybe a teensy tiny little bit, but only further grayed out an essay that I’d imagined would be painted in stark black and white. Which clarity is, still, for my money, clearly what’s called for at this scary historical moment. Every night for the past few weeks I’ve been sacrificing a half hour of sleep to gulp down another few dozen pages of Rick Perlstein’s brilliant Nixonland. There’s nothing like a meticulous accounting of the brutal Vietnam-era cracking of our nation’s Red/Blue fault line to put our present cultural circumstance in perspective. You think tempers are high in 2009? Try ‘68, dude. People were setting off bombs, burning down cities, riding around with shotguns looking for fellow citizens to murder. Forty years ago America really must have felt like it was coming apart at the seams. Instead we stitched ourselves up and moved on. As we will again. As we are already. So, bottom line, let’s pass a damn health care bill already. A real one, with a public option, or at least as close as Senators Baucus and Conrad will deign to permit the other three hundred million of us to to enjoy. No, the recalcitrant side of the aisle won’t vote for it, and no, we shouldn’t care. We should pass the best possible bill via reconciliation and ignore both Republicans’ crocodile sobbing about Democratic unilateralism and tee-bagger invective about socialism this, Communism that, and whatever other detritus emerges from those poor bastards’ collective post-President-Moron minority-party psychosis. We need to pass the bill and take our lumps if need be, let the fair-and-balanced pundits blather about liberal overreaching and the conservative comeback, even let the GOP pick up a few House seats in fall 2010 if it comes to that. Just please, please, let’s pass the damn bill. Then we’ll sit back and watch. “We are being lied to!” yesterday’s speakers yelled repeatedly. They’re right, of course, but by whom and about what? Let’s pass a good bill, pull up an easy chair, pop a cold one and enjoy the spectacle over the next few years as millions of fence-sitting independents suddenly realize that they and their kids have health insurance which they can’t lose because of a job change or preexisting condition. How do you figure those politics will play out among swing voters in, say, Ohio and Florida in November 2012? Yeah, that’s what I think, too, which is why so many Republican leaders are calling the emerging bill, mangled by compromise though it will almost certainly be, the end of the world. They’re right about that, too — it’s the end of their world, anyway. As for our world, it just turns. The times change, sometimes epochally and swiftly. FDR ‘32. Reagan ‘80. Obama Now. The birth pangs of a new age are often painful and bloody, but this latest American evolution, whose genesis we’re collectively creating, will live and thrive. And over time, most of us, anyway, will see that it is good. Michael Krantz is a writer and editor at Google. The views expressed on these pages are his alone and not those of his employer. More on Health Care

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Michael Krantz: Who Would Jesus Insure? Tea Party Dispatch From San Francisco

There is an unspoken subtext to all this Obama-bashing that has been heard at the health care town halls and in the Birther movement. And I’m not talking about the racism which others have already identified. I’m talking about anti-Hawaiianism. As a native New Yorker married to a woman from Hawaii, I have first-hand familiarity with the fact that most of my fellow American mainlanders maintain a nagging impression that Hawaii is not really very American-y. If Obama had been born in, say, St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City, the Birthers would never have been allowed to say boo. This is where the Birther movement found fertile soil: Obama’s being born in a third-world-sounding hospital called Kapi’olani Medical Center exploited America’s embedded insecurity about the 50th state. Here are ten facts about Hawaii that the Birthers and the town hall crazies have exploited to create their case: 1) Walking through Honolulu International Airport, one repeatedly hears people refer to the flight to the mainland as “going to America.” 2) The McDonalds there serve rice and spam. 3) There are those native Hawaiians who still claim that their land was illegally annexed, and therefore Hawaii is an illegitimate state. 4) The street names have way too many vowels; just try saying, “Kalanianaole Highway.” 5) The health care system covers more than 95% of its residents. Does that sound like America? 6) You can watch NFL football games — live — at 8am on Sunday mornings. 7) It’s the only state that grows coffee. (Suspiciously, Kenya is also a major exporter of coffee.) Hawaii’s population is 55% Asian. Does that sound like America? 9) Obama himself once mistakenly said that there were 57 states, so even he is a little insecure about this whole notion of there being 50 states. 10) At least Alaska has Sarah Palin and oil; now, that’s America. Tom Roston is a journalist who writes the blog, Doc Soup, on PBS’s POV documentary website. His work has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Elle, Spin, The Hollywood Reporter, New York, and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn. You can email him at troston@gmail.com. More on Barack Obama

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Tom Roston: The Real Reason the Birthers Don’t Like Obama

I turned 30 this week, and promptly began to fall apart. Fortunately, modern medicine is here to help with my arthritis, incontinence, and bone loss…for now. WATCH: More on Advertising

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Sarah Haskins: Target Women: You’re Old

“This power that we’re supposed to have, we’re just calling it ‘The Wizard,’ just because, you know, wizards have magical powers.” -Jordan. (We have now found the one thing that Jordan does know!) When my column last week, The Empire Strikes Out , had to be several days late, I received many comments and emails from you readers, expressing how you missed it, and were hoping it would be forthcoming, and when it arrived, expressing gladness that it was here. Thank you. At the risk of being sincere for one sentence, that meant a lot to me. Also, before we get down to business, I wanted to point out that in the comments for two weeks ago’s column, No Joy in Mudville , a comment was left by evicted houseguest Casey himself, fortunately expressing how hilarious he found my write up, rather than fuming over my harmless japes. It does tickle me to learn that some of my subjects are also among my readers, though I don’t expect any compliments from Palpatwit anytime soon. Glad to have you here, Casey. Now to business. This week was a trilogy of fantasy worthy of J.R.R. Tolkien himself, and so shall it be. Book One: Sunday : Jeremy Piven and the Deathly Bores. Jessie is so clueless (and doomed) he actually misses Palpatwit. Said Jessie of The Dork Lord: “We lost a wingman, and a very good wingman he was.” Jessie, Palpie was the whole turkey. Pointless Wizard Speculation #1 : Kevin to Chima: “I thought sure you had the mystery power.” Why? Chima about winning HOH: “Most importantly, it means that Natalie, Jessie, and I are safe this week… Sweet Revenge, baby.” Somewhere (outside in the pool), a secret wizard is chortling quietly. Russell tried kissing Chima’s butt to stay off the block. He had to hug her. Poor Russell. My skin hasn’t crawled so far since Palpatwit appeared shirtless. Plus, it was pointless. Jordan, watching a spider spin a web (Which Jeff thinks the tiny spider will use to catch birds! I’d like to see a half-inch spider trying to eat a robin, snared in its steel web.): “What do they make their webs out of?” Jeff: “Web.” (Well, it’s not like he’s wrong, but it’s still an utterly stupid answer.) Jordan: “Yeah, but where does it come from? Or does it shoot out of their butt?” Jeff: “I don’t know where it comes out of. They’re wrists! ” Spiders have wrists ? Even Jordan wasn’t stupid enough to buy that one. And when you’re dumber than Jordan, you are truly an ignoramus. I’m afraid this wizard flunked out of Hogwarts. I hereby rename Jeff to henceforth be called The Wizard Gandoofus. He’s not a dark wizard; he’s just a dim wizard, The Dim Lord. Chima told the houseguests the tale of her rape and beating by a serial killer. It’s a horrifying, true story, and her evidence sent the killer (He’d already killed two women he’d raped) to death row and his execution. Chima said: “I want to do something, maybe go talk to young girls or something. Something that’s empowering.” It happened ten years ago. What has she been waiting for? Pointless Wizard Speulation #2 : Jordan: “I think Michele has the mystery power. I really do… Michele has the mystery power.” Why Jordan is certain of this I don’t know; but then, I don’t know why she can’t tell time, nor divide 60 by 4, nor know where that far-away mythical land “Iowa” is. Jeremy Piven visited the Big Brother House. Poor Jeremy. And now the houseguests are all in danger of getting mercury poisoning. Gandoofus: “If any celebrity can come in the house, Jeremy Piven is definitely up there. I would say - I’m not even going to say top ten. Maybe top eight.” I’m dying to know who the seven celebrities Gandoofus would put ahead of Jeremy are. (I would put about 22,784 celebrities ahead of Piven.) My guesses for Gandoofus’s Top Seven: 7. Jessica Simpson. (For her bitchin’ brain.) 6. Jon Gosselin. 5. Sanjaya Malakar. 4.The Sham-Wow Guy. 3. Me. 2. Kendra Wilkinson. 1. Professor Stephen Hawking. So if Gandoofus loves Jeremy Piven so much, why didn’t he warn him about that spider web? What if Piven got eaten by that ferocious spider? If Gandoofus loves Jeremy Piven so much, why doesn’t he marry him? Natalie told Piven that Gandoofus and Jordan have been “hooking up.” Great! Now thanks to Loose Lips Natalie, Gandoofus can never achieve his dream of becoming Mrs. Jeremy Piven. Way to go, loudmouth. It was a “luxury” challenge. The losing team had to see Jeremy’s new movie. (Paramount Vantage hasn’t payed me for Product Placement to mention its title, so I’m not going to.) The winning team got to eat slop for a week. One loser also got $50,000, which would be my minimum fee to sit through this execrable movie. I saw the trailer for it in a theater a couple weeks back, and not only did it leave me wanting never to see it, but I wanted to un see the trailer, which includes an anti-Asian Hate Crime presented as a “funny gag.” Let me put it this way; the ad mentions that it’s from the people who made Stepbrothers , a wretchedly dreadful movie of last year. That’s the sort of connection you hide, not trumpet. I’d tell you what grade Entertainment Weekly gave it, but they haven’t reviewed it yet, luckily for its opening weekend. However, on Rotten Tomatoes.com , out of 55 reviews, 40 were pans to only 15 mildly positive ones. While in the house, Piven made The Biggest Mistake of His Life, even bigger than appearing in Very Bad Things , or eating plates of fish that can tell you the temperature. He said to Jessie, “Good to see you, my friend.” You see, Jessie took this meaningless polite noise at face value. Jessie now thinks that Jeremy Piven is now his actual friend! As Jeremy was trying to escape, I mean leave, we had this exchange: Jeremy: “I’ll see you guys on the other side.” Jessie: “How are we going to be able to take you up on that?” Jeremy (A look of panic and terror flashing across his face): “On the other side? Don’t you worry.” Jessie: “Oh, you’ll find us?” (Jessie’s been handed this dodge before, once by his parents.) Jeremy (sprinting for the exit): “I’m gonna find you. Yeah. It’s easy to find. I know how to find you guys.” Then, Jessie in the Diary Room: “He’s a celebrity, and we actually get to say that now we’ve met him. You know, I was like, all right. Cool. If you wanna chill outside the house, that’s awesome.” Jessie, Jeremy Piven is not your friend, and he does not want to “chill outside the house.” I see a restraining order in Jessie’s future. Jeremy Piven in the Diary Room: “They seemed like a bunch of really nice kids,” so we know he hasn’t been watching! Jessie made the mistake of not fleeing when Lydia spoke to him, and Natalie flew into a jealous rage. If he were anyone in the world but Jessie, I’d feel sorry for him. That poor guy needs steady hands when shaving his armpits. To no one’s surprise, Chima nominated Russell and Lydia, and it didn’t matter, because The Wizard was still lurking shirtless in the background, with the real power. Book 2: Tuesday : The Treachery of Gollum. I looked at the houseguest page on CBS.com , and there people can elect to be a “fan” of their favorite houseguests, just as you can elect to be my fan here. (My thanks to all 75 of you) Interestingly, Gandoofus has the most fans, at 6580. Chima has the fewest ( Yea! ), at 399, actually below Palpatwit’s 468. Braden has 1126 fans, and he was evicted the first week! Russell has 2193 fans, oddly enough, all gay bottoms. Pointless Wizard Speculation #3 : Jessie to Natalie: “[Gandoofus] has the power.” Okay, that’s actually a correct guess, but it was based solely on The Dim Lord getting summoned to the Diary Room. They all get Diary Room summonses! It means nothing. Yet Jessie then went around to his alliance announcing that Gandoofus has the power. These people will soon be on a jury, and they don’t begin to grasp the concept of “evidence.” Pointless Wizard Speculation #4 : Chima to Jessie: “I’ve been thinking it was [Gandoofus] from the beginning.” On what evidence? Pointless Wizard Speculation #5 : Natalie to Jessie and Chima: “[Gandoofus] doesn’t have the power. I don’t think he would use it if he’s not on the block anyway… He’s not dumb like that.” That’s three wrong guesses in thirty seconds. He is The Wizard, he will use it, and he is that dumb! Russell does not have a future in diplomacy. “I’m on the block, so I’m going to try to mend some fences, particularly with Michele,” said Russell before going out and starting an argument with The Doctor that rapidly escalated into a full-scale screaming match. Russell could get Mahatma Gandhi to mass-murder orphans. I bet this once happened in a shopping mall: Santa Claus to Little Russell sitting on his knee: “So little Russ, what would you like for Christmas, you tremendously hunky six-year-old? Ho, ho, ho.” Forty-five seconds later… Santa Claus to Little Russell: ” Get off my lap, you vicious little bastard! I hate your mother-f*#king guts, you evil monster! I hope you die slowly in pain! I hope your Christmas tree burns down your house! I’m bringing you cholera for Christmas!!! ” Russell gets people screaming so loudly that I can still hear them after I turn off my TV. To play for her in the Power of Veto competition, Lydia chose Kevin, now renamed by me Gollum, because he’s creepy, fawning, and untrustworthy (there’s also a physical resemblance; no offense, Movie Gollum). Admittedly, the movie Gollum is a bit butcher. Okay, more than “a bit.” Lydia did this because her buddy Gollum assured her he would use it to take her off the block. Lydia, a word of advice; don’t loan Gollum any of your jewelry. This competition required the contestants to wear chicken suits. CBS, we tune into Big Brother each summer for the flesh. Quit dressing them up, and let them compete as nude as they’re willing to get. It involved stealing eggs through chicken wire. Why weren’t they dressed as foxes, or still better, weasels? Gollum complained in the Diary Room: “I’m thinking ‘I’m screwed,’ because I have tiny Asian hands.” This is the first time I’ve heard a member of an ethnic minority use racial slurs against himself. Besides, his tiny hands were actually an advantage, as they could more easily slip through the chicken wire than the others. He took an early lead which he never lost, and won the Power of Veto, though Russell only lost by a single second. Lydia was jubilant. Gollum had won! She was safe! Oh yeah? You see, Gollum is a cowardly little weasel. He immediately began worrying that if he kept his word to Lydia, whom he repeatedly told, “I’ve got your back,” he’d make an enemy of Chima and others. Realizing that he was now vulnerable to the power of the lurking Wizard, Jessie began working on Gandoofus to try and turn him against Russell, using the straightforward tactic of telling Gandoofus blatant lies, recounting how Russell had been telling everyone that The Dim Lord “needs to go,” which Russell never said. Gandoofus may be dim ( may be!), but he’s not that dim! Jessie then laid this same line of bull on Jordan, who can believe anything (I’m fairly certain that by Thursday, she was expecting a real wizard to show up), but even she wasn’t buying it. Pointless Wizard Speculations #6, 7, and 8 : Jordan to Jessie: “I think it’s Michele, or [Gollum], or hopefully [Gandoofus] has it and is just playing dumb right now.” Basically Jordan’s guess boiled down to “It’s someone who isn’t me.” And Jordan, Gandoofus isn’t playing dumb, any more than you are. Now I would like to award a couple achievements: Most Pointless Speculation Imaginable : Jordan asked Gandoofus: “If I get HOH next week, who should I put up?” The correct answer would be, “Ask the pigs that fly out of your butt when you win a competition.” Most Honest and Accurate Statement of Fact This Week : Russell: “Chima is a complete bitch. She’s the most arrogant, self-centered person I’ve ever met.” And he knows Jessie! Chima, whom I’m starting to loathe as much as I loathed Palpatwit, said to Russell, “You should have been on America’s Top Terrorists.” (Will Paula Abdul be judging that now?) Yes Chima, Russell disliking you, the only sane response anyone could have to meeting you, makes him the equal of people who fly hijacked airliners into skyscrapers, murdering thousands in seconds. Real sense of perspective and good taste there. Russell took this as a racial insult to him. Is he of Arabic heritage? I’m really asking, as I have no idea. Anyway, as he protested that this was a racist remark, Chima’s mature, adult response was to stick her fingers in her ears (hopefully managing to avoid piercing her eardrums with her razor-sharp talons), and loudly chanting “La, la, la, la, la, la, la.” Chima Symone, the 21st Century Oscar Wilde. President Obama doesn’t hold a monopoly on brilliant, reasoned oratorical powers and calm, intelligent discourse skills. Chima should be - ah - “discussing” healthcare at a town hall gathering. Remember, this is the woman who last week said: “America, you suck.” and then laughed that scrapping-chalk laugh of hers, because it’s funny to hate America for petty reasons. The producers backed up Chima’s offensive (to victims of actual terrorists) slur with a montage of clips of Russell’s ‘riod rages throughout the show’s run so far. It was entertaining, but no one seemed to be in terror. They were just annoyed. Russell doesn’t terrorize. Not even once has he killed a random group of innocent strangers. What he does is harassment. Frankly, if he’ll keep doing it shirtless, he can come over and “terrorize” me all night. I’ll leave my door unlocked. Don’t tell Lydia. “You can’t take it because a woman is sending you home!” Chima screeched at Russ. Chima, don’t count your chickens until The Wizard lets them go. ” I DON’T CARE! ” Chima shrieked like a banshee so loudly she was blowing out my speakers, which to me says she does care. “Grow a pair,” was her parting shot. Chima, I’ve seen a live-feed screencap of Russell coming out of the shower, and he has a pair. Oh boy, does he. Then the Luxury Challenge losers were locked in a room and forced to watch the Jeremy Piven movie. I believe this violates the Geneva Conventions. They were supplied with plenty of beer, in the producers’ hopes that if they got drunk enough, they’d like the movie. How bad is this flick? Well, Russell and Jessie were laughing at it, Chima thought it was “good,” and Jordan could almost follow it. In the Diary Room, Lydia was wearing bright red lipstick and a red head scarf that made her look like a punk Lucy Ricardo. After Lydia told Russell she was sure Gollum was going to betray her, Gollum got all whiny with her for betraying his plan to betray her. How dare you betray me when I’m betraying you? Gollum got so peeved that he threatened to use the POV to take her off the block. That’s right, he threatened her with being saved from eviction. He hasn’t really gotten the hang of this menacing thing quite yet. Gollum: “As soon as I won the Power of Veto, I realized crap! ” Well then why didn’t you just lose the competition, you boob? Russell: “I’d love to the veto to be used on me, but I think there’s a better chance of me getting struck by lightening inside the Big Brother House than the veto being used on me.” Russ, Gollum is gay, and you are a gorgeous young man. I think I know a way you could influence Gollum to save you. Just ask yourself, how badly do I want to be saved? The way to Gollum’s heart is not through his stomach. In the end (the way to Gollum’s heart), Gollum chickened out, and refused to use his precious to save anyone. You could see in Lydia’s pout that she was tattooing a target on Gollum’s forehead. The first step in her hideous revenge was to change her nickname for Gollum from “Sugar Bear” to “Poopy Bear.” She’s so “street,” so “punk,” so “edgy,” so pre-school. Book Three: Thursday : The Wizard of Ah-Hahs. Our lovely Chenbot was wearing a black & white polka-dotted outfit so full in the rear that in profile, she looked like she’s carrying the baby in her “trunk.” At the eviction ceremony, Russell looked both cool and hot in his Sinatra hat. Very sharp. Lydia is bitter, in addition to her usual sour, about Gollum not taking her off the block. “[Gollum] didn’t use the Power of Veto on me, which is totally bogus. You could have saved your best friend from the block.” Lydia, you’ve known him for a month. You are not his “Best Friend.” At most, you’re his “Best Acquaintance.” Russell on trying to save himself: “I’m not going to roll over and play dead.” I knew he was a top! Thank Heaven for the punishing heat wave we’ve been having here. (Remember, I live nearby the Big Brother House.) Thanks to the heat, Russell and Gandoofus are almost permanently shirtless. Pointless Wizard Speculations #7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 : Jessie: “Someone has it [sharp deduction, Sherlock] , and it’s not Lydia, more than likely.” Jordan: “Russell is up to something…” Dr. Michele: “Or he has the mystery power.” Chima to Dr. Michele, Gollum, and Jessie: “I still think one of you all have the power.” Gollum: “It’s totally [Gandoofus].” Natalie (in Diary Room): “Jessie and I have come to the conclusion that the mystery power either lies between [Gandoofus] or Jordan.” Half right, but again, they have nothing to base this on but personal paranoia, though to be on the safe side, the two of them spent an afternoon buttering Jordan and The Dim Lord up. Natalie employed the “Playing Badminton Ineptly” tactic often favored by Julius Caesar during his campaigns in Gaul. Jordan: “There’s something scandalous going on, and I will figure it out - eventually.” She should have it worked out by the second term of the Sarah Palin Presidential Administration. “Ah, that is clearly a metaphysical speculation, and like most metaphysical speculations, has very little relation to the actual facts of real life as we know them.” - Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest. Chima was pre-gloating, hoping for a unanimous vote against Russell so she could smirk at him. “Loathsome” is too nice a term for Chima. “I have orchestrated his demise,” she said, laughing her revolting laugh over her imaginary victory, “I look forward to dancing on his grave.” Chima darling, when you die, they will hold a grand debutante ball on your grave. Please make it soon. My gown is going out of style. Julie Chenbot: “Chima is not afraid to speak her mind.” You can always tell when Chima is speaking her mind; it’s when she’s silent. Pointless Wizard Speculation #13 : Chima: “I’m not 100% sure that [Gandoofus] has the power, but I’m like 99.9% sure.” Braying laugh . Later on: “I’m pretty much being myself.” Braying laugh. Her sense of humor is “If I say any random phrase, it’s hilarious! ” Biggest Lie of the Week (in fact, of the whole season so far): Chima: “I am so not a diva.” We had a segment showing the grandmother who raised Chima watching her on TV. She ought to be too ashamed to show her face in public. She spoiled this horrible woman so severely that she’s acquired a monstrous sense of entitlement and ego, coupled with imperiousness, and a solid belief that the sun shines out of her butt, that has made her unbearable to be anywhere near. If ever there was a case of too much self-esteem, Chima is it. Jessie has a massive ego also, but he is miles behind her in the obnoxiousness sweepstakes. They had a montage of Chima’s imperious, whining, spoiled-diva behavior. It should be released as a horror movie: The Blair Bitch Project . Chima’s “friend” Kimberly: “Chima thinks men look down on women.” No, they just look down on Chima. “She comes off very strong.” No, she comes off as a raging harridan. “I’m very proud of her.” said the grandmother who spoiled a pretty little girl so horribly that she grew up into this monster. Chima: “When I argue, I prefer to stick to the issues.” So Russell’s alleged “cauliflower ears” are an “issue”? If cauliflower looked like Russell, I’d eat a lot more of it. Back in my first Big Brother recap , I said I’d be looking for people shouting “I knew it!” at the revelation of something they did not know. When Gandoofus stood up and revealed his secret identity as The Dim Lord, Gollum yelled out, “I knew it!” No he didn’t. No matter who had stood up and revealed they had the power, Gollum would have yelled “I knew it!” Unless Gollum himself had the power (assuming the voting was done not by America, but by Mordor); that would have surprised him. “Oh my God, it’s me! Who knew?” So Gandoofus did just what I wanted him too: he used the Coup D’etat . He broke up the imaginary romance of Jessie & Natalie, by replacing Russell and Lydia on the block with them. Tragically, he was prohibited from putting up Gollum or Chima. If only he’d said, “Luke, you don’t know the power of The Dim Side of the Force.” When nominated, Jessie stripped off one shirt, revealing another one underneath with a picture of him shirtless on it (Think about that; he was wearing a shirt showing him shirtless. Why not just be shirtless?), and with the words “The Man, the Myth, the Legend…” on the front, and “Take it all in!!!” on the back. I suspect that I could take Jessie’s all in and still have room for a friend. Jessie babbled meaninglessly, and said he hoped the vote would be a tie, despite the odd number of voters. He must have learned math from Jordan. And so once again, as last year, Jessie was evicted. Jeremy Piven, I strongly recommend you change your name, move, get plastic surgery, and maybe even a sex change. Jessie is expecting to “chill” with you. The thought chills me. When Gollum tried to hug Jessie as he exited, Jessie dodged him, and said, “Hey no. Hey. It’s all right buddy. Get out of here.” You know Jessie, if you had hugged Gollum a few times, he might have voted to keep you, and you wouldn’t be leaving. Jessie took out his anger by beating up random audience members on his way to the Chenbot. America, hide! Jessie is blaming you! Jessie and Julie had a flex-off. Be careful, Jessie; hers are made of metal. Hell hath no fury like a Chima foiled. She was steaming. (Heh, heh.) Chima: “Did he [Russell] just say he [Gandoofus] kept his word? Oh, that means he knew about the mystery power.” No it doesn’t, but as Stephen Stills so wisely wrote, “Paranoia strikes deep, into your heart it will creep.” Chima added, “Looks like me and the producers need to have a little bit of a talk.” Those poor producers. (Go ahead and quit, Chima. Please quit! Walk out that door.) Dr. Michele won HOH, so the big question next week is will she go with “Sisters before Misters”? Please Doctor. I’ve been nice to you here so far. Please nominate Chima. Waiting to get back in the house at the end, we heard Chima saying, with ominous, quiet fury: “If you don’t want me to cuss, let me into the house.” She’s pure class, that one. “They’re testing my paaaaa-tience.” Chima insanely thinks the producers work for her, rather than vice versa. Did Chima’s granny teach her that she rules the universe? Granny Chima, you spoiled that girl rotten. You should be ashamed. Next week, a double eviction. I so hope one of them is Chima. Cheers darlings. To read more of Tallulah Morehead, go to The Morehead the Merrier . More on CBS

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Tallulah Morehead: Big Brother 11: The Wizard of Wacko Place.

There isn’t a more striking symbol of America’s health care crisis than the thousands of people who are lining up this week outside the Los Angeles Forum waiting for treatment. One patient put it succinctly, “If everybody in this country were in the situation my daughter and I are in, they would have a whole different view of (the health care debate).” Many of those in the queue have jobs but they do not have adequate health care. In many cases the employer does not provide enough coverage. Still it seems a bit ironic that the nonprofit Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corp (RAM), whose mission is to provide free health, dental and eye care to poor or under served areas around the globe, is turning people away in Los Angeles. This is because of the heavy demand, and because RAM does not have enough volunteer doctors. One RAM worker compared the need in Los Angeles to the poorest parts of India. Yet this unfortunate scene is far from an antidote for the radical and misleading assertions being screamed aloud at town hall meetings across the country in the health care debate. “Death panels” and “eugenics” are among the outrageous lies being spun by those seeking to benefit, either politically or financially, by killing health care reform. In a country of more than 300 million people there is bound to be a small fraction that absolutely believes President Obama wants to kill grandma, or that the president is a Nazi. These are the kind of folks who make up the core audience for Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin, all of whom everyday feed their loyalists the red meat of socialism and government gone wrong. Beck’s and Limbaugh’s few million loyal listeners never miss a minute of their shameless diatribes. After all, these radio commentators get paid an enormous amount of money to incite a national ruckus, and their audiences love it. You are right Mr. President, it sure plays well on television. Protesters don’t want to hear the truth. Like that there are no death panels in the government’s health care reform proposals. They believe that government has gotten too big and is not true to the wishes of our founding fathers. In fact, some of these folks are joining local militias perhaps with an eye to “one day taking our country back!” From whom? It’s very scary. America has been caught up for the past decade in a great ideological feud between left and right that has perhaps been more polarizing than at any time in our history, except for the period leading up to and during the Civil War. The feud is being amplified and accelerated by technological advances. At the core of the feud is the role of government in each American’s life. And a wasteful, inefficient and bloated government is easy to criticize. It is also easy to criticize those elected officials who lie and cheat. Or those who want to spend taxpayer money on corporate jets. And what of a government that mishandles the economy and yet saves the rich bankers during the worst economic downturn in decades? One Wall Street banker made more than $700 million, yet the unemployment rate is unacceptably high and foreclosures are too. A large number of well-intentioned Americans are “mad as hell” and say they are not going to take it anymore. There is a lot of pent up emotion and concern in our populace. They feel no one has been listening to them, and hot August days are especially conducive to raising the heat in town hall meetings across the nation. The complaints and cries for help have become louder, especially at the extremes. But there is nothing to fear. This is American Democracy at work. Most Americans are smart enough to see through the fog of distortions, fabrications and flat out lies being offered up about health care. They know that all politics is local and that hypocrisy runs deep in DC. They know that many Senators and Congressmen are being well funded by the health industry. That many elected officials will do what is best to assure their own survival. Most Americans agree that this country’s health care system is broken. There are 46 million uninsured people in the U.S., and that number is growing every day. They know that health insurance companies have enjoyed record profits while co-payments have gone up and “pre-conditions” and other loopholes are impeding access to quality care. They see it every time they need care. President Obama must continue to aggressively push his agenda and highlight its benefits. They include making health care accessible to all, making it affordable for everyone and “bending the curve” of health care costs, which are out of control and are a tremendous drain on our economy. Proponents must also speak out with a clear voice. Few Americans are happy with our current system. Just ask anyone standing in line at the Los Angeles Forum. More on Health Care

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Joe Peyronnin: Health Care at the Forum

Let’s get the weekend kicked off properly, with a smattering of polls, an absolutely delicious potential candidate announcement, and other news in the wide world of politics. NC-Sen: Burr’s Standing Improves Incrementally, According to PPP The good folks at PPP have been very consistent about polling Richard Burr and his prospects for 2010, and they come in before the weekend with their latest installment . Burr’s approval numbers are still in the ditch (38/32), but his trial heat numbers have rebounded slightly. He sits at 43% in all four proposed trial heats, with Sec. of State Elaine Marshall (43-31) and Cal Cunningham (43-28) coming closest to the incumbent. TX-Gov: Watson Says No To 2010 Bid For Governor When Leticia Van de Putte demurred from a gubernatorial bid earlier in the year, she specifically named fellow state Senator (and former Austin Mayor) Kirk Watson as someone she wanted to see make a go of it. Those hopes were dashed today , as Watson released a statement making clear that he will run for re-election to the state Senate. CT-Sen: Republican Primary Devolving Into Steel Cage Match? Apparently, the combat-sports metaphors that often accompany politics might come in handy now. Linda McMahon, who sits on the state board of Education, is contemplating a bid as a Republican . If that name does not ring a bell, you might know her as Mrs. Vince McMahon. Indeed, she is the wife of the titan of professional wrestling, and has factored into some of the storylines of the WWE over the years. She can tap into a pretty sizeable personal fountain of cash, so expect her to be player if she gets into it. LA-Sen: Vitter Getting Challenged…To His Right Assuming David Vitter manages to survive his potential primary with Stormy Daniels, he may still have to concern himself with more than just the Democrats (and presumptive challenger Charlie Melancon). According to TPMDC , a sixty-something veteran named Bob Lang is contemplating an Independent challenge to Vitter. FL-Sen: Could One Martinez Replace Another? Last week’s decision by Mel Martinez to go Sarah Palin on the U.S. Senate has spawned a cottage industry of speculation on who Governor Charlie Crist (himself a Senate aspirant) would select as the appointed replacement for the departing Senator. The newest name that has emerged is former GOP Governor Bob Martinez , last seen getting beat by Lawton Chiles nearly twenty years ago. NATIONAL: Where Ideological Titles Wear Well…and Where They Don’t Gallup , over the past six months, has compiled the self-identified ideologies of their respondents. In the numbers, there are few surprises. The top ten states in self-identified conservatism were all states carried by McCain in 2008, with Alabama, Mississippi, and Utah leading the way. On the liberal side, Washington DC leads the pack, unsurprisingly. The top ten liberal states, unsurprisingly, went for President Obama in 2008.

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Polling and Political Wrap-Up, 8/14/09

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell gets deserved kudos for nailing a Republican Congressman who opposes healthcare reform for the obvious unspoken reason: the Republicans do NOT want to give Obama any major victories that promises continued popularity with ordinary voters and taxpayers. In their wildest dreams the Repubs cannot imagine people hating healthcare that is no longer only for the rich and the well-employed, courtesy of the insurance industry. Of course, Republican office-holders cannot aid the spread of Medicare-like coverage. It would become entrenched, assumed, effective and popular (like social security) and it would always bear Obama’s name, not the Republican Party. That would insure further Democratic election success. This is not about what’s good for the public or the country, this is about a cynical, power-grabbing party trying to get back in control anyway they can without necessarily going to prison. The damage done to nation and humans matters little. The next set of questions for O’Donnell or another honest interviewer to ask the next Congressional Hypo-Republicrite: Why don’t you reject your own personal government-funded platinum healthcare package and buy on the free market? Why doesn’t your dedicated free market loving staff reject THEIR fancy government paid healthcare coverage? Have you suggested that Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich reject any government health benefits they are getting? Maybe Karl Rove and Dick Cheney should stand up for what’s right and give up their continuing health benefits as former administration officials. Do you think any private insurance company would cover Cheney with his medical history of cardiac problems?

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Harry Fuller: Repubs and their healthcare hypocrisy

Three general guidelines for the healthcare debate: First, whenever someone is spouting off about “communist fascism”, you may ignore everything that person says from that point forward. Fascism and communism are two entirely different things, and a primary tenet of fascism is its opposition to communism. So if you think Obama is leading us to either fascist communism or communist fascism, you aren’t only a paranoid, LaRouchian nut, you also don’t even know what it is you’re afraid of, and are just putting scary words together in the hope of stirring an emotional response among stupid people. Second, you cannot be “against socialized medicine” and at the same time think Medicare is good. Medicare is, in no uncertain term, socialized medicine, and government run, and all of that very scary stuff. If the concept of “socialized medicine” outrages you, you are against Medicare. If you are for Medicare, then by definition there is some level of “socialized medicine” you are willing to accept, and at that point you are exactly where the entire rest of the country is, and we’re merely arguing about the details. All of the people who say that they are afraid of socialized medicine but that they support Medicare are liars. All of them. They either secretly don’t support Medicare but are unwilling to say such an unpopular thing out loud, for obvious reasons, or they aren’t in fact afraid of “socialized medicine” but still want to use the talking point. This includes Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and every Senate Republican, as well as the usual assembly of pundits and shouters and supposedly panic-stricken mobs crying in fear at town halls over the imminent Russianization of America if we undertake any meager healthcare reform whatsoever. The third guideline: the first two guidelines are freaking obvious.

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Stating The Obvious: Healthcare Reform Edition

As the debate over President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul intensifies, one thing has become quite clear: it took former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin just three weeks into ‘retirement’ to prove that when it comes to major domestic policy, she is going to be right smack in the middle of it all. And surprisingly, all it took for her to fully inject herself squarely into the health-care debate was one simple, albeit politically explosive comment last week: “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.” But the truly astonishing part is that The Wasilla Wonder has actually framed the entire debate with her disingenuous reference designed to scare the crap out of old folks and those who care for them. “Death panel” has now become the official phrase and rallying cry of all the right-wing loons salivating at the opportunity to not just derail Obama’s attempt at reform, but more importantly to undermine his nascent administration’s entire agenda. Conservatives smell Obama’s blood, and the health-scare mobs are just the front lines in the much more complicated war to take him down. ‘You betchya, America, we’re not gonna let that Muslim terrorist in the White House allow those youths-in-Asia to kill our grannies, gosh darn it!’ But I have to give Palin credit. For someone with the knowledge and intellectual curiosity of an Alaskan moose , she’s sure demonstrating some deft political skills. What the health-care debate has proven is that in ‘retirement’ she’s not crawling under any rocks just yet. For some strange reason, and I cannot for the life of me understand it, there actually are a whole bunch of people who hang onto every word this inarticulate, vacuous, empty-Versace-suited fraud has to say. That we as a nation are engaged in a bitter partisan battle over such an important subject as health care, with Palin’s words leading the charge on the right, is absolutely mind-boggling. Maybe Republicans have been right along: perhaps she is the future of their party. More on Sarah Palin

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Andy Ostroy: Sarah Palin’s "Death Panel" Mantra: Like it or Not, this Woman’s Influence on the National Stage is Now Crystal Clear

Proponents of President Obama’s health care reform — outmaneuvered for several weeks by conservative activists — finally woke up this week. Liberals and Democrats showed up at most of the town meetings sponsored by Senators and Congressmembers around the country, It isn’t clear, however, if the angry right-wing Republicans had more ground troops at these events or if they were simply louder, more obnoxious, and had a simpler, more disciplined message. Whatever the reason, the Republicans dominated the media coverage of this week’s health care events. As a result, even though the die-hard right-wing opponents of Obama’s plan represent a small — less than 20% — proportion of the electorate, they’ve successfully captured the public debate. This, in turn, has made it harder for Obama to make the case for his reform proposals and hurt his standing in public opinion polls. Most Americans want some kind of universal health care plan, but the recent attacks by the GOP and their right-wing allies have muddied the debate. Whether the centrist blue-dog Democrats are swayed or intimidated by what some are calling the right-wing “mob” attack is stll unclear. I went to one of those town meetings on Tuesday night in Alhambra, California, a Los Angeles suburb, sponsored by my Congressperson, Adam Schiff, a moderate Democrat who nevertheless supports Obama’s public option plan. At this event, which attracted over 2,000 people, the pro-Obama forces clearly outnumbered the right-wingers, but you couldn’t tell from that night’s TV news reports or the next day’s newspaper stories. They covered the town hall meeting as a shout-fest, using the “he said/she said” format that made it seem that public opinion in the district is evenly divided. It isn’t. Last November, Obama won 67% of the vote in Schiff’s 29th Congressional district. Schiff opened his remarks by asking how many people in the crowd supported Obama’s plan, then asked how many opposed the plan, then asked how many were undecided and came there to learn more. The pro-Obama people represented at least 60% of the crowd, perhaps more. Most of the others opposed the president’s plan. Hardly anyone cheered when Schiff asked who was undecided. This was a crowd of people who arrived with strong opinions. Whether the turnout by progressives and Democrats in Alhambra and elsewhere around the country advanced the cause of health care reform is an open question. Rather than confront the extreme right wing of the Republican Party — which is who constitutes the crowds at these town hall events — it might be more useful to target protests at the giant insurance companies and the huge campaign contributions they are handing out , especially to moderate Democrats. Compare the insurance companies’ big profits and outrageous corporate compensation to the tens of millions of Americans who can’t afford health insurance, who can’t get insurance because of pre-existing conditions, or who have policies that don’t cover the things they need. Then challenge the waffling blue-dog Democrats to answer a simple question: which side are you on? Even so, it would good to see the big turnout by pro-reform Democrats and progressives. Schiff’s 29th Congressional district is heavily Democratic. Many of the anti-Obama folks in the crowd lived outside Schiff’s district. Some came from as far away as Orange County and Ventura County. The right wingers brought drums and lots of American flags. (I thought more Democrats should have brought flags of their own — right-wingers have no monopoly on patriotism). The conservatives mostly had hand-made signs; the Democrats and progressives mostly had printed signs. When he arrived at the podium at 7 pm, Schiff told the crowd, “I hope we’ll have a lively discussion tonight on the merits.” But he knew, as did everyone in the crowd and all the assembled media, that there was absolutely no chance for a reasonable debate. This was a media circus. Schiff explained why he thought the current health care system was broken and why he supported Obama’s plan for a public option. He took questions from the audience, answered them calmly, or asked one of the people he brought with him - a consumer advocate, a hospital administrator, and a medical professor — to field the questions. The TV reports that night and the newspaper stories the next day paid little attention to the specifics of health care reform. Schiff spoke from a raised podium. Several Alhambra cops stood in front of the podium between Schiff and the crowd. Schiff didn’t go into the crowd to get up-front and personal. This arrangement, and the powerful loudspeakers projecting his voice, made Schiff less vulnerable to angry protesters. Conservatives and Republicans in the crowd tried to disrupt Schiff throughout the 90 minute forum, but Schiff soldiered on, trying his best to ignore the shouters. Also, the presence of so many Democrats and pro-health care reform advocates clearly intimidated the right wingers. Whenever someone tried to interrupt and shout down Schiff, he or she was quickly surrounded by Obama/Schiff supporters. As a result, the right-wingers were less rowdy and aggressive than they seemed to be at other forums around the country. The cops had to escorte a few disruptive people - all conservatives — out of the event, including one man who kept shouting “abortion is murder,” but the police made no arrests. A week earlier, I wouldn’t have predicted that the Democrats would outnumber the Republicans at the Schiff town meeting. Several weeks ago, Schiff sent out brochures and emails to constituents, announcing the public event in Alhambra. He scheduled the town meeting before the conservative Republicans began mobilizing their ground troops against the Obama plan. Quickly, however, the conservatives started spreading the word, not only about the event but also the talking points to use in attacking Obama’s proposal. Some of the conservative activists in Alhambra told me that they’d heard about the event two weeks ago; others got phone calls, emails, and Facebook messages in the past week. The two major groups that mobilized people to turn out were the Republican Party and the Patriots, a right-wing network that sponsored the anti-Obama “tea parties” in April across the country. Local right-wing radio talk shows also played a part in encouraging listeners to attend the Schiff event. Last Friday, the local paper, the Pasadena Star-News, published a front-page story headlined, “Activists Planning to Pack Town Hall.” It only quoted conservative activists, including members of the Pasadena Patriots, who said they’d be there to protest “socialized medicine.” It was clear that these conservatives didn’t just show up on their own. They were organized to be there. For them, this was part of a crusade. Schiff’s town meeting was just one event among many ways to mobilize around their broader mission — to stop abortions, kick out undocumented immigrants, and thwart ‘big government” and the oncoming onslaught of “socialism.” The Democrats and their allies got a late start mobilizing people to attend the Schiff forum. Last week, I was one of about 13 million people who got an email from President Obama on behalf of Organizing for America — the group created to keep his campaign volunteers mobilized after the election — asking me to pledge to attend at least one meeting a month to voice my support for his health care plan. The email asked me to fill out a form and promised to let me know about any events in my area. I thought his email was much too tepid — not sufficiently urgent to arouse the passion and anger that people need to change their daily routines and attend political events. Still, I was glad to see that Obama was using his presidential bully pulpit to mobilize his ground troops on behalf of his agenda. But then, starting last weekend, the emails started arriving more often and with more urgency, alerting me about the Schiff event, and encouraging me to attend. They came from Schiff, the AFL-CIO, the ACLU, Americans for Democratic Action, a friend who is active in the local Democratic Party, another friend who is active in health care reform, a third friend who was active in Obama’s campaign, and Democrats for America (the group started out of the Dean campaign in 2004), and two more from Organizing for America. (I also got emails from the Democratic Party and MoveOn.Com that asked me to contact my Congressmember about health care reform, and asked me for money, but didn’t tell me about the town meeting in my Congressional district). In my experience, emails — even multiple emails — can help motivate people to attend events, but follow-up phone calls are more effective. I didn’t get a single phone call — not even a robo-call — about the Schiff town hall. By 5 pm, two hours before Tuesday night’s town hall meeting was to begin, a few hundred people were there. By 7 pm, at least 2,000 people had arrived. It was originally scheduled for the 200-seat Alhambra municipal library. But by Tuesday morning, when it became clear that the turnout would vastly exceed original expectations, Schiff changed the location to the open air plaza between the library and the high school. I asked the Democrats, Obamacrats, and health care reformers how they learned about the event. Most of them mentioned Organizing for America, SEIU and other unions, and the Democratic Party , while a few were part of the League of Women Voters or the ACLU. Many of them were wearing Obama t-shirts from last year’s campaign. I talked with people on both sides of the political divide to find out what they care about and why they showed up. It was like talking to people from entirely different planets. President Obama desperately wants to pass a health care reform with bipartisan support. But there was no common ground in Alhambra. This is a battle over two entirely different views of the world and of the proper role of government, not only in health care but on many other issues. The proponents were there to support Obama’s health care plan. The opponents were there not only to stop the Obama plan but also to voice their anger about many other issues and, more generally, the direction the country was going. The many hand-made and printed signs in the crowd reflected these differences. The Democrats carried signs that read “Public Option - Yes” “No One Should Go Without Health Care” “Health Care Now.” “ACLU Supports Health Care for All” “Insure People, Not Profits,” “Affordable Health Care for All” And simply “Thank You,” directed at Schiff. Members of the feisty California Nurses Association were carrying signs that read, “Put Single Payer on the Table.” The other side’s signs were angrier. “Socialism = ObamaNation” “NoBamaCare” “Kill the Bill” “Stop Bankrupting America” “Obama’s World: No Health Care for Granny.” “What’s the Rush? Afraid We’ll Read the Bill?” “Karl Marx Loves ObamaCare” “No Socialized Medicine” “No Nazi Health Care.” One large sign just had a photo of Obama painted with a Hitler moustache. I talked to more than 20 conservatives who showed up to protest Schiff’s support for the Obama proposal. These were people who thought John McCain was too moderate. They preferred Ron Paul, admired Sarah Palin, and were devoted followers of radio reactionaries Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. In their comments, I could hear the echoes of the talking points put out by the Republican Party and right-wing radio. The Obama plan, most of them told me, includes a provision for “pulling the plug” on old people with serious diseases because they are expensive to care for. Although Obama has consistently said that people who like their existing insurance policies can keep it, every conservative person I talked to said he was lying, and insisted that the president’s plan would force everyone into a government-run insurance program. Several people insisted that the number of people without health insurance — 47 million, according to the Census — is a lie. “They just made that up,” one woman told me, “And a lot of them are illegal aliens.” Most of the conservatives echoed the view that Obama and the Democrats (or just “Pelosi”) were moving too quickly to streamroll the bill through Congress, especially since most members of Congress haven’t even read what they called the “thousand page bill.” They said they were there to make their voices heard, and insisted that they were simply exercising their First Amendment rights. “Government is spending my money without my permission,” said Penny Alfonso, a retired nurse from Glendale. These were the same points made almost nightly by Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and their local radio counterparts, as well as the newsletters, emails, blogs, and Facebook pages sponsored by the right-wing Patriots, Human Events magazine, and other components of the conservative network. Every conservative I met Tuesday night insisted that he or she was there on his or her own, and wasn’t getting paid to be there. I believe them. These aren’t stooges for the insurance and drug companies, even if their efforts help those industries fend off government regulations. These are true believers. But their presence at the event, and their views about Obama’s health reform proposal, are being orchestrated by the GOP and the extreme right-wing echo chamber. I thought it was stupid for pro-Obama folks to engage the others in arguments over the health care bill. But while people were waiting for the event to begin, lots of shouting matches broke out between the pro- and anti- forces — one-on-one shout-fests that were even worse than the old Crossfire “debates” between Pat Buchanan and Paul Begala. The arguments were a classic example of people talking past each other, shouting cliches, generating lots of heat but shedding no light. But, inevitably, these verbal disputes were what the TV cameras and newspaper reporters were waiting for. When I got home, I watched some of the local TV reports about the event. They featured shots of angry protesters from both sides yelling at each other. In the Pasadena Star-News the following morning, the lead front-page headline was “Boisterous Debate,” with a huge color photograph right below it portraying one of the confrontations between two men shouting at each other. Beyond the talking points on health care, the conservatives had lots of other things on their minds. Michael Fell, 55, has been out of work for 15 months, explaining that he was “downsized” from his job doing office space planning. He’s a big fan of Kevin James, a local right-wing radio talk show host who was urging listeners to attend Schiff’s town meeting. Fell is from Culver City, in a different Congressional district, and told me he’s a leader of the Westwood Patriots. “I’m here supporting the Pasadena Patriots,” he said. “We stand by the Constitution, for smaller government, more self reliance, lower taxes, and individual responsibility.” He was there, he said, “to fight for the preservation of American individual liberties.” I asked him if he thought the federal government should extent unemployment benefits for people like him whose benefits had run out. “There’s no shame collecting unemployment insurance,” he told me. “I earned it.” Edna Jones is a retired realtor and legal administrator from Pasadena, in the heart of Schiff’s district. She attended one of the Tea Party rallies in April and is an “active member” of the Patriots and the Republican Party. “We want to take back our country,” she explained. Obama, she said, “was mentored by a Communist in Hawaii,” and is friends with people like Bill Ayres. “They hate America.” She’s on Medicare. She’s worried that Obama’s plan will reduce Medicare payments to doctors, “and all the good doctors will leave the profession.” Under Obama’s health care plan, “they are going to tell the old folks to take a pill” — referring to the alleged plan to withhold services from senior citizens in bad health. She’s angry that “Obama’s got the government taking over private businesses like automobiles and banks, and now health care.” “This is not the America I grew up in,” said the 72-year old Jones who was born in the middle of FDR’s New Deal. “I feel like I’m in the Soviet Union.” Obama, she insisted, “doesn’t deserve to be President.” Another man, in his late 30s or early 40s, refused to give his name, but told me he was from Oxnard (an hour away and outside Schiff’s district) and that he was a member of the John Birch Society (he handed me a Birch brochure) and the California Coalition for Immigration Reform , an extremist group whose website promotes a CD called “The Takeover of America” and a radio show called “America Betrayed.” As Schiff was speaking, the Bircher told his friend, who was wearing an NRA (National Rifle Assn) t-shirt and works in a warehouse: “He should be impeached.” When Schiff said proudly that “We’re the most diverse population in the world,” the Bircher laughed dismissively, clearly indicating that he didn’t consider diversity something to be proud of. When Schiff said that 47 million Americans lacked health insurance, he said that Schiff had “made that up out of thin air.” When Schiff explained that Obama’s plan will let people keep their existing insurance if they like it, the Bircher shouted “liar!” Pasadenan John Cooper, who said he was in his late 50s, was there because “I’m against socialism, which is taking people’s property and giving it to other people — redistribution of wealth.” Cooper described himself as a contractor who remodels homes, but who is currently having a hard time making ends met and currently doesn’t have any health insurance. But he opposes Obama’s health care plan and his other ideas, which, he says, are “orchestrated by international bankers.” “Obama is a Marxist baby killer,” he said with the confidence of someone who had used those words many times before. “The problem in the U.S.,” he insisted, “is big business, big government, big labor, and big media.” “I don’t want more taxes,” said Wendy Maier, a 42-year old owner of a small deli who lives in Ontario, outside Schiff’s district. Last November Maier was the Republican candidate for a state Assembly seat in a heavily Democratic district; she got 33% of the vote. She told me she liked watching Bill O’Reilly on Fox News because “he gives both sides.” Maier traveled to Albambra with her friend Carol Schlaeffer from Pomona, also outside Schiff’s district. Schlaeffer told me that people who say they can’t afford health insurance “have flat screen TVs, and cars, and cell phones.” She also told me: “I don’t want illegal immigrants getting free insurance.” Emily Lewis, 20, came from Riverside, outside Schiff’s district. Her father encouraged her to attend the event. She lives with her parents and earns money teaching piano. Despite her youth, she’s an experienced activist, having attended anti-abortion protests in front of clinics. She was home-schooled because of her family’s religious views. She voted for the first time last year and supported Ron Paul for President. She’s on her parents’ health insurance plan but she doesn’t know if they get their insurance at work or pay for it on their own. What she does know, though is that Obama “doesn’t have the right to do this” — create a public health care plan. “It comes out of my pocket.” Virginia Zelenak, a retired accountant from South Pasadena, told me that “its appalling what they [politicians] do for immigrants. They should send them back.” She worried that Obama’s plan would cause people to lose their insurance and force them into a “government plan.” I told her that Schiff just said that nothing in the House bill would do that. “He’s a liar,” Zelenak said. I asked her where she got her information. She mentioned Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Dennis Prager, Hugh Hewitt, Human Events, NewsMax (a right-wing website), and ExposeObama.Com. John Ware is a 44-year old producer of Christian films from Burbank. He told me he was a moderate Republican, but as we talked, it became clear he was involved with the right-wing fringe. He attended a local Tea Party protest in April, and learned about the town meeting from the Patriots’ email list and Facebook group. (The Pasadena Tea Party Facebook has 470 members). I went to Ware’s Facebook page and discovered that he’s also a member of various conservative Facebook groups, including Pasadena Tea Party and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the prime sponsor and defender of California’s Proposition 13 tax-cutting measure. Discussing Obama’s plan, Ware told me that the president was “serving up a shit sandwich and he doesn’t know what’s in it.” While Cong. Schiff was addressing the crowd, Ware was trying to pick up a woman holding a “Health Care for All” sign. She laughed and rebuffed his advances, but he insisted that “opposites attract, isn’t that right?” More on Health Care

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Peter Dreier: Health Care and Hate in Alhambra

Greg Sargent: GOP officials  John Boehner, Thaddeus McCotter,  Johnny Isakson, and  Chuck Grassley all voted in 2003 for a measure very similar to the one in the current House health care bill they now suggest in various ways could lead to government-encouraged euthanasia. Despicable, depraved fear-mongering liars — all of them. They are literally willing to put the fear of death into seniors’ hearts just so they can gain political advantage. They truly are the scum of the political earth. And yet we negotiate with them? Oh, how they must laugh.

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Deathers supported counseling before they demagogued it

Brandwashed (def) A confused state of utter and complete denial, wherein marketers believe that the brand they create and their opinion of it are more important than the wants/needs/desires of the consumer. Consumercentrics (def): The logical yet renegade assertion that retail products should be built from a consumer-centric perspective that begins at point of consumer purchase, not from the traditional brand-centric approach shaped well outside of the purchase arena. Let’s face it: the marketing industry is brandwashed. We’ve been living too long in idol worship, prostrate at the feet of brand positioned, advertising driven product images. We’re slaves to the almighty brand “personality.” We’ve let ourselves get swept away, dreamily pondering ad nauseam the human characteristics of inanimate objects. (I wish I had a shiny penny for every “If Acme Orange Juice was a person, what kind of person would Acme Orange Juice be?” type conversation I’ve witnessed in the past 20+ years.) In simple truth, we’ve been spending too many billable hours blowing smoke up our own shorts. If we used even half as much time considering the true product owners — the purchasers — as we did on our own brilliant and heady brand musings, we’d save billions in misspent dollars and countless hours of wasted effort while increasing sales and profits. Here’s the news flash: consumers are the most important considerations in a marketing cycle, and they don’t spend countless hours wondering if their yogurt is “perky yet confident, not afraid to share its opinion but not a gossip, sporty but not a tom boy, with a hint of mischievous independence.” If we have our brand blinders on, chances are we’re not seeing past the brand. Consumers are the ultimate owners of the product — they buy it, quite literally — and they make the vast majority of their purchase decisions in-store. Rather than starting in the corporate boardrooms with our ad and branding and various other marketing guys deeply considering the emotional truths of a bar of soap, we need to focus on the purchaser and her concrete wants/needs/desires. And we must recognize that the first time she reaches for the soap is not in the shower, it’s in the aisle. What do our competitors say to her at the most important moment — the moment of purchase impact? (Experts tell us that the majority of her purchase decisions are made at point of sale, not in the comfort of her house three miles from the store). Can we deliver a product that delivers the right answers to her? How can we win the support of the retailers? Once we answer these and a host of other consumer-centric and retail-centric questions, we can develop in-store strategies and brand positioning and advertising that make sense for the consumer. And, as a result of looking to brand and advertising as the last cogs in the marketing wheel rather than first, we won’t spray countless dollars of brand buckshot over various forms a media hoping something will hit. We’ll be more targeted, because we’ll start where most sales happen — in the mind of the consumer in the retail environment. If we start there, we’ll only spend on advertising as necessary to round out an overall marketing strategy. Whereas the above might cause many an advertising and brand manager some discomfort, logic is firmly on the side of a consumer-centric and retail-centric marketing approach. The majority of products are not deeply and emotionally driven, and Suzie Shopper approaches her purchase decision with a typically open mind. Regardless of how memorable the TV spot or enormous the media spend or massive the awareness numbers, your product is worthless until it’s purchased by the consumer. Starbucks isn’t the ultimate owner of its product. Wal-Mart(R) shareholders don’t profit until consumers purchase their products and services and it hits the bottom line. McDonald’s employees are merely the keepers of the brand. Until a product/service is purchased at retail, it is valueless. When consumers choose to engage or disengage a brand, they are determining its fate. Consumers are the brand champions, and their experiences at retail are the most important element of a product’s marketing life cycle. As marketers, we need to find the epicenter of the consumer experience and build our brands from that point outward. When convention is brand build then get it to the consumer, convention needs a reversal. The brand owners have wants/needs/desires, and it’s about time we recognize them. More on Advertising

Excerpt from:
Sarah O’Leary: Let’s Face It — We’re Brandwashed.

The Senate Finance Committee has stripped a provision to reimburse Medicare doctors who provide end-of-life counseling to dying patients from its version of health care reform. Take that, Hitler. Hitler, like I have to tell you, supports Medicare reimbursement for end-of-life counseling because he wants the Federal government to talk America’s old people into killing themselves. We don’t know why he wants this. Maybe he’s still bitter about the Battle of the Bulge. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if not for Sarah Palin’s Facebook page. Sarah Palin Facebook status was: “… is fearing Death Panels.” (Thumbs down. Doesn’t like this.) And that was good enough for Chuck Grassley. As Grassley explains: We dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly. If you were really, really bone ignorant, for example, you could think they meant, “death panels.” Fair enough. You don’t want to confuse people into getting Hitlered. But was this idea that complicated? You get the very real impression that if our standard for legislation was “understandable to Palins” we’d have to retire the “Yield” sign. Does Chuck Grassley mean we can only write laws that make sense to people who can’t name a newspaper? Are we really stripping counseling from health care because of what doctors might say? (We all know, given the chance, a doctor will always talk you into suicide. That’s where the money is.) Why not forbid doctors from talking to patients at all, just to be safe? Call it the Palin-Grassley Freedom from Information Act. Of course that’s not what we’re really talking about. We know that end-of-life counseling doesn’t mean euthanizing the gullible. (Soylent Green is Palins! Soylent Green is Palins!) Getting this bill rewritten - or getting it killed altogether — is about something more primal than that. It’s about how good it feels to bully someone. (That’s what the town hall protests are about to. What could be more a more basic human pleasure than to scream at someone until they give you what you want?) (And what’s the most satisfying thing to demand? Silence.) There are thousands of words in the health care bill that Sarah Palin and the Tea Baggers could have chosen to misconstrue. They chose the counseling provision because if they could defeat that, it would mean they had to power to tell a doctor to shut up. Doctors think they’re so smart? Well, they ain’t gonna tell me about medicine. Or any of their other patients, either, without they gets my say so. Same as congressmen tellin’ me about gummint. I’m a gunna hollar ‘atil they shuts up too. Just like James Madison would. — So Sarah Palin wins. I keep thinking about what Robert Stone wrote about Lee Harvey Oswald. This was a man whose only gift was the wit to compound his mistakes exponentially. A man to turn a personal fuck-up into a national disaster and make his problems everybody’s.

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Chris Kelly: Sarah Palin Wins

The latest about health care reform is that it’s going to kill your grandma. At least that’s what Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Charles Grassley and a whole bunch of right wing broadcasters and bloggers are telling us. And a lot of people - including a lot of older people - believe them. Incredibly. I say incredibly because these older folks, many of them, have been on Medicare for years (40 million Americans are Medicare recipients) and never seen a shred of evidence that Medicare had any desire, intention or impact on shortening their lives. I, for example, have been on Medicare for 11 years and my wife for seven. We know all about Medicare. It’s paid tens of thousands of dollars in cancer radiation treatments and back surgery for me; and additional tens of thousands for hip and knee replacements for my wife. Never once have either of us been denied care by Medicare, nor has any government bureaucrat even raised a single question or otherwise tried to get between either of us and our doctors. I’m sure there are some exceptions, for example I wouldn’t expect Medicare to pay Elmer Gantry for patent medicines or successors to the late Oral Roberts for the laying on of hands, but I’ve never heard any one of the dozens of people I know who are on Medicare complain about any treatment that wasn’t covered for the legally mandated 80 per cent of Medicare’s cost. Most of all, I’ve never heard of anyone suggesting euthanasia for grandma, grandpa - or me (I’m now 76 and getting progressively more expensive to insure). So, if in all these years, Medicare hasn’t made a single effort to kill me off - or any other Medicare recipient I know for that matter, no matter how expensive it’s been to keep any one of us alive - why should anyone believe that health care reform should cause Medicare to start going around and urging death on us seniors? No one should. These idiotic charges are false and make no sense. Unless you’re a Republican and want to deny Obama the credit for spreading health insurance to almost everyone in this benighted country, or an insurance company executive who can’t stand the idea of cutting profits by insuring people with pre-existing conditions. The argument for euthanasia is just plain stupid; besides it’s not based on a shred of evidence from a government program that’s provided health care for seniors since 1965. Unfortunately, the phony fuss may well result in getting rid of those voluntary counseling sessions that might make it more likely for sensible seniors to better control a lot of end of life decisions, like how much and what kind of treatment and care they want - and don’t want - when they’re terminally ill. So we’ll all end up paying the price for having so many Republicans and other stupid people in this country - and so many powerful insurance lobbyists.

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Sandy Goodman: If Medicare Wants to Kill Grandma, Why Hasn’t It Done So For 44 Years

Before I state my opinions on why college students by the millions drink themselves into insensibility four nights of every week, I’m going to give the reader who may know nothing of this subject a little recent history. For some reason that escapes me, the big metropolitan dailies in this great republic of ours have been abuzz this summer with stories , editorials , and letters about “binge drinking” in college. It must be a slow news summer. The appalling statistics of campus drunkenness and alcoholism haven’t changed much in 50 years, except to get worse. This blathering comes after last summer’s buzz about the same subject, a PR effort to lower the legal drinking age from 21 to l8, started by a group of 120 college presidents calling itself the ” Amethyst Initiative .” Our leaders of higher education admitted their failure and desperation, while saying nothing about ignoring the carnival outside their doors for five decades and more. But being the big bold dreamers and decisive leaders that they are, the presidents didn’t really commit to the lower drinking age. No, startled and scared by the storm of criticism their fatuous idea aroused, they hastily backtracked and announced that they merely wanted to start an “informed discussion” about lowering the drinking age. The New York Times , in an equally namby-pamby editorial last fall, took the college presidents to task for their rash enthusiasm about a preliminary, tentative, non-binding, feeling-out sort of discussion. Readers, if you’d been studying these college presidents’ proposals for fighting alcoholism on their campuses as I have, you too would be smiling sardonically at the ineffectuality of their “ideas.” Three of these ideas: (1) Massive PR and advertising campaigns in their schools’ newspapers full of dire facts, stern warnings, and useless appeals, (2) requiring incoming freshmen to take an alcohol education course, and (3) lowering the legal drinking age to 18. College presidents now threaten to supplant high school principals as the new national symbol of moral and intellectual bankruptcy, imbecility, and incompetence. Just consider the president of the University of Illinois , who wrote a book on leadership. At least the presidents have given up on homeopathic remedies for alcoholism. These remedies relied on boring, ineffective special campaigns of education to halt a spreading plague caused by an ersatz product falsely labeled “education.” This is exactly like a college president trying to fight undergraduate alcoholism by hosting a nightly multi-keg beer bash on his front lawn. They have now proposed just about everything except the one measure that might work: suspending students who get drunk, and expelling the habitual drunks. Not that I trust one statistic about college binge drinking in the most complete survey of the subject so far, the Harvard University report . I think Harvard and all the rest of the survey takers and scientists far underreport the amount of drinking that goes on. I do believe that 44 percent of college students are binge drinking (binge drinking is defined as taking five or more drinks for males, four drinks for females, in relatively rapid succession at least once in a two-week period). But I distrust the answers given by young people to survey questions asked about their vices. I think young adults, just like older adults, have a powerful interest in minimizing those vices. And I know from my own experience that it’s almost impossible to accept at face value anything said by a heavy drinker. So, in light of the above, I believe that the percentage of binge college drinkers is at least 55 or 60 percent, not 44 percent, of the undergraduate population. But there are other vitally important questions to be asked. How many students get high (that is, not dead drunk) twice a week? Three times? Four times or more? Is it necessary for me to point out that two beers chugged quickly can impair for hours a student’s ability to study or read or write, just as surely as five beers consumed over the course of one hour may clinically poison him or her? How much of this drinking just below binge level goes on? Here’s the reason The New York Times gives for campus binge drinking: “The higher minimum age of 21 for legal drinking is not the problem. It is the culture of drinking at school.” Now we know. The Times says college students drink because, well, because they drink. Not only is this weak, it’s tautological. Here are the real reasons: (1) The point of college in America is to acquire a social stamp rather than the ability or the liking for an intellectual life. No one except the most serious student has any reason to husband their best, freshest energies for class. (2) What most students are asked to do in the way of study and mind work lacks the spur of difficulty, even in core subjects. College is culpably easy. As one articulate student at MIT put it in a letter to The Wall Street Journal , “The solution to binge drinking on campuses is simple: College curriculums need to be more rigorous. If college programs required their students to put in a significant number of hours per week doing work related to their classes, campus drinking would soon find itself limited to one of two nights a week. Furthermore, those few nights a week [of drinking] would be more moderate. . .” (3) Students are bored to death by what they “study.” The school they attend ignores the Great Questions. The Great Books are conspicuous by their absence, or by their Bigfoot-like re-appearance from time to time in schools desperate for a curriculum idea that will re-animate the cold corpse of collegiate intellectual life. Instead of the classics, students get the Cafeteria Curriculum, where any nameable activity in life may pop up as the latest “major.” Students are at least dimly aware that “Methods of Real Estate Management” is not a real subject, and does not satisfy anyone’s lust to know “the best that has been thought” on subjects that have engaged superior minds for 3,000 years. (4) Unlike varsity footballers or rowers, who worry obsessively about their prowess in their chosen sport, the average student does not fear that he may not be strong or nimble or quick enough of mind in his subject. He has no anxiety about lack of preparation. He’s not called upon to sacrifice sleep or pleasure for the sake of either team or a highly-prized voluntary activity. (5) The student’s casual attitude about his studies is more than matched by the corresponding casualness with which the full professor in the modern “great public research university” treats his teaching duties. Here is the essence of why things have gone terribly wrong in our colleges and universities: What this pandemic of drunkenness records is the death of teaching, and the removal of the undergraduate as the central concern of the college and the university. The death-agonies of teaching occurred in the l960s. The hearts and minds of the full professors, the stars of the “great public research university,” are now engaged by research, not teaching. Teaching is dead, long live King Research! But if you want to know what the substitution of the prestige of research for good teaching by leading faculty members does to the morale of undergraduates, just look at the statistics of campus drunkenness . College presidents finally have admitted that it’s the most serious problem they face. And this sickening Thursday-through-Sunday drunken debauchery denotes the absence of mind in the one place where intelligence, reflection, and sobriety in every sense ought to set the tone for the entire institution. (6) There are no serious consequences for drunkenness and for sleeping through class in one’s seat, missing class, or missing assignment deadlines. Researchers have found that in the last 27 years, binge drinking by men 18 to 20 who did not attend college dropped by more than 30 percent, but the percentage of binge drinkers in college remained unchanged. One suspects that the non-college men faced more serious consequences for arriving at a job hungover or late than did the college men. Consequences such as losing one’s job, or being written up or suspended. John J. Holden, an adjunct professor at Hudson Valley Community College, sums up what the misguided leniency of American universities has done to higher education in a recent letter to The Wall Street Journal : “‘Just why the college crowd continues to drink so heavily’ is no mystery to this teacher. Students can get away with it. “Witness the large numbers of students who typically miss Friday morning classes because they’re still sleeping off Thursday night’s bacchanalia. Or the multitudes who regularly fail to complete assignments on time, blithely assuming that their hackneyed excuses actually excuse their behavior.” (7) The lack of intellectual adventure in college life. That loathsome phrase at the service of high school counselors, “a good fit,” says it all. “I think Marlborough College would be a good fit for you, Sarah” gives away the game. College has now become just another process to be gone through. It’s a game of qualifying and a predictable, mutual process of adjustment of human being and institution. Both parties agree to a program that will bring a success in a predictable career in a predictable profession for the student, and for the institution, another reliable $200-a-year donor to the alumni fund. Students who drink to get drunk want to feel alive, as they obviously do not feel alive, entombed with 500 of their fellows in some cavernous lecture hall, listening to an inept T. A. whose disjointed lecture follows a textbook written by the T. A.’s adviser. As the president of a San Diego University fraternity said in an NPR interview four years ago: “The biggest activity at the end of the night when we get drunk and all the girls go home is, we all meet up in our chapter room, just all the guys, and we have huge wrestling matches. Everyone’s drunk, everyone’s rolling around. It’s a fun time. It’s great.” Is this really what college has come to? Yes, and it’s even worse than the public suspects. We don’t have any idea of what we really want college to do. At this late date, we can’t decide whether we want institutions of professional vocational training, or whether we want to try for the Holy Grail of higher education for everybody: “a liberal education.” Huge classes taught perfunctorily by bored, distracted T. A.’s, an assembly-line feel to the whole of undergraduate education, non-existent subject matter haired up and eked out to look like the real thing in dozens and hundreds of non-existent subjects, legitimate subjects divided into thinner and thinner slices taught by narrower and narrower specialists every year, and the whole sordid show already prohibitively expensive: One wonders why 100% of undergraduates aren’t drinking themselves into oblivion four nights a week.

Originally posted here: 
Bill Sweetland: Education in Chicago: Binge Drinking Reveals a Desperate Boredom With College

…Asked by ABC News in an interview about the thoroughly discredited claim by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to paint his philosophical writings as evidence — along with a provision providing optional end of life counseling in the House Democrats’ health care reform bill — that President Obama wants to set up “death panels” to deny medical treatments to seniors and the disabled, including her son Trig, Emanuel, brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, does not hold back. “It’s an absolute outrage that you would take first of all a provision written in the bill,” Emanuel says, a provision allowing for “doctors to talk to patients about end of life care, and turn it into the suggestion that we’re going to have euthanasia boards — that’s a complete misreading of what’s there. It’s just trying to scare people.” More on Sarah Palin

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Zeke Emanuel On Sarah Palin’s Accusations: "It’s An Absolute Outrage"

Isn’t this special ? The Senate Finance Committee will drop a controversial provision on consultations for end-of-life care from its proposed healthcare bill, its top Republican member said Thursday. The committee, which has worked on putting together a bipartisan healthcare reform bill, will drop the controversial provision after it was derided by conservatives as “death panels” to encourage euthanasia. “On the Finance Committee, we are working very hard to avoid unintended consequences by methodically working through the complexities of all of these issues and policy options,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement. “We dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly.” So Max Baucus has ceded policy making not only over to Chuck Grassley, but to Sarah Palin, because only in their minds was the end-of-life consulations (note, Hill reporter, NOT end-of-life care, but end of life counselling)controversial. Or euthenasia. Where’s the White House on that one?

Excerpt from:
Sarah Palin Setting Finance Committee Policy?

I was going to ask, “How stupid do you have to be to believe that the government is creating a health reform bill that will include killing our senior citizens?” But I realized that’s the wrong question. The proper question is - How angry at losing political power or how frightened about liberals or how scared at any change or how terrified at having a black president or how stupid do you have to be to truly believe the United States is creating a public health bill to kill senior citizens? Mind you, I’m not talking about people against healthcare reform. That’s another matter entirely. The topic at hand here is one thing only - believing that the U.S. government wants to kill its senior citizens and weakest members. That’s the issue. And that’s what is incomprehensibly insane. And if right now you are reading this and sputtering, “No, it’s not insane because…” then you are among those who, while likely a level-headed and good-hearted person at most times, are being too stupid or angry or frightened or entrenched or racist. Pick one. (Just to be clear, you don’t have to be all the above. Any one will do. But of course, feel free not to limit yourself to just one, if you are so inclined. That’s totally your choice.) The only thing not your choice is thinking that the U.S. government wants to kill its weakest citizens. Try to justify that, and you lose all sanity defenses. “Yes, but…” doesn’t cut it. Crying socialist, communist, fascist, racist, Hitler, Stalin doesn’t cut it. (Geez, folks, where were you the last eight years? We could have used you. Yet as draconian as the Bush Administration was, even with George Bush scorning the Constitution as “just a goddammed piece of paper,” I still know they weren’t trying to kill your puppy.) Actually reading the portion of the bill might be asking too much, but the issue is really quite simple. Most doctors right now meet with their sickest patients to discuss the future openly. Not to make recommendations, just to explain honestly what a patient is facing. (Such options, by the way, include, “You can be kept alive on every pill and medical device known to man as long as humanly possible.”) It’s the patient’s choice. It’s the patient’s choice if they even want to meet with the doctor! All this bill does - All This Bill Does - is reimburse you for the doctors’ bill. For what they’re already doing. Reimburse you for what doctors have been doing since the beginning of medicine. Often for free. That’s it. It’s about payment reimbursement. Check it out here. HR 3200, Section 1223 . Read it first. Okay, honestly, I really do get it that there are people who think the government wants to kill old people. What I don’t understand is how deeply, gut-wrenching, twisted-up inside do they have to be to believe it? How white-ash bleak must one’s fury be at having political power for eight years and then losing all of it to ignore reality and believe the government wants to kill old people? How stomach-churning horrified must one be towards liberalism to believe that liberals, who brought about Social Security, Medicare and civil rights, want to now kill the elderly and needy? How frozen with angst must a person’s life be to believe change means the government wants to kill them? How terrified in one’s soul must someone be towards black people to believe that a black president would want to kill the weakest people in America? And how willing must a person be to completely stop thinking for themselves to believe without questioning that the United States wants to will senior citizens? It must be hell inside to be that torn up with vitriolic hatred, hysterical panic, and emptiness to prefer to believe the insane rather than simple reality. The government is not trying to kill senior citizens. Here, let me give you a hug. It’s all okay. Now, in fairness, some GOP spokesmen who are creating this fear-mongering fall into the above-mentioned categories themselves. But in equal fairness, most know better and are just demagogues trying to relentlessly lie and terrify people for political gain. Like when resigned-governor Sarah Palin wrote last week how “my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel.’” Or like when Newt Gingrich said on Sunday that in this government “there are clearly people in America who believe in establishing euthanasia.” And even Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who said on Wednesday, “[Y]ou have every right to fear…We should not have a government program that pulls the plug on grandma.” You want to discuss “downright evil,” as Ms. Palin called it? Start with these statements. Toss in others from Republican spokesmen just like them. They know better. (And I’m bending over backwards to presume that Sarah Palin does know better.) But what they are doing is just trying to terrify susceptible people into believing insane things, just to advance a conservative agenda. (How susceptible? An audience that rants against government-run health care while supporting Medicare makes the demagogue’s job oh-so much easier. It’s like playing with human silly putty.) A demagogue who relentlessly repeats an insane lie, that’s one thing. But how angst-ridden does a person have to be to truly believe that the U.S. is creating a health bill that will kill our senior citizens? Even the barnyard animals knew that Chicken Little was nuts, no matter how many times he yelled that the sky was falling. The government is not creating a bill to kill senior citizens. You know better.

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Robert J. Elisberg: If Only Healthcare Reform Covered Full Insanity

“This is about the dismantling of this country,” Katy Abram, 35, shouted at Mr. Specter, drawing one of the most prolonged rounds of applause. “We don’t want this country to turn into Russia.” No, we don’t want this country to turn into Russia. But the facts are alarming. Consider the following: In 2008, Sarah Palin stated that she could see Russia from her house. Coincidence? No. The actual landmass of Russia is moving towards us at a rapid and alarming pace. Leading scientists predict that within the next six months, Russia will actually be on top of the United States. According to a Scientific Report, first, we’ll look up and we’ll think that we’re in a scene from Independence Day or War of the Worlds . We’ll be convinced that aliens have invaded. But no, it will be the actual country of Russia, hovering above us. And Obama will peer down from his perch on top. He’ll be riding it like it’s a skate board, holding hands with Putin. Obama will be all like, “Look out down below! Hope you don’t miss the sun…or your lives!” And with a terrifying “Bwhahaha,” he’ll send the entirety of the land of Russia crashing down upon us, destroying our Mom and Pop insurance companies and unspoiled Arctic and gleaming rivers and shining cities. In their place, bears on chains and free bears and red faced vodka-swilling children wearing bearskin hats and men and women who look like bears will roam our once pristine and free land. Waifish supermodels with unpronounceable names and tiny ballerinas and gymnasts will paint themselves red in our blood and practice Communism. They’ll dance on our graves, torso upright, yet knees bent, arms crossed, leggings kicking outward, ever outward. I’ll miss you all. More on Barack Obama

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Sarah Walker: Russia On Top

By Laurie Penny My partner suffers from a joint disorder which requires regular operations, paid for by the British NHS. His most recent procedure was performed without anaesthetic by a drunken surgeon wielding a rusty hacksaw. As I forced a mouldy rag between his teeth to stop him screaming, an official wearing Nazi insignia burst in and informed us that limbs were not considered an NHS spending priority, so dirty chisels were employed to remove both his legs and one of his arms. My partner is now a triple amputee, and I am forced to prostitute myself for heroin to numb the pain of living in an Orwellian super-state. God save the Queen. This decidedly made-up story is hardly more ridiculous than the lies that Republicans have been peddling about the NHS all week. To set a few spluttering records straight: patients over 59 are not denied heart surgery; Professor Sir Stephen Hawking has come forward to say that he would not be alive without the NHS ; and Republican hysteria over ‘ death panels ‘ reflects more accurately the situation in the United States than in Britain. On both sides of the Atlantic, lofty officials get to choose how best to allocate a finite amount of healthcare funding - the difference is that the NHS bases decisions on its analysis of how best to deliver equitable healthcare for all, rather than basing decisions on the interests of its shareholders. Brits all over the world have been stepping forward to defend the NHS , with ‘WeLoveTheNHS’ becoming a trending topic on Twitter this week, surely the ultimate signifier of public passion. The British are proud of our healthcare system, and even members of the right-wing Conservative party have pledged to defend it, knowing that without promising to uphold socialized healthcare their chances of election success would vanish. What President Obama is proposing is not a simple transposition of the NHS setup, although it will make for a fairer system if it passes Congress. He is right not to base his plan on the British system: the NHS has its flaws; it’s not a simple case of NHS good, Medicare bad. The reality, as ever, is much more complex, and is being obscured by half-truths, frothing right-wing paranoia and outright lies. My partner’s illness, however, is real - so let me tell you what really happens. Whenever he needs an operation, my partner receives top-quality care from our local hospital - eventually. Because his debilitating, agonizing condition is not life-threatening, he normally has to wait several months for the free operations, and the process of consultation and aftercare varies on a sliding scale from risible to non-existent. On the other hand, his disability makes him unfit for most work, and were we US citizens my meagre half-salary would doubtless put us amongst the 43 million Americans with no healthcare cover at all. We can and do complain about the NHS - being British, it’s one of our favourite hobbies - but the specialist painkillers he needs to get through his worst days are free, and they will remain free for the rest of his life. It isn’t easy for my partner, being 25 years old and facing a lifetime of pain and limited mobility. He worries about his future; I worry, among other things, that any children we decide to have will inherit his condition. But one thing we never have to worry about is being able to afford those vital operations, or the medication that keeps him stable. Moreover, if I were to fall pregnant tomorrow, even on my low-income I would be treated to regular check-ups, help to quit smoking with free NHS classes, ante-and-post natal care, and food vouchers so that I could afford to drink milk, eat vegetables and take supplements to safeguard my health and the health of the foetus. By contrast, staggering inequalities in the US healthcare system mean that the United States has the highest infant mortality rate in the developed world. I’m proud to live in a country with ’socialized’ healthcare. For all its faults, its shoddy waiting lists and its dreadful dental care, the NHS system erases health inequalities and relieves millions of people, rich and poor, from the burden of constant anxiety about medical bills and sudden sickness. Even more importantly, it creates the progressive impression that the physical and mental health of the nation is the collective responsibility of all its citizens. In the process, without making a fuss about it, the British NHS truly upholds the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all. If that’s socialism, then sign me up. Laurie Penny is a columnist for the British progressive website LabourList . More on Socialists

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LabourList: Life, liberty and happiness: if this is socialized healthcare, sign me up!

There has been a lot of misinformation and downright lies concerning the healthcare overhaul. Sarah Palin’s usual inflammatory and inept speechifying reached a new level of obfuscation when she said there would be “death panels” to decide whether the elderly and disabled should live or die. Senator’s Grassley’s ratification of Palin’s know-nothing statement only reinforced the level of Republican propagandizing around big lies. Central to the big lies and smears is the constant invocation of people with disabilities. Everyone seems concerned that disabled patients would be terminated before the end of their natural lives. The reality is that health care bill allows insurance companies to reimburse patients who want to discuss whether or not to have living wills and how to structure those most effectively for the comfort zone of the person. This rhetorical concern for the disabled is fascinating coming from the right, which has routinely worked against extending accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act, saying that it would cost businesses too much to retrofit their environments. But there are strange moments when the right and disability activists have become bedfellows. One was the controversy around Terri Schiavo, in which right-to-lifers joined with people concerned that the comatose patient was being deprived of life support because of her disability status. Another area has been assisted suicide, in which fundamentalists have held that no one should be allowed to take their own lives, and in which disability activists feel that given limited health resources the disabled will be pressured into assisted suicide by insurance companies and impatient doctors. However, in the case of the health-care bill, there should be no such alliances. Everyone, disabled or not, should create a living will now when they are capable of doing so without confusion and not under the pressure of a serious illness. It is important that people with disabilities speak out against being used as the negative poster children of the Republican’s smear campaign. The reforms advocated in the health care bill would specifically benefit people with disabilities by stopping the current practice in which insurance companies can terminate people for their health status. As for living wills, if Terri Schiavo had made one, there would have been no controversy around her death. More on Health Care

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Lennard Davis: Stop Using People with Disabilities as the Poster Children for the Republican Attack on Healthcare

Michelle Malkin and Fox News Channel have finally blown the lid off the biggest conspiracy of our time. No, it’s not the one about how the Obama administration is going to take over your computer, banish white people to FEMA camps, poison your tap water, murder your special needs children and strangle your grandmother with its government robot claws (” because they’re made of metal and robots are strong “). It’s a brand new conspiracy involving President Obama and an 11-year-old girl. The plot? To ask a question at a town hall meeting. Scary. Run for your lives and all that. Rewind to Tuesday afternoon when an 11-year-old girl asked President Obama a question about the “mean things” she observed on various protest signs outside. Malkin and other wingnuts swooped into action , investigating and exposing the girl’s parents as — shock, horror! — supporters of the president. The girl’s parents even donated some money and volunteered on the campaign. Mind blowing, I know. It’s like the Donald Sutherland scene in JFK . But considering that there were literally millions of volunteers associated with the president’s campaign, and considering that tickets for the event were available online where millions of supporters of the president typically hang out, it stands to reason that a few actual, you know, supporters would manage to acquire tickets. Yet beyond this earth-shattering information uncovered by Malkin that Obama supporters attended an Obama event, there isn’t any evidence whatsoever that the 11-year-old girl was coached or scripted by the White House. None. And, it goes without saying that Malkin and Fox News Channel are entirely ignorant of the fact that similar Bush events were revealed to be literally and entirely staged and scripted with attendees having to sign loyalty oaths . Nevertheless, given that Republican hero Sarah Palin just recently warned everyone about attacking her kids, and given that there’s no evidence of any White House meddling in this case, you would think both Malkin and Fox News Channel would back off and avoid the story , especially considering that the target was an 11-year-old child without any relationship to a public figure. Naturally, this would be the decent thing to do since there’s no story here. But decency never stopped Malkin and Fox News Channel from targeting civilian children in order to satisfy their ignorant viewers and to substitute for their utter lack of integrity, rationality and reason. You might recall how Malkin famously stalked 12-year-old accident survivor named Graeme Frost after he appeared in a commercial supporting SCHIP, the children’s health insurance program. (Incidentally, we can only assume that since they claim to hate socialized health insurance, there aren’t any conservative Republicans who have received SCHIP benefits for their children. Nope. None. Right?) And just last week on his Fox News Channel show, Glenn Beck outed an Islamic private school in Northern Virginia when the school’s sole newsworthy trespass was that an application to expand its campus was approved by the local zoning board. But Beck went on an extended googly-eyed, sarcasmo rant (lots of “maybe it’s just me”) about the school being a de facto training camp for would-be terrorists, and even invoked September 11th imagery — collapsed buildings and the like — in the process. It’s a grade school! Where large groups of children go for seven hours a day. And Beck risked stirring up the kneejerk vitriol of his itchy-trigger-fingered wingnut vigilante audience while also calling attention to the school’s existence and general location, all because the school’s zoning application was approved. Inciting an obviously gun-toting audience to pursue adult politicians is dangerous and irresponsible enough. You may have heard that a man appeared near the president’s New Hampshire town hall event carrying a loaded firearm and a placard that implied the necessary assassination of the president. Not only was he left alone with his piece and his dreams of assassination, but he was invited to appear on Hardball to talk political science later that day. The takeaway? Bring a gun, get on TV. Today, at a town hall meeting held by Senator Cardin (D-MD), a man held up a sign reading : “Death to Obama.” Regardless of their first amendment right to assemble and to blurt out loud noises, the far-right, whether or not they’re honest enough to admit it, represents the reactionary wing of American political ideology. That’s a fact. They dig weaponry and they endorse violent solutions to conflicts (war, torture and the like). Contrastingly, no matter how loudly many liberals protested the Bush administration, I never heard of a liberal bringing a loaded weapon to a Bush rally. You know, because of the general message of pacifism and peace and such. Besides, as Cenk Uygur observed , if any liberal had stepped within a mile of George W. Bush while brandishing a loaded weapon. They would’ve been arrested — perhaps indefinitely detained — given a cutesy nickname like the “Shoe Bomber” and vilified by Michelle Malkin and the establishment media as a terrorist. It’s become evident this week that, unless cooler heads prevail, this modern breed of Fire-Eaters are lurching ever closer to an armed assault of some sort. Perfect time to demagogue children, right? As the ring leaders migrate into the arena of targeting children within the context of the increasingly hot war over healthcare reform, Malkin, Fox News and other wingnuts who orbit the right-wing satellite of crazy has evolved from being a silly, almost campy assembly of sore losers to an ignorant, dangerous posse — a rabble of misinformed cranks who have no problem with pinning large red targets on the backs of children. Put another way: they have identified an 11-year-old girl as a co-conspirator in this horribly misperceived socialist-fascist-Nazi-Marxist-communist-leftist-rightist-and-brown ” insurgency .” They have broadcast her name and her home town to every hairless wingnut freakdog who’s holed up in his bunker with Glenn Beck on TV, Alex Jones on the radio and The Gimp locked inside a steamer trunk. They have defined this child as another enemy standing in the way of getting “their country back.” And she only asked the president a question. (I hasten to add that she did so with a tone far more mature than many of the easily-misled hollering goons who are upwards of 70 years her senior.) If Fox News Channel and Michelle Malkin had any dignity or integrity left in their souls, they would personally offer to finance a private security detail to protect this girl and her family until the worst of this insanity blows over. But we probably shouldn’t hold our breath. At the very least, I sincerely hope that fewer and fewer voters and politicians take these maniacs seriously, especially when it comes to healthcare reform. Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog! Go! More on Health Care

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Bob Cesca: Malkin and Fox News Are Stalking Children Again

click for full size Yes, we already probed the Joker fairly thoroughly (but then, major points for the guy having that creepy eruption!). But the killer element here (pardon the pun) is this dear lady’s pullover. Honestly, the whole ” Death Panel ” thing was so “out there,” it didn’t resonate with me until I came across this Newscom photo today. As Rachel Maddow well elaborated , the radical right has been scaring seniors based on the picayune but otherwise perfectly sensible fact health care reform proposals encourage people to create living wills.    So, here’s what I’m wondering. Do you think Dottie Kennard, from Peoria, AZ, really thinks that Obama and/or the Dems want to waste her and her husband? Or, do you think Dottie is smarter than that but she’s picked up Sarah’s shouting point just to emotionally terrorize more vulnerable members of her demographic? For more visual politics, visit BAGnewsNotes.com (and follow us on Twitter ). (image: Newscom, August 8, 2009 via TPM) More on Rachel Maddow

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Michael Shaw: Reading The Pictures: Grandma Must Die!

Looks like the deathers got to Johnny Isakson, the Georgia Republican who authored Senate legislation providing Medicare coverage for end-of-life planning. Yesterday, Isakson slammed deather claims about the House bill: I just had a phone call where someone said Sarah Palin’s web site had talked about the House bill having death panels on it where people would be euthanized. How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts. You’re putting the authority in the individual rather than the government. I don’t know how that got so mixed up. Today, after President Obama pointed to Isakson’s comments while refuting deather claims such as Sarah Palin’s imaginary “death panels,” Isakson went ballistic, releasing a statement from his office: WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., today denounced comments made by President Obama and his spokesman regarding Isakson’s alleged connection to language contained in the House health care bill on “end-of-life counseling.” Isakson vehemently opposes the House and Senate health care bills and he played no role in drafting language added to the House bill by House Democrats calling for the government to incentivize doctors by offering them money to conduct “end-of-life counseling” with Medicare patients every five years. In the statement, Isakson himself bent over backwards to please the deathers: “The House provision is merely another ill-advised attempt at more government mandates, more government intrusion, and more government involvement in what should be an individual choice.” It’s yet another example that if you’re a Republican and you criticize Rush Limbaugh Glenn Beck teabaggers birthers deathers, there’s only one thing you can do if you want to stay in the party: you flip-flop as fast as you can. Update (5:04PM): John Cole wraps it up nicely : In for a penny, in for a pound. There is simply nothing these guys will not lie about, and they have no problem reversing course hours after publicly stating something completely different. The facts are just optional with these guys. They just don’t care if they tell the truth, they are not ashamed to lie at will, and no one in the media will hold them accountable. Isakson is up for re-election in 2010, and he knows how wingnutty the base is. He has to play to the Palin wing or he will get primaried. That is how crazy the GOP is these days.

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Isakson backs off criticism of deathers

As ABC’s Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller note , President Obama pointed out the amusing detail that one of the key authors of the provision twisted by Sarah Palin and others into a “death panel” was in fact a Republican: President Obama said the “irony” is that one of the chief sponsors of this idea was Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., who “sensibly thought this would expand peoples’ options.” Isakson this week told the Washington Post that “someone said Sarah Palin’s website had talked about the House bill having death panels on it where people would be euthanized. How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts. You’re putting the authority in the individual rather than the government. I don’t know how that got so mixed up. …It empowers you to be able to make decisions at a difficult time rather than having the government making them for you.” President Obama said that underlying this issue was the “legitimate concern” that people have “that if we are reforming the health system to make it more efficient that somehow that will mean rationing of care.” He painted a picture of “some bureaucrat” saying “’You can’t have this test, you can’t have this procedure’” because “some bean counter” said so. The president said his health care reform would put these decisions in the hands of medical experts and doctors, rather than insurance company bureaucrats who “right now are rationing care.” Transcript below the fold.

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Presidential pushback on "deather" conspiracy theories

Health care reform was the single biggest issue in the 2008 campaign. Everywhere any of the candidates went, especially town hall meetings, they were peppered with the question: “What are you going to do about the dismal state of our nation’s health care system?” There weren’t any Tea Baggers descending on these places demanding the candidates pledge that they do nothing to change the miserable private health care system we currently have. Even John McCain and Sarah Palin had to pretend they had a plan and talked up all sorts of nice sounding “reforms,” such as shopping for insurance across state lines, that would do little (if anything) to stop the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations from gaming the system. What happened that so changed the terms of the health care debate? Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations , refers to capitalist business elites as “an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.” The same type of business people Smith identified 233 years ago run our political economy today. For them the system works best when elites make the most fundamental decisions for our society unencumbered by the trappings of “democracy” and the population is depoliticized or misinformed, or both. Single payer? “Off the table.” Tax the windfall profits of health insurance and drug companies? “Off the table.” Volume buy drugs to control costs? “Off the table.” Public Option? (We’ll see). The elites have spoken. Forty years ago, the social theorist Paul Baran pointed out that contemporary capitalism’s emphasis on marketing and advertising is designed “to make people want what they don’t need, and not to want what they do.” It’s painfully obvious that we need a national health care system that provides every American with access to affordable, quality care. But with the “Running of the Tea Baggers” this August we see the power of elites to “deceive and oppress” the public, and to confuse people about what’s in their best interest. Even in times of peace and prosperity the corporate media environment produces false needs, depoliticizes people, and uses corporate marketing techniques to manipulate consumers. This media environment also knows how to push all the right buttons that dwell in the hearts of “low information” citizens to allow elites to dictate national policy and to block reforms that will cut into their bottom line. The corporate-tool-Congressman-from-Louisiana-turned-corporate-tool-lobbyist-for-Big Pharma, Billy Tauzin, cut a deal with the White House so his clients, who have gorged themselves at the public trough, cannot be charged more than the arbitrary amount of $80 billion over a ten year period because that just wouldn’t be fair. And this calculation comes after George W. Bush and Thomas Scully and Tauzin himself engineered a huge give away of taxpayer dollars to the pharmaceutical industry with the passage of the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill. Tom DeLay rammed it through Congress while the Bush White House lied about its true costs. Lying to Congress about the costs of a major overhaul of the nation’s Medicare system might sound like an impeachable offense to some of us but in the halcyon days when the Republicans controlled everything and had the corporate media cheerleading for them we heard nary a peep of criticism. Tauzin, Scully, and their buddies instantly became fabulously wealthy — who wouldn’t want to rake in over $2 million a year as a shill for Big Pharma? The current state of the health care “debate” illustrates, even with the election of Barack Obama and large Democratic majorities in Congress, we might have already lost the vocabulary for collective moral discourse. Whenever someone says health care is a human right or that the federal government is capable of managing a large part of the nation’s health care system (as it already does) these ideas are generally met with scorn, indifference, and an onslaught of lies. More on Sarah Palin

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Joseph A. Palermo: Health Care Reform was the Key Issue in the 2008 Campaign — What Happened?

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama has more than one way of bringing people together: Just ask Cass and Samantha. Or Anita and Bob. Or Tommy and Katie. It turns out there are power couples all over the White House, united both in marriage and by policy. The aide charged with managing all government regulations and a top national security official just had their first child together. The White House’s top communications official is married to the Obamas’ personal attorney. And the president’s recent trip to France provided the perfect backdrop for a marriage proposal in the residence of the U.S. ambassador to France. Tommy Vietor, a 28-year-old assistant White House press secretary, surprised Michelle Obama’s chief spokeswoman inside the ornate mansion while the Obamas were visiting Europe to mark the 60th anniversary of the Normandy invasion. Vietor wasn’t part of the official trip, but flew overnight to make the unannounced visit. “I was shaking – he completely surprised me,” 30-year-old Katie McCormick Lelyveld said. “I couldn’t have picked a more perfect way for this to happen.” When told of the proposal, Obama said Vietor had pulled off a “smooth move.” The Vietor-McCormick Lelyveld wedding – no date has been set – will add another couple to the list of administration officials who share more than an employer. Although the couples decline interviews, citing a White House policy against profiles involving staffers’ personal lives, they don’t work in anonymity. Pulitzer Prize-winner Samantha Power is a senior official at the National Security Council, where she continues to be among the familiar voices Obama consults. Next door, at a government office building, former Harvard Law School professor Cass Sunstein oversees government regulations for the Office of Management and Budget. Power and Sunstein met during the Obama campaign, started dating just before last year’s leadoff caucuses in Iowa, and were married by summer. “You know what they say,” Sunstein told a magazine before the November election. “Obama brings people together.” It’s not far off in this case. Obama phoned Power in 2005 to discuss her book on genocide; she offered to leave her job at Harvard to intern in his Senate office during a four-hour meeting. Sunstein, meanwhile, worked alongside Obama at the University of Chicago Law School until he left to join Power at Harvard when she returned there. During last year’s presidential campaign, Power resigned after causing a firestorm when she referred to Hillary Rodham Clinton as a “monster.” She later returned to work as a senior foreign policy adviser to Obama. Both Power and Sunstein retain their outsized reputations inside academic circles and, amid the chaos of the new administration, had their first child in April. Steps from the Oval Office, veteran image master Anita Dunn recently rejoined former campaign colleagues as the president’s interim communications director. Her husband Bob Bauer, already was working as the Obamas’ attorney. Dunn initially had turned down an offer to join the White House after the campaign, promising her family she’d return to her consulting firm and the dining room table. But a staff shake-up pushed Ellen Moran out and Obama turned back to Dunn, who during the campaign shaped the broad message and worked with women’s groups. She couldn’t say no. Next door to Dunn’s West Wing office, her deputy Dan Pfeiffer manages the White House’s day-to-day spin. Just steps up the hall, his wife Sarah Feinberg is a top aide to the White House chief of staff. Pfeiffer and Feinberg met while they worked on Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign. He was based in Nashville; she, in her native West Virginia. They started dating two years later, when they both worked on the re-election campaign of Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D. “I thought the world of her as a colleague and a friend, but in terms of a relationship, I didn’t put two and two together for a long time,” Pfeiffer told The New York Times for his 2006 wedding announcement. “But sitting four feet away from her, well, it wasn’t very long before I wanted to go out with her.” When Rahm Emanuel became Obama’s chief of staff, he brought along Feinberg, his spokeswoman in the U.S. House. Pfeiffer, meanwhile, moved from his Michigan Avenue campaign office in Chicago back into his Washington home he left two years earlier. More on Obama PDA

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Obamas Are Not The Only White House Couple

It turns out Sarah Palin’s “death panel” craziness about her Down syndrome son Trig wasn’t quite as original as it initially seemed. On August 4 — three days before Palin’s deather rant — Newt Gingrich made the same basic claim, asserting that through adviser Ezekiel Emmanuel, the Obama administration was seeking the “foreboding” and “threatening” power to “euthanize” Americans, putting “Down syndrome children at risk.” Given that Gingrich made his strange euthanasia claim three days before Palin, the fact that he vociferously defended her on Sunday shouldn’t be any surprise. Transcript:    Look at what Dr. Emmanuel has said, the President’s advisor who has certainly implied a willingness to consider euthanasia, and then you look at the historic record of euthanasia. You know, should Down syndrome children be at risk of the government, or should their lives be protected?    If you read the “communitarian standards” that Dr. Emmanuel describes, then it certainly sounds very foreboding and very threatening, and I think you can suddenly get people engaged in conversation and in debate who would not normally be engaged in it. Gingrich was answering a political question about how conservatives should woo college students on issues like the health care debate. Although he didn’t say it, it’s obvious that one of Gingrich’s top strategies is to lie through his teeth. :: You can view the full question and answer here .

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Before Palin crazy, there was Gingrich crazy

Politico ’s Jonathan Martin explains that claims from groups like Club for Growth that health care reform will spur “waves of euthanasia” are “not true”: We’ve heard about the “birthers,” now we’re hearing about the “deathers” … It’s these folks saying that health care reform will spur waves of euthanasia, and of course, that’s not true. ::: Deather, defined Main entry: deather Function: noun Etymology: From birther , a related conspiracy theory which holds that President Obama is not a natural born U.S. citizen. Inspired by the teabaggers of April 15, 2009. Date: Mid-2009 Definition: One who believes or spreads the false conspiracy theory that the health care reform legislation before Congress would create “death panels” or force seniors and sick people into euthanasia. Examples: Sarah Palin is a deather. Glenn Beck is a deather. Rush Limbaugh is a deather.

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Club for Growth spreads “deather” conspiracy theory

John Nichols makes the case for single payer advocacy. Of course, getting a September vote on single-payer does not mean that single-payer will get the votes. With the Obama administration and congressional leaders determined to compromise rather than fight, it is unlikely in the extreme that the current debate will end with the adoption of a single-payer plan. Even if the House approved one, it would still face a fight in the Senate. But just as Republicans are willing to just say “no” to any reform, progressives should just say “yes” to real reform. The WaPo’s Steven Perlstein : The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they’ve given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They’ve become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems. Perlstein was apologetic for coming across as one-sided on the issue. Kudos to him for telling it like he sees it. Here’s an example of what Perlstein was talking about. Remember “death panels”, springing from the fevered imagination of Sarah Palin? From the Institute for Southern Studies : And as it turns out, the cause of advance planning has been championed especially strongly by a pro-life Republican — U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia. Advance planning is good, appropriate, necessary and standard. Lying about it is not going to get Republicans more than a week’s worth of advantage, and the blow-back is going to be considerable. See Perlstein. From Ezra Klein , interviewing Isakson: How did this become a question of euthanasia? I have no idea. I understand — and you have to check this out — I just had a phone call where someone said Sarah Palin’s web site had talked about the House bill having death panels on it where people would be euthanized. How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts. You’re putting the authority in the individual rather than the government. I don’t know how that got so mixed up. The DCCC blog (the Stakeholder) has a nice round-up of editorials condemning the unruly mobs and hooligans at town halls here and here . Polling cross-currents on health reform are summarized by USA Today : An analysis of results from a USA TODAY survey July 10-12 illustrates some of the crosscurrents in public opinion. The poll of 3,026 adults has a margin of error of +/—2 percentage points. The poll found: •Significant differences on what the key goal of a health care overhaul should be. Two-thirds of blacks and six in 10 Hispanics say it should be expanding coverage to the uninsured, but six in 10 whites say controlling costs. Westerners are inclined to say expanding coverage is more important; Southerners say it’s controlling costs. •Challenges in convincing most Americans that it is urgent to act this year, as Obama argues. There’s less urgency among those who have insurance and whose health is excellent or good — groups that make up the majority of those polled. •Resistance among seniors. Fewer than half of seniors polled want an overhaul enacted this year. If you missed it, mcjoan noted: The White House has launched a new Web site to debunk some of the crazier ideas floating around about healthcare reform, Health Insurance Reform Reality Check . See also: Democrats take sterner line against health care misinformation and this from the NY Times : “Don’t associate loud with effective,” Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said in an interview, adding that he detected no anxiety from supportive lawmakers in politically vulnerable districts. “What is coming across is a lot of noise and a lot of heat without a lot of light.” From the ONE.org blog : During the month of August, Secretary of State Clinton is embarking on a seven-nation, 11-day trip to Africa. Her travels will include (in order) Kenya, South Africa, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Liberia, and Cape Verde. We’ll be closely following her journey on the ONE Blog with background and developments as they occur. This is really a remarkable trip for the Secretary of State, touring countries that have made great strides in democracy (Liberia and Cape Verde come to mind), and countries that are working to get there. but the health focus of the trip should not be lost. South Africa now officially recognizes HIV/AIDS (the previous health minister did not.) Factoid: 33 million people are infected with HIV/AIDS worldwide. Two-thirds of them (22 million) live in sub-Saharan Africa. programs like The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) are key to the effort. They have bipartisan support, and need to be continued. Helen Branswell : Infection with some kinds of influenza viruses may set up people to be at higher risk of developing Parkinson’s disease later in life, a new American study suggests. The work, inspired by the story behind the 1990 movie “Awakenings,” suggests some aggressive strains of flu that can pass into the brain may deplete dopamine-creating neurons, leaving a person more vulnerable to developing the neurodegenerative disease at a later date. Also from Helen Branswell : A scientific review published Monday questions the merits of broad use of antiviral drugs in children suffering from influenza, suggesting there is an urgent need for a better understanding of how well the drugs work in children. The British have been more aggressive with tamiflu than their Canadian and US counterparts. In the US , only high risk, ill and very young patients get treated.

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Health Care Tuesday

Keith Olbermann went off on Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and the birthers in a nearly 15-minute “Special Comment” Monday night. The MSNBC host was particularly incensed by Palin’s recent, totally unsupported, claim that Obama’s health care plan would result in a “death panel.” “There is no ‘death panel.’ There is no judgment based on societal productivity. There is no worthiness test. But there is downright evil, and Ms. Palin, you just served its cause,” Olbermann said, before going on to call Palin a “clear and present danger to the safety and security of this nation.” Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy More on Sarah Palin

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Olbermann Slams Palin For "Death Panel" Claim, Calls Her Dangerously Irresponsible (VIDEO)

The most entertaining Larry King segments ever? Kathy Griffin was guest-hosting the show Monday night and she welcomed Levi Johnston for multiple segments of flirting, sexual innuendo, deep thoughts and a Teen Choice Award show recap . In Levi’s experience, teens scream louder for Jonas Brother than Republicans did for John McCain at the RNC. Of the Palins Levi said, “I’m not really looking forward to being around that family anymore.” He also said he plans to change up his Bristol ring finger tattoo . In between Kathy calling Levi “Tiger” and talking about “making sweet love” to him, she talked about moving to Wasilla, his chew habit, hunting and had Levi read aloud a random fan letter to Miley Cyrus. WATCH: Follow HuffPost Entertainment On Twitter! More on Levi Johnston

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Levi Johnston And Kathy Griffin Take Two: Flirting And Palin Talk On "Larry King" (VIDEO)

The GOP’s boss falsely claims the House version of the health care reform bill contains mandatory euthanasia: ::: Deather, defined Main entry: deather Function: noun Etymology: From birther , a related conspiracy theory which holds that President Obama is not a natural born U.S. citizen. Inspired by the teabaggers of April 15, 2009. Date: Mid-2009 Definition: One who believes or spreads the false conspiracy theory that the health care reform legislation before Congress would create “death panels” or force seniors and sick people into euthanasia. Examples: Sarah Palin is a deather. Glenn Beck is a deather. Rush Limbaugh is a deather.

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Rush Limbaugh is a deather

As a basic rule, politicians will say anything they can get away with. If an effective politician thinks that he can call his opponent a drug-dealing, serial-murdering gangster, and have the charge taken seriously by the media, then he will do it, even if there is no reality whatsoever to the allegation. The reason that most politicians don’t describe their opponents this way is because the media will denounce them as liars, who are unfit for responsible public office. This basic truth must be kept in mind in understanding the health care debate. The debate has trailed off into loon tune land, and it’s the media’s fault. The lunacy was most clearly in evidence in former Gov. Sarah Palin’s claim that President Obama’s plan would force her to stand in front of a “death panel” to argue for the life of her baby with Down Syndrome. This “death panel” is a complete invention by Governor Palin. There is no twist or turn or contorted permutation of President Obama’s plan that would prevent Ms. Palin from providing as much health care as she wants to her baby. It would have made as much sense to claim that the transportation bill will deny medical care to her baby. After all, if the roads in front of her home are not properly maintained, and her baby has a medical emergency, then the transportation bill would have effectively sentenced her baby to death because she won’t be able to get medical attention in a timely manner. The reason that Governor Palin thought she could make up stories about President Obama’s death panels is that the media have treated all sorts of other absurd inventions about his health care plan with respect. At the most basic level, opponents have repeatedly said that President Obama’s plan will lead to rationing of health care. Of course, there is absolutely nothing in President Obama’s plan that resembles rationing. He certainly intends to limit the type of medical procedures that the government would fund, but opponents of the plan don’t want the government to fund any procedures. So, how is restricting the procedures funded through a government plan rationing? Anyone who wants to is entirely free to buy as much health care as they want outside of the government-subsidized plan. Where is the rationing? Using Governor Palin’s story, there may be mothers who are less wealthy than her who will be able to care for a baby with Down Syndrome or other serious affliction as a result of President Obama’s plan. These mothers might not otherwise have this option because they could not afford the health care. It is easy to see how President Obama’s plan can lead to life compared with the current situation. It’s virtually impossible to see how it leads to death. The media have allowed the politicians to turn life into death and night into day when it comes to the health care debate because they decided that anything said against President Obama’s plan should be treated with respect, no matter how absurd it might be. The line about rationing isn’t the only place where the media have fallen down on the job in the health care debate. Instead of telling us that the cost of the plan was “huge,” as the have often done, the media could have put the cost in a context that would make it understandable to people who are not policy wonks. They could have told us that the projected $1 trillion cost over the next decade is equal to about 0.5 percent of GDP, less than half of the cost of Iraq-Afghanistan wars at their peak. The $250 billion ten-year shortfall that Congress is struggling to fill is a bit more than 0.1 percent of GDP, rounding error in the total budget. But the media only assured the public that this gap was a big hole in the budget; they didn’t try to tell us how big. The media have the job of informing the public. They have the time and the resources to know that when opponents of President Obama’s plan talk about rationing, they are not telling the truth (i.e. they are lying). If the media just pass these assertions on to the public without comment, then they are giving them credibility. And if the opponents of health reform think they can get away with one really big lie, then why shouldn’t they start moving forward with even bigger ones. It was only a matter of time before someone came up with Governor Palin’s death panel line. For this we owe our thanks to The Washington Post and the rest of the mainstream media. More on Sarah Palin

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Dean Baker: Governor Palin’s Crazed Health Care Rant: Blame the Washington Post

Glenn Beck says he agrees with Sarah Palin’s false claim that President Obama is creating “death panels” that could kill her infant son: (Transcript after the jump.) ::: Deather, defined Main entry: deather Function: noun Etymology: From birther , a related conspiracy theory which holds that President Obama is not a natural born U.S. citizen. Inspired by the teabaggers of April 15, 2009. Date: Mid-2009 Definition: One who believes or spreads the false conspiracy theory that the health care reform legislation before Congress would create “death panels” or force seniors and sick people into euthanasia. Examples: Sarah Palin is a deather. Glenn Beck is a deather. Rush Limbaugh is a deather.

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Glenn Beck is a deather

When insurance companies deny coverage to critically ill patients because of what they deem “pre-existing conditions,” they sentence those people to misery and often death. And that has nothing to do with proposed health care reform. This travesty exists now. When acutely and chronically ill people are unable to purchase medicine because of exorbitant prices, pharmaceutical death panels have spoken. And again, this has nothing to do with universal health care proposals. When an infant is stillborn because of inadequate or nonexistent prenatal care, a cancer patient forgoes or is denied treatment because of costs, a family is forced to decide whose medical needs will be met — whose postponed, don’t tell me somewhere a death panel isn’t at work. Sarah Palin is supposedly worried that people are going to die if health care reform occurs. They’re dying now! Right under our noses! Instead of what could be, let’s talk about what is. Instead of fiction, let’s discuss reality. And instead of President Obama responding to wild attacks from fabricators as if deserving of reasoned responses, let’s hear him describe the death panels we have now and how much worse it is going to get if only the lucky and the wealthy have health care. Dr. Reardon also blogs at bardscove. More on Sarah Palin

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Kathleen Reardon: The "Death Panel" Already Exists!

Former Governor Sarah Palin’s rejection of almost $29 million in federal stimulus money designated for energy efficiency projects was overturned today in a special session of the Alaska State Legislature. The vote was 45-14 in favor of accepting the money. Had it not been approved, Alaska would have been the only state in the union to reject such funds. In addition, the appointment of Craig Campbell to the position of Lt. Governor was confirmed by a vote of 55-4. Dept. of Corrections Commissioner Joe Schmidt had been previously confirmed by the legislature to fill that position, but when Palin stepped down from her position, she announced Campbell rather than Schmidt would be taking the place of Lt. Governor Sean Parnell when he ascended to the Governor’s seat. This unexpected turn forced the need for the special session and a legislative vote on his confirmation at a cost to the state of over $100,000.

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AKMuckraker: Alaska Legislature Votes to Accept Palin’s Rejected Stimulus Funds

House leaders Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer have written a joint op-ed in USA Today calling for civility and order at local town hall events over the August recess. Apparently, via TPM , Sarah Palin agrees: Former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) — who last week denounced President Obama for supposedly wanting to create a “death panel” that would condemn her Down Syndrome son to go without health care — is now calling for civility at town halls, and to not  diminish our political discourse. It really spotlights the rabid political animal lurking just below Palin’s shallow psyche. If we are to take the former Governor of Alaska at her word — which, given the current state of the loony right, would be on par with putting a mother grizzly in charge of a meat locker — she’s convinced that Obama will convene a death panel to condemn her disabled son to a slow, lingering death. But, hey now, Palin doesn’t want the Townhall Screaming Old Boy’s Choir to get the wrong idea and be uncivil , or take any actions that could diminish the political discourse, when opposing death panels turning mentally challenged kids and senior citizens into worm food. Yeah, and I’ve got a bridge to nowhere for sale.

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Pelosi, Hoyer, and … Palin?

The fathers of Sarah and Todd Palin will be joining forces this month to help an Idaho congressional candidate who’s getting an early start on his 2010 election bid. Both Chuck Heath and Jim Palin will be in Idaho later on this month to help out Vaughn Ward, a Republican candidate for Congress. They’ll be attending events for Ward at the end of the month in Boise and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Ward’s campaign spokesman said.

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Palin Fathers Campaigning For Idaho Candidate

Former Governor Sarah Palin made some preposterous claims over the weekend which attracted mainstream media attention. She made up the term “death panel” and claimed that part of the health care reform bill now working it’s way through Congress required that families with children with disabilities, or elderly people who are infirm, could be judged by one of these death panels, which could control their fate and decide if they would die. GOP leadership repeated this outrageous claim across the airwaves on the Sunday morning talk shows. The mainstream media gave this claim credibility simply by repeating it. My wife and I have practiced medicine for over forty years combined. There is no truth now, nor has there ever been any truth to the idea that the government encourages euthanasia or infanticide. Our country is in trouble. Claims like these are routinely refuted by people who know better, but they are recirculated because they are sensational, and the MSM purports to take a balanced position without a thoughtful assessment of the facts. Fox News actually has people on in support of these outrageously false claims. In fact, these kinds of claims are lies. There is no nice way to say it. This kind of stuff is far beyond the usual politicians’ tricks of shading words and imputing meanings that aren’t there. To quote a famous American who began the process of ending the McCarthy era in the fifties I address the MSM: “At long last, Have you no sense of decency?” More on Sarah Palin

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Howard Dean: The Media’s Treatment of Palin’s Outrageous "Death Panel" Claims

[T]here is nothing resembling the alleged “death panel” in the health care reform plan. A spokesperson for Palin told ABC News that the former governor was referring to a section promoting advance care planning that appears on page 425 of the House Democrats’ bill [pdf]. Advance care planning includes living wills and durable powers of attorney that allow individuals to make clear their wishes for end-of-life care, whatever they may be. And as it turns out, the cause of advance planning has been championed especially strongly by a pro-life Republican — U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia.

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Pro-Life Republican Behind So-Called "Death Panels"

These are times that try a progressive healthcare blogger’s soul. It shouldn’t be a surprise that a political establishment that looks at the fact that the Bush administration, led by Dick Cheney in every venal step, decided to start torturing people picked up in Afghanistan to amass false confessions about connections between bin Laden and Saddam so that they would have their “justification” for their war on choice, with nothing more than a yawn can report as straight across “news” that Sarah Palin thinks Obama is coming to kill her baby. But it still astounds that this is the new “normal.” Just unfathomable. And that’s what last week was. The image that will be indelibly linked in my mind I saw in one of the reports on the Rachel Maddow show with video from a townhall meeting held by Rep. John Dingell, and referenced in gdunn’s diary . There’s a young, disabled woman (pictured in the diary), speaking to the group propped up by her crutches, trying to explain what she’s been through since her insurance company dropped her last year and her inability to get coverage now because of her “preexisting condition.” She’s trying to tell her story, and an older woman stands a few rows back from her and screams, her face distorted and ugly in it’s anger and ignorance and selfish extremism, “I shoudn’t have to pay for your health care.” And these are normal, patriotic, “concerned” citizens? The ones abusing disabled people, hanging people in effigy, destroying property, making death threats. (Oh, and also insurance and pharmaceutical industry shills and Republican operatives.) This is political discourse now, and Cokie Roberts says it’s the liberals’ fault. I guess she and Rahm Emanuel have that in common. That’s the week we had. Other stuff happened, too. The obscene amounts of money was in the news again. Hmmm, suppose there’s a link between the $1.4 million plus spent per day by industry trying to kill this and the townhall screamers? Max Baucus set deadline number 578 for when he’d be done with his bill, September 15. Jon Kyl took his turn as the GOP concern troll to say that there’s no way. And to add to the bipartsan fun, Chuck Grassley, in an extreme display of Senate comity and decorum, used his colleague Ted Kennedy’s illness to lie about the proposed public option. So Democrats want to kill granny, Sarah Palin’s kid, and Ted Kennedy, for those of you keeping score at home. Bipartisan negotiations in the Baucus committee seemingly continue unabated. Billy Tauzin created a stir when he leaked a White House/Baucus deal with PhRMA that would have blocked proposals in the legislation to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion through price negotiations or rebates. Then it got confusing, with some Dem Senators saying that the White House told them there was no deal , while at the same time the White House was reaffirming it. The week ended with the White House backing out of a chunk of the deal , and with many Dems (those not named Baucus) with a bad taste in their mouths. The most disturbing aspect of this story is the extent to which the White House is using Baucus, knowing what we already know about what is going to be lacking in the Baucus plan: namely, a public option. This week, the primary media story is likely to continue to be the townhalls, since they’ll make good copy. The behind the scenes story will be the fight for a real public option, and not some watered down co-op system . Stay tuned.

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Healthcare Reform: What a Week

What we’re seeing in these angry town halls these days is the last gasp of the angry white man. He’s not quite sure what he’s angry about, but he knows he’s angry. It’s not the world he used to know. He gets the disquieting feeling that he doesn’t rule the roost anymore. And it’s driving him crazy. One of the chants at the town hall events was, “No national healthcare!” Okay, mission accomplished. No one has proposed such a thing. So, I guess they can go home now befuddled at what they were yelling about. The reality is that what they have been manipulated into arguing against is a public option that would give them more choices, not less in health insurance. It wouldn’t nationalize health insurance at all, let alone any part of the rest of the healthcare industry. But this isn’t about health insurance. It isn’t even about health care. You think those people are really this animated about having less health care options and making sure it costs more for them and their family? No, this is visceral for them. And it has nothing to do with their perceived choices on health care. This is about the sinking feeling in their stomach that they are losing power in this country - losing control. That the reigns of power are slipping out of their hands and they don’t know what to do about it, except yell, really loud. One guy famously shouted, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.” Everyone is understandably amused by this . But there is a larger point here. They don’t care about the logic of the issue at hand. I’m not convinced they even care what the issue is. These are the same people that were yelling at the Palin rallies. They were screaming just as loud then, and it was different issues, or no issues at all. Just name calling and fear. Pure, unadulterated fear. At a recent Tampa town hall people were yelling at the top of their lungs, “Hear Our Voice.” Ironically, that’s all we could hear. No one could hear the congresswoman there. Or any arguments that were being made or any issues debated. All they could hear was the loud, angry voices demanding to be heard. And who is stoking these fires? Encouraging and egging on these screams, this anger, this fear? Conservative talk hosts all across the country (and, of course, special interest groups funded by the healthcare industry who are relishing using these poor schleps as fodder for their effort to kill health care reform). They’re telling them the proper response is anger. Don’t wait your turn. Don’t listen to the congressman. Shout. Be heard. Be angry. Obama is taking this country away from you. The woman who now famously stood up in a Delaware town hall and demanded that her congressman recognize the illegitimacy of Barack Obama’s birth certificate, said something telling in her rant . She said, “I want my country back!” Indeed. Where did it go? Of course, the country is still right here. It’s the “my” part that’s missing. She doesn’t want this country back. She wants her country back. I want everyone to be heard, too. I hated it when the Bush handlers would keep out dissenting voices from their town halls. If conservatives are frustrated with some of the policy initiatives of the Obama administration, I think it’s an appropriately democratic reaction to show up at town halls and ask questions. In fact, if they did it in a way that asked their representatives interesting and tough questions, I’d be proud of them. Some of them are holding up constitutions. They finally got them out of the drawer where they were collecting mothballs as the Bush administration ran roughshod over that sacred text. They didn’t seem to demand loyalty to that document as the Bush team eviscerated the Fourth Amendment. But bygones be bygones, if they want to hold Obama responsible for his signing statements for example, great. You can argue he is impinging against Article I of the Constitution just as Bush did. Do you think that’s the argument the town hall screamers are making? Come on, can anyone really discern an argument? Could they point to one clause that they think Obama has violated? My guess is if challenged they would scream out the Second Amendment. Except Obama has not only not done anything to impose gun control , he has gone out of his way to reign in his Attorney General to make sure he also does nothing about it . It isn’t about the Second Amendment. It isn’t about the constitution. It’s about the anger. It’s a self justifying anger. The angrier they get the more they feel the imperative to get angry. What is it? What’s really eating away at them? I don’t think it’s a conscious racial thing for them. It’s more a feeling of their way of life slipping away from them. Think about it. If you worked at the local shop and in the old days you could get your son hired there, things were pretty good. Now, they tell you that they have to give the job to someone else’s son. Someone that doesn’t look like you, someone that you’ve never met or ever talked to. There’s been a lot of generations of that now. You think those guys are going to inquire into the history of racial prejudice in this country and why it might make sense to increase diversity in a workplace when some groups have been excluded entirely? No, all they know is that their son couldn’t get the same job that their dads got for them. They want their country back. Of course, this has been building up for quite awhile. But now they have lost their political power. Now the epitome of what they were fighting against is their new leader. His first hire for the Supreme Court is a Hispanic woman, who they hear is racist against white men and was only picked because of her race and gender. And when the president is talking about a confrontation between a white man (a cop trying to do his job) and a black man (another one that got to be a professor, though God knows if he earned it), he immediately chooses the side of the black man - without even knowing the facts. Man, they’re angry. This is the guy they were warned about. Whether their perception is true is not relevant. It’s the intensity of the perception that is relevant. And on top of all this, they feel the whole system is rigged against the average guy (and they’re right about this one). The bankers get all the money. The government spends a ton of cash, but they feel like it never comes to them. It feels like the guys at the top are the ones who always make out like bandits (the fact that their anger against this is being used by those same guys for their own interests is of tremendous irony). But then add on top of that, their team lost. They don’t feel like the president is “one of them.” Maybe that’s not even malicious, or at least consciously malicious. But that’s how they feel. The world is changing around them and every time they turn on the radio or television (which, of course, is glued to Fox News), they are being told they’re right to be angry. And that their anger should be directed primarily at one man - Barack Obama. That’s where the trouble comes in. It’s starting to feel like a third world country around here. In developing countries there are organized mobs. There are disruptions of political gatherings. There are angry crowds and talk of gathering weapons. Talk of revolutions (one man in South Carolina told Rep. Inglis that “there is not a day that goes by … that I don’t hear talk of revolution in our country .”). We’re America. We’re supposed to be better than this. We’re supposed to resolve our differences peaceably and civilly. We’re supposed to listen to one another. We’re supposed to have the best democracy in the world. As it stands, we’re one burning tire away from Haiti. We have to dial this thing back down. Of course, the problem isn’t the progressives here. Their side won. The moderates and independents aren’t necessarily boiling over with anger. No, in this case, it’s the right-wing. And there’s the problem. Because there does not seem to be anyone on that side who is capable or inclined to bring down the volume of the conversation. If anything, their response is more shouting, more disruptions, more rancor and more accumulation of weapons. As one local Republican nominee in Virginia put it, “We have the chance to fight this battle at the ballot box before we have to resort to the bullet box.” So, what happens when they keep losing at the ballot box? It’s beginning to smell a lot like banana republic around here. And there is no answer. If you try to suggest that they bring it down a notch, they scream censorship and warn their audience that their rights are about to be taken away from them. And so is their country. If you say it might not be such a good idea to have all of these weapons in the hands of all these angry men, they scream about the Second Amendment and tell their audience to hold on to their guns even tighter. And many have held on so tight that some of them even pulled the trigger . How many more will? When does this stoking of anger and fear stop? And who would stop it? I really don’t know. Here’s one more thing I don’t know. What happens if it doesn’t? Watch The Young Turks Here More on Glenn Beck

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Cenk Uygur: The Last Gasp of the Angry White Man

The public healthcare plan is the major lightening rod of the healthcare reform ‘debate’ (which, thusfar, has not been about healthcare or reform!). It provides the radical right ‘evidence’ to engineer fear of ’socialism’ and ‘a government takeover’ that make seemingly rational people scream for the government to “stay out of Medicare (!)”. It allows irrational people, e.g., Sarah, with apparent backing from Newtie, to proclaim that the government is setting up “death panels”. [Whereas tobacco companies, whose business is, literally, selling death--needing to recruit 15,000 children per month to become nicotine addicts--seem not to be objects of Sarah-Newtie's outrage]. By making the public plan optional for each state, the hot air is let out of the disinformation balloon. “The public plan is socialism”. OK, if that what people in your state believe, disallow it in your state. The wingnuts could even declare victory. Who cares? If Alaska believes their quitter’s twitters that the public plan establishes “death panels”, then they can refuse to allow that plan to be offered in that state as one of the competing health plans. If Kentucky believes that its people “win” on healthcare by defeating a public plan, then let them defeat it, for Kentucky. My state (Washington) would certainly adopt it. If Montana (our neighbor and home of Max Baucus) does not want it, then several years later we can see what the healthcare is like in Montana compared to Washington. And, if it is better in Montana without the public plan, why should the rest of us get exercised about it? Consider this: suppose Medicare had been, similarly, optional. In states that did not adopt it, insurance premiums would have to skyrocket to account for the very high costs of seniors’ medical care. Business would have suffered a competitive disadvantage, and many families would have to go into massive debt to pay for Granny’s care–something Granny would have felt terrible about. Who would want to live in that state, and how long before the political forces in the state decided, however reluctantly, to adopt Medicare? Adoption of the public plan, if optional, will become a major campaign issue in most states. I suspect that it will be nearly universally adopted–or the private insurers, in an effort to prove it is unnecessary, will keep their premiums from rising at such drastic rates. I will go a step further. This was first suggested (”An Offer on a ‘Public Option’ Republicans Can’t Refuse: Let States Determine Whether to Adopt It”, June 25, 2009) purely as a political strategy. But, making the public plan optional is not only better political strategy, it is better public policy in our federal system. Federal authority really should be exercised only when necessary, and the burden of proof ought to be on those who assert its necessity. Those states not wishing to partake of the public plan ought not to be provided any additional benefits as compensation, but ought not be treated as pariahs. The optional public plan can pass. There will no longer be any excuse for a member of the Democratic caucus to vote against cloture (and, if they do, they should be stripped of their seniority). We now know that Senator Byrd can make it to the Senate to cast a vote. That provides 59 votes for cloture. If Senator Kennedy cannot make it for the cloture vote, making the public plan optional ought to attract the Maine Senators to vote to allow a vote on healthcare reform. Deference to federalism is also good 21st century progressive politics. One does not have to subscribe to the Republicans’ nonsense of government-as-ogre to prefer individual control over one’s life choices. Progressives who assume that millennials, who shun the rightwing because of their lies and divisiveness, are naturally attuned to federal power do so at their electoral peril. Today’s progressivism is not yesterday’s Progressives make a fundamental error, therefore, when they do not take advantage of opportunities to create policies that do not require the assertion of federal authority. On energy and the environment, for example, no such opportunity exists–indeed, even federal authority is inadequate, world action is required. Healthcare reform, however, is different. It provides an opportunity for accomplishing the goals of reform, while enjoying the benefits of federalism. And, in so doing, enabling the reform to be enacted in the first place. More on Sarah Palin

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Paul Abrams: To Dick Durbin: Before Surrendering the Public Plan, Just Make It Optional

When people allow themselves to be overwhelmed by fear things usually get crazy. Sadly, such is the case concerning Health Care reform. During a series of town hall meetings around the country last week, members of Congress have been jeered, shouted-down, and threatened with death. Many of the protesters have been ginned up by pundits and political organizations: Sean Hannity: “Become part of the mob!” read a banner on his Web site. Rush Limbaugh: “Adolph Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate.” A Web site called Tea Party Patriots instructed their followers to “Yell out and challenge the Rep’s statements early… Stand up and shout and sit right back down.” And former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin wrote in a statement on Facebook, “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide… Such a system is downright evil.” In looking at the results to the Walter H. Capps Center’s Post-Election poll that I took part in last November when asked, what the most important, actionable issues were for the next president and congress, the third highest write-in response, behind “Fixing the economy,” and “Ending the war in Iraq” was ” Fix healthcare… availability for all .” Despite differences in how to go about this, one fact that is not in dispute is that health care costs will rise to unsustainable levels unless something is done. But this commentary is not about the pros and cons of the health care debate. That’s politics. This is about the ethics of a “debate” which has deteriorated into an Us vs. Them shouting match. What’s particularly troubling is how easily people can get stirred up by fear, show up at a meeting designed to have an honest dialog and then proceed to disrupt and proclaim “their rights.” Most of those that I witnessed in news clips seemed to have forgotten the corresponding responsibilities that go with those rights. Many demonstrated something akin to shouting fire in a crowded theater. How can you hear the answers to questions if everyone is shouting? And what kind of message does this send to our kids: that if you don’t like what someone says, it’s okay to bully, badger or shout them down? We’re better than that. I don’t know how the health care debate will end. There’s no doubt that there is genuine public concern. This is a complex issue and there are no easy answers. What I do know is that we won’t be able to succeed in fixing anything through misinformation, shout-downs and hate speech. More communication is needed. Greater clarity needs to be brought forth by the president. He and Congress both need to listen and learn the genuine concerns by Americans. Americans, in turn, need to communicate those concerns in a reasonable, rational manner. Shouting is neither reasonable nor rational. After a reasoned debate and thoughtful working from both parties, I would like to see the president and a small bi-partisan group of Senators hold a town hall meeting to clearly lay out their plans for reform. In last November’s poll, one of the top qualities likely voters said was important for the next president was a “clear vision to unify the country.” In the final analysis, this might be Mr. Obama’s greatest challenge. But we bear some of the responsibility for this too. We need rational rhetoric not irrational fear-mongering. Many of us need to stop allowing ourselves to be stirred up by hate-filled, demagogic rhetoric and start examining the pros and cons by reading and discussing the specifics of any bill with friends, neighbors and colleagues. “Asked by PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer in February,” wrote Time magazine (July 6, 2009) “if he did not feel burdened by the several crises now besetting the country, Obama noted that the moment ‘is full of peril but full of possibility’ and that such times are ‘when the political system starts to move effectively.’” Last week has shown us the peril. Mr. Obama needs to show us the possibility; a possibility that will move us from fear to faith. Jim Lichtman has been writing and speaking on ethics since 1995. You can read more commentaries on his Web site, www.ethicsStupid.com. More on Barack Obama

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Jim Lichtman: From Fear to Faith

In the world of Palin Wack-a-Mole, you need steroids to win. Facebook press releases seem to come on Fridays. Yesterday was no different. This week’s word salad had the crazy dressing on the side; a link to Michele Bachmann’s health care rant. The crap croutons had quote marks around them; “death panel,” and “level of productivity in society.” If you ever needed proof our current health care is deficient, or for that matter, our education system, try to make sense out of either woman’s position. For all the fear mongering and “bearing false witness” as this is: “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.” As weirdly elitist as this: “I commend her for being a voice for the most precious members of our society, our children and our seniors.” And as “grab your torches and pitch forks” this is: “Let’s stop and think and make our voices heard before it’s too late.” There is a much bigger problem. Sarah Palin has a history of fudging about health care. While being vetted by the McCain camp: At one point, trying out a debating point that she believed showed she could empathize with uninsured Americans, Palin told McCain aides that she and Todd in the early years of their marriage had been unable to afford health insurance of any kind, and had gone without it until he got his union card and went to work for British Petroleum on the North Slope of Alaska. Checking with Todd Palin himself revealed that, no, they had had catastrophic coverage all along. She insisted that catastrophic insurance didn’t really count and need not be revealed. This sort of slipperiness — about both what the truth was and whether the truth even mattered — persisted on questions great and small. During the vice-presidential debate , Palin stated: About times and Todd and our marriage in our past where we didn’t have health insurance and we know what other Americans are going through as they sit around the kitchen table and try to figure out how are they going to pay out-of-pocket for health care? We’ve been there also so that connection was important. WHAT? There are 228 federally recognized tribes in Alaska. According to the Indian Health Services website: IHS-funded, tribally-managed hospitals are located in Anchorage, Barrow, Bethel, Dillingham, Kotzebue, Nome and Sitka. There are 37 tribal health centers, 166 tribal community health aide clinics and five residential substance abuse treatment centers. The Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage is the state-wide referral center and gatekeeper for specialty care. Other health promotion/disease prevention programs that are state-wide in scope are operated by the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC), which is managed by representatives of all Alaska tribes. Todd Palin’s heritage as an Alaskan Native was a curiosity to many during the 2008 campaign. According to public disclosure forms that Sarah Palin filed with the state of Alaska, her husband and their children are BBNC (Bristol Bay Native Corporation) shareholders, meaning they would likely qualify for the health service program. So between Todd’s union job insurance, the governor’s state coverage and the FEDERALLY FUNDED health care through Native blood, when did the Palins ever sit around the kitchen table and discuss their “out-of-pocket” health care costs? There are millions of people who don’t have ANY options to provide for the health care needs of themselves or their children, let alone THREE! And that’s just the personal hypocrisy. While under contract to govern the state of Alaska, Palin’s administration failed to keep up on the state’s Medicaid obligations and was ordered to cease signing up new patients. No other state in the country had been put under such a moratorium, according to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. July 14, 2009 ADN : A particularly alarming finding concerns deaths of adults in the programs. In one 2 1/2 year stretch, 227 adults already getting services died while waiting for a nurse to reassess their needs. Another 27 died waiting for their initial assessment, to see if they qualified for help. Doctors and other health care providers wrote to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid with concerns that the state wasn’t responsive. Some alleged that the lack of state controls “has resulted in the death(s) of the active clients,” the federal review said. While the people served are frail and suffer from chronic health issues, the state never investigated to determine if any failure in service contributed to the deaths, the federal review found. Seriously, when are we going to stop electing people who say “the government is bad”? Once elected, they do everything they can to prove it. It can only be one of two things; incompetency or sabotage. Either way, Alaskans have died due to a lack of health care. The point of this post is not to point out the never ending hypocrisy of Sarah Palin. Nor is it to point out the blatant lies of one person — but how the intention, manipulation and lies of one person can affect the lives ordinary people. Perhaps Citizen Palin should take her own advice, “honor the American soldier”, “Quit makin’ things up” and “leave the kids alone.” More on Facebook

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Shannyn Moore: "Death Panels" For Dummies

(From the diaries — kos) Dear Republicans, Over the past week, we have seen your passionate protests and heard your concerns about Democratic proposals for health care reform. We have considered your insightful and well reasoned arguments, and on behalf of progressives everywhere, I am here to say: OK! We give up! We are willing to compromise on the proposals that concern you. You’ve won! Yay! In accordance with your cogent and potent criticisms, these are the terms of our concession: We will not euthanize your grandmother. This is the big one, and I really hope you guys appreciate how much of a concession this is on behalf of the progressive movement. Since the days of the Bull Moose Party, progressives have wanted nothing more than to slaughter old people by the millions. That much is obvious. After all, if we wanted senior citizens to have long and healthy lives, why would we have created Social Security and Medicare? Think about it. Death to grannies has long been the core of progressive policy, so it’s not without some consternation that we give it up. So there: no euthanizing old people. You’ve got it. Rahm Emanuel’s brother will not kill Sarah Palin’s baby. While this will require us to gut HR 3200 “America’s Health Choices and Murder Sarah Palin’s Baby Act of 2009,” we’re currently working with Henry Waxman to remove the extensive Sarah Palin’s baby-killing provisions from the final bill. While this will probably cost us Andrew Sullivan’s support, we recognize that this is a necessary sacrifice for securing broad bipartisan support of health care reform. The government will not nationalize hospitals and other health service providers. This is another big one. Though the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has correctly pointed out that current Democratic proposals involve adopting the British health care system, we now recognize that this is not politically viable. The final bill, accordingly, will not involve the nationalization of hospitals and other health service providers. This will be a major setback to Obama’s well known communist agenda, but again, we progressives agree with the Blue Dogs that we need to reach a broad national consensus by responding to Republican concerns. We will make the health care reform bill available for all Americans to read as soon as possible. I know that conservatives and pundits have been eagerly anticipating an opportunity to read the final health care reform bill, and after extensive discussion, we have decided to comply with your request. While we would like to have unseen drafts languishing in committee forever, we have asked Senate Democrats like Max Baucus and Kent Conrad to deliver a bill as soon as possible in order to allow the public to read it. As you know, progressives wanted nothing more than to keep these drafts hidden for as long as possible, but in the interests of transparency and bipartisan consensus, we recognize that it’s vital to move the legislative process forward. In fact, it is our hope that Baucus and Conrad will return from the August recess early in order to ensure that the public has as much time as possible to inspect their work. We will not subsidize abortions with your hard-earned tax dollars. Despite the fact that both FactCheck.org and Politifact insist that we already made this concession months ago, we’re going to make extra-special-super sure that we did. Just give me a second… … … … … yep, we did. We will not allow the government to have direct access to your bank account. I know several conservatives I’ve spoken to are deeply concerned about this measure, and while we progressives are always looking for new ways for the government to unlawfully violate your privacy and steal your money, we have decided to remove this provision from the final bill. While we may include a way for individuals to voluntarily set up an electronic funds transfer with their insurance provider, we will no longer push for government access to all individual bank accounts. You’ve won this one. We will not provide illegal immigrants with unlimited free health care. Though progressives want nothing more than to provide unlimited social services to illegal immigrants while denying them to everyone else, we now recognize that this plan was, perhaps, a bit inequitable. However, while they will not be receiving unlimited free health care, each illegal immigrant will still receive a pretty pony. I’m sorry, but we have to draw the line somewhere. Private health insurance will not be eliminated. Though, as Drudge recently pointed out with a damning YouTube video, the long-stated Republican goal of moving away from employer-based coverage somehow means “eliminating private insurance” when Obama talks about the same thing, we’ve decided to preserve private insurance plans for those who want them. However, we have yet to convince ultra-socialist Charles Krauthammer to drop his communist crusade against employer-based (i.e., according to Drudge, “all private”) coverage. You will not be issued a “National Health Insurance ID.” While we thought this was a fun idea, the final version of the health care reform bill will not require you to have any kind of ID when you’re pulled over for drunk driving or found loitering outside of a military base. In fact, you are hereby encouraged not to carry any proof of insurance whatsoever. Trust me, it’s a terrible idea! There will be no super-secret-awesome health care program for ACORN employees. Though we love our election-stealing squirrels, we have decided that they’ll have to settle for the same options as everyone else. With these concessions having been made, I trust that we can now move forward on health care reform with a broad, bipartisan consensus. Blue Dogs and Republicans, you can now rest easy knowing that the concerns of the town hall protesters have been met. While the progressive dream of a nation in which old people are slaughtered to pay for the abortions of ACORN-employed illegal immigrants will again have to be deferred, we are willing to settle for a bill without these measures in the name of bipartisanship. Congratulations, Republicans. You’ve won this round.

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Alright Republicans, We Give Up.

You don’t have to know a lot about our health care system, or even be a close follower of the recent debate to know and explain how incredibly wrong Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich are. Two of the leading contenders for the 2012 Republican nomination have said health care reform will lead to “death panels” and “turning power over to the government, when there are clearly people in America who believe in establishing euthanasia….” Palin said bureaucrats will pass judgment on whether her elderly parents “or my baby with Down Syndrome… are worthy of health care.” Gingrich defended her statements (albeit in less bold terms) by talking about “selective standards” for who will be covered…. Therefore, if you’re disabled, sick or old, you don’t want government health care. This is equivalent of, “Up is down. Black is white.” The two groups that government seeks out to care for — not kill — are the elderly and the disabled . Private insurance companies are the ones who do their best to minimize risk and thereby try to keep these people from joining their rolls. This is Civics 101 — a principle function of government is to take on needed services the private market deems too costly to provide. Again, you don’t have to know a lot about our health care system, or even know which side of the argument you fall on. But if someone doesn’t understand or acknowledge that the government goes out of its way to make sure the disabled and the elderly are cared for, they’re irrelevant to this debate. And they’re irrelevant because not only do they refuse to accept facts, they believe in the opposite of facts. Gingrich and Palin included. More on Sarah Palin

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John R. Bohrer: The Simplest Explanation for Why Palin and Gingrich Are Wrong

Question: Who is crazier? (a) Sarah Palin, for embracing the fanatical, loony conspiracy theory that Pres. Obama is organizing “death panels” to come to kill her infant son, or (b) Lou Dobbs, for embracing the fanatical, loony conspiracy theory that Pres. Obama is not a natural born citizen of the United States of America. Answer: They are both equally crazy. Next question: People who believe the Dobbs conspiracy are said to be “birthers.” What do we call people who believe Palin’s conspiracy theory? Answer: “Deathers.” ::: On July 28, Christopher Beam coined the term “deathers” in an article at slate.com. First came the “birthers.” Now, as President Obama makes a final push for health care reform, we have the deathers. A few days after Beam’s article, Rachel Maddow picked up on the term, crediting Beam: MADDOW: Now, you know about the conspiracy theory that the president secretly isn’t really the president because he’s secretly foreign. Those conspiracists are called birthers, right? Well, Christopher Beam at Slate.com has christened the health care-reform-as-a-secret-plot-to-kill- old-people conspiracists as the “deathers,” which is sort of brilliant. The deathers’ theory is being advanced not only by far-right advocacy groups, like the Family Research Council. It’s also being advanced in Congress by Republicans, like Virginia Foxx of North Carolina. Beam and Maddow both focused on “deather” fear-mongering targeting seniors, but the term “deathers” applies equally well to Sarah Palin’s fear-mongering about her infant son. Indeed, much of the disinformation about health care reform centers around the idea that reforming the for-profit health insurance system will actually kill people of all ages. Like the “birther” movement, the “deather” movement depends on a combination of gullibility and willful dishonesty, and as with the “birthers,” it will take a sustained counter-offensive to debunk the “deathers.” One of the reasons that “birthers” have effectively debunked (outside the strange world of the Republican Party and southern white conservatives) is that they have a name. Fortunately, thanks to Christopher Beam and Rachel Maddow, there is a name for those who believe President Obama is developing a health care reform plan designed to kill them: “deathers.” It’s a very useful term for referencing the complete and utter nonsense and lies being spewed by wingnuts about health care reform, and we ought to start using it whenever possible.

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Deathers: The birthers of health care reform

If you watched ORLY Taitz’s MSNBC interview on Monday night, you probably thought it was the nuttiest thing you’d see all week. But you were wrong… way, way wrong. Between the pop culture war , the townhalls gone wild , the Nazi comparisons and President Obama’s ” death panel ,” by week’s end, the volume of the crazy coming from the right had reached 11 .

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Sunday Talk - It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Stupidity

Two of our most venerated democratic traditions— the town hall meeting which gives local citizens the opportunity to express their views and the referendum which allows citizens to propose legislation and constitutional amendments—-have been turned against themselves. At town hall meetings on the issue of health care, the free speech of some has been used to deny it to others. Instead of being a forum to exchange views and ideas, the meetings have deteriorated in to shouting matches with volume drowning out reason and hysteria replacing facts. This is a complex issue requiring thoughtful discussion and the exchange of views, not the nonsense of “death panels” suggested by Sarah Palin. Likewise, the referendum, which should be the ultimate in democratic action, the public directly enacting legislation or proposing constitutional amendments, has also been hijacked from its original purpose. 24 states allow referenda and voter initiatives. California in particular has made ballot propositions a cottage industry and has suffered mightily for it. Most propositions are launched by special interest groups followed by commercials and mailings. I have been involved in the law for over 50 years, and no matter how hard I study the pros and cons, I find that I do not understand most of the propositions presented or what they will accomplish, and, as a result, frequently fail to vote one way or the other. I suspect that I am not alone. Despite what I perceive to be the abuses of both the town hall meeting and the referendum, I would not want either to disappear from our American landscape, How can we honor these great traditions and not defile them as we are presently inclined to do?

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Judge H. Lee Sarokin: Democracy v. Democracy

What Palin Said : The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil. How Politico reported it : Palin calls Dems healthcare plan “evil,” cites threat to Trig Describing Democratic healthcare plans as “evil,” Sarah Palin is warning that the proposals being debated in Washington could threaten the life of Trig, her Down Syndrome infant boy. Palin, in her first policy statement since resigning as Alaska governor, wrote on her Facebook page Friday afternoon that the sick, elderly and disabled would suffer should healthcare be rationed, as conservatives claim it will with a public option. Seriously? Seriously? Yes, seriously. It falls to Politico to take a story about a national figure making up wholesale a crooked and ridiculous story about how Democratic “Death Panels” are coming after her disabled child if we dare reform healthcare, and turn it into an absolutely straight news story. Well done, Politico. Absolutely masterful. I couldn’t come up with a more embarrassing example of the national political media as lazy, stupid, worse-than-useless prop if I tried. I think there should be such a thing as an anti-Pulitzer. There should be an award for the reporter or reporters that most willfully ignore the basic falsehood of a story — something like “fire is cold”, or “if you shoot yourself in the head, M&M’s will come out” or “if we reform our nation’s healthcare, the President will send a Death Panel to murder my disabled son” — and instead treat as if it was a debatable point worth reporting as fact. You have to really, really try, in order to take a story so asinine and report it with such studious credulity. Well freakin’ done.

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Idiot Nation, Idiot Press

Are we having fun yet? Birthers, Limbaugh’s diatribe equating Obama to Hitler, fistfights at town halls, an enormous increase in death threats against the president. And now our diva moment, with Sarah Palin — in full victimhood throttle — charging on Friday that an “Obama death panel” could deny health care and pass a death sentence on her Down syndrome child. Welcome to the lunatic asylum. Oh, I’m sorry…that’s being unfair to lunatics. Joking aside, I have this fervent belief that Obama has somewhere, deep down in his pockets, the keys to escape. And I don’t say this out of a Pollyanna-ish view that we can all be bipartisan if we just try hard enough. I don’t have any illusions about a future in which the left and right stroll arm in arm into the setting sun. As I see it, the reality is that, in America, the lunatics will always be with us — or at least for a long time. Our uniquely noxious blend of racism, right wing politics, and moneyed interests exploiting racial fears and economic insecurity have hollowed out the core of moderation in American politics. In an unbroken line from Goldwater to Limbaugh and Palin, the Republican party has committed itself to scorched-earth tactics that have shredded the economic, political, and moral fabric of this country. Watching the drama unfold over health care reform, one can’t help but have one’s heart go out to Obama — a fundamentally decent man, with good intentions, faced with an implacable foe. It appears that Obama is slowly overcoming the blind faith in bipartisanship that sabotaged his stimulus package, and today’s attack on Republicans’ “outlandish rumors” is a hopeful sign. But it’s nowhere near enough. That’s made clear by Obama’s statement that his opponents are “exploit[ing] differences or concerns for political gain. That’s to be expected. That’s Washington.” No, this is not politics as usual. There’s no “as usual” with a foe bent on utter destruction. In contrast, Palin understands the nature of the battle, when she states that adopting Obama’s health care reform amounts to “a point of no return” for America. Underestimating this challenge means losing the battle. So what does Obama need to learn from Palin? First, he needs to really hear her. This is no longer a question of getting the facts straight. Granted, getting the facts straight about health care reform is necessary, and those who provided those facts performed an absolutely vital service. But we’ve moved beyond that point now. As Palin has said, the place we’re at now is about good and evil. And for an intensely cerebral Obama, it’s clear to me that this is not a place he wants to go to. Going there for him, I think, means giving in to the angry rhetoric, the unreasonableness, the muck. But sometimes we must dive down in order to come up and break through. We must meet people in their place of fear instead of insisting that they meet us in our comfort zone — the place of reason. What Obama needs to learn from Palin is that the fight over health care reform is indeed a moral battle. No longer an issue of statistics and parliamentary maneuvers, it’s moved to a higher level. So how does Obama prevail in such a battle? First, he must see things as they really are, not as how he wishes them to be. He must understand that he will face an implacable and destructive Republican opposition for the rest of his presidency. Second, he needs to take on board the insights of Eric Kleefeld and Larry Sabato in this post . As Sabato states in the article, “…something about the negativity motive that seems to result in action. People are willing to spend some time and some effort to oppose something. But rarely are they willing to put out the same effort to support something.” As a result, Democrats are losing the intensity battle with Republicans. Health care reform, as well as two extremely valuable governorships in New Jersey and Virginia, hang in the balance. Third, in order to close the intensity gap Obama needs to re-discover the moral fervor that imbued his campaign during the Democratic primaries. Then, he successfully equated voting for him to transforming America into a better, finer place. With an assured moral authority, he addressed voters’ fears and conflicts over race, meeting them in their place of discomfort. Now, Obama seems to have lost that certainty in himself, unable to carry his moral energy beyond his own political dreams. Rather than continuing to appeal on the basis of reasonableness and logic, Obama needs to have a frank, heartfelt discussion with Americans about their fears over health care reform — over things like rationing, affordability, and loss of control. As in the Jeremiah Wright incident, Obama needs to show that he can empathize with people’s fears on a gut level and lead them to a better place. And he needs to be clear about the malign intentions of those who are trying to thwart reform. In the end, for better or for worse, whether he likes it or not, Obama is joined in a battle against the forces of anger, hate and grievance. A choice not to engage them on a moral level is an abdication. They will not go away, and they will stalk him the rest of his presidency unless he faces them and conquers them. President Obama, you need to go down into your soul and find those keys. More on Sarah Palin

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Robin Wells: What Obama Needs to Learn from Sarah Palin

Simon Rosenberg . Perhaps no figure in the country has been more on the frontlines of the rising anti-Hispanic rhetoric in the Republican Party than Senator Mel Martinez.   His political ascendency was engineered by Bush and Rove as part of their early - and successful - effort to increase Republican market share with Latinos.   He was placed in the Bush Cabinet, and then backed by the Bush machine heavily in both the GOP primary and the Senate general election in Florida in 2004, as a way of helping create a national Republican Hispanic leader and to help Bush in a state they no doubt considered essential - given what happened in 2000 - in their 2004 re-election. After the disasterous 2006 elections, the Bush White House made clear what worried them most by their defeat by appointing Senator Martinez the Chair of the RNC.   The Hispanic vote which had gone from 21% in 1996 to 35% in 2000 to 40% in 2004 had - because of the anti Hispanic rhetoric of the immigration debate in 2005-2006 - dropped all the way down to 30% for the GOP in 2006.   Martinez, who was the sharp edge of the Rovian Hispanic spear, was deployed to help reverse what was clearly a dangerous development for the GOP - the profound alientation of the fastest-growing, and perhaps most strategically placed, part of the American electorate. When he was picked to be RNC Chair I predicted Senator Martinez would not last, that the national GOP so long so reactionary on matters of race, would simply not accept a bi-lingual Hispanic immigrant as their Chair.  He lasted till the fall of 2007, overseeing among other things the sight of John McCain going from champion of immigration reform and Hispanics to opponent - all in order to appease the unappeasable anti-immigrant fringe of the Republican Party.   To be clear after leading the GOP for less than a year Senator Martinez felt he could no longer do the job and walked away. You can almost sense Martinez’ slow realization that his party is fundamentally hostile to brown people — from ditching the RNC gig early, to announcing his retirement of a seat he likely would’ve held easily, to just up and pulling a Palin before his term was up. And that he did so the day after casting his vote for Sonia Sotomayor is particularly interesting. Unless Marco Rubio wins that seat, Republicans will lose their last brown person in the Senate, and will be down to just three in the entire U.S. Congress. A white Southern regional rump party will look more and more the part.

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Sen. Martinez had front-row seat to his party’s Latino bashing

The first Saturday in June, superbowlxx had a brainstorm. He decided it would be fun to have a Daily Kos chess tournament. So he wrote a diary about it. Little did he know what he was getting himself into. Expecting a modest response of maybe 20 interested Kossacks, he was floored when that diary wound up on the Recommended List, with 88 people expressing an interest in playing. Three days later, he had to cap the number in the tournament at 150, and he had donated prizes to pass out because the diary had been seen by Mig Greengard, a chess author and aide to former chess champion Garry Kasparov. The prizes are a complete, $250 set of training newsletters from ChessNinja and a book signed by Kasparov himself. As Executive Editor SusanG said in a midday thread that first Saturday: “This community and its self-direction is awesome. On what other political site would a call for a chess tournament make the recommended list?” Since that first diary June 6, superbowlxx has written a chess diary almost every day, devoting so much time to it that we’re not sure if he knows that Sarah Palin has resigned. As he told me: The amazing thing instead of a small leisure activity involving a few Kossacks, all of a sudden I had a huge operation on my hands. I had to somehow figure out how I was going to organize, manage, and run a tournament this large.  I had never even played in a chess tournament before. Decisions had to be made about which format to use, how long each match would be and how players would be stacked against other. And while some of this was done by voting, most of the grunt work fell to the guy who thought up the idea. A lot of emails passed back and forth. In the process, superbowlxx found a great partner in papicek , who put together a complete website for the tournament from scratch. He made it easy for players to register for the tournament, enter their match schedule information, look up the tournament standings and results, and view past matches.   Today and tomorrow, we’re down to the nitty-gritty: the semi-finals, the first of which begins about an hour from now. The matches will be live-blogged here, but the players will make their moves at chess.com . Here’s the schedule: Sharkmeister vs. Albanius Saturday, August 8 at 2 p.m. Eastern Time PsiFighter37 vs. MakeChessNotWar Sunday, August 9 at 2 p.m. Eastern Time (What grandmaster wouldn’t sacrifice at least a rook to be known by one of those monikers?) Cobbler vs. brendanm98 Sunday, August 9 at 9 p.m. Eastern Time (Cobbler’s username on chess.com is djbrown) . At chess.com, you can watch and kibitz with other observers as the game is happening. The site allows spectators to type comments into a textbox of a live game, but the players can’t see them. The only time players can chat with observers is when the match is over. Because we don’t have a similar screening program at Daily Kos, players are asked not to visit the DK live-blog during the match, and commenters are asked to limit all their remarks to moves already made. Spectators can watch the match in real time on chess.com by following these steps: • Register for a free account here . • After logging in, you can observe matches in the Live Chess window, which you can find under the green Play tab at the top of the page, and by clicking on the Play Live Chess button.  Live Chess works best with Firefox, Safari, or Chrome. • In the menu called “Room - Main Hall,” click on the Games tab. There, you can sort the list of matches by name of the player, or by time limit.  Spectators can find this match easily by sorting the list by time limit, where all DKos chess tournament matches are 30 minutes, with 0 bonus time (or “30 0″ as shown in the list). • Click on the “Observe” link next to the game, and you’re all set. Kudos to superbowlxx , papicek and all the players and spectators who made the tournament a reality. Community building at work and play.

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Daily Kos Chess Tournament Semi-Finals Start Today

Ugh. I just have to highlight this again, as perfect example of Everything. Sarah Palin , determined to battle healthcare reform: “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.” Seriously? I mean, come the flying monkey hell on. How is it that this hollow-headed dimwit doesn’t get run out of town for statements like that? Obama’s going to come murder her son? The whole Republican party can absolutely make stuff up, no question about it, 100% lies, no factual basis whatsoever, outrageous, known false stuff about euthanasia and “death panels” and denying care to people that are no longer “productive”, stuff that’s right out of the most venomous propaganda playbooks around, weird-assed, depraved, paranoid stuff that would be perfectly at home in a Henry Ford tract about the secret methods of the evil Jews or the like — and not a goddamned news outlet on the planet is making a story out of the fact that these supposed leaders of their party are gleefully lying through their teeth about all of it, or that the “teabaggers” carrying these selfsame lies into public meetings aren’t just angry Americans with a different point of view, but people spreading known, 100%-goddamn-freaking-false-and-false-from-the-very-first-time-it-was-uttered bullshit, and intentionally doing it so loud that they hope nobody can possibly shout them down. There’s no “he-said, she-said” on a statement like “Obama’s coming to murder my handicapped child.” There’s no damn panel of talking-head experts that need to be involved, there’s no need to call on a lefty and a righty to have an honest to God televised freaking debate over where or not Obama is really going to go appoint a new government panel devoted to the task of murdering America’s mentally handicapped kids. There’s no Gigantic Public Calling to have the Wall Street Journal or some other Fail-in-a-fishwrap rag devote column space exploring how Americans may be “divided” on the probability of future government child-killing squads. What. The. Hell? If outright, astonishing, venomous child-murder-related death propaganda by some of the most prominent figures of a nation’s political-supposed-discourse is not big, come-on-and-get-your-goddamn-Pulitzer-already news, what the hell is?  But no — all we get from such luminaries as the big boys of CNN these days are public statements about how even their own damn pundits can lie their asses off about whatever made-up disproven bullshit conspiracy crap they want , because that’s just the way free speech is supposed to work, you pissant little asshole commoners. I sure to hell hope all these news outlets are being paid off or something, because I would hate to find out, ten years from now, that they really were ignoring the circuslike butchering of democracy out of star-spangled, crap-flinging, head-in-the-ass incompetence. They had better be on the take, and not really this goddamn unwilling to do their jobs just as a matter of dimwitted, bullshit-peddling laziness.

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Idiot Nation

I’m sure it’s only a matter of time now before somebody cranks out a Freakonomics-esque pop culture tome on the seemingly accelerating phenomenon of elected Republican officials getting the quitsies. Arlen Specter and Sarah Palin and Kay Bailey Hutchison. But Florida Republican Sen. Mel Martínez’s just-announced resignation isn’t just a variation on the “quit and ditch” theme. It’s very probably the last nail in the Republican’s “diversity” coffin. Poorly made little pine box that it was. Cuban-American Melquíades Rafael “Mel” Martínez was the sole (or lonely) Hispanic U.S. senator in the Republican Party. As former chair of the RNC he made outreach to Hispanics and minorities a priority. This to the consternation of some Republicans who were at odds with his stand on immigration. He didn’t last long in that position. Less than a year. And now, a day after breaking with all but eight of his fellow Republicans in voting to confirm Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor, Martínez is throwing in the towel. It’s very, very hard not to see the timing as a statement. Not just against the Republican’s attempted debasement of Sotomayor, and by association the Hispanic narrative in America. Martínez’s move, too, can been seen as another accomplished person of color — following Colin Powell — flipping a metaphorical middle finger at all the Republicans have devolved into: The party of the “angry white voter,” as Paul Krugman says. A return to the “white voter strategy,” writes Thomas Edsall . It is a party dominated by dangerously reactionary regressives whose fallback position is open hate and active violence. Frankly, those Tea Bag Party days seem like gentle times compared to the thuggery of the Health Care Town Hall meetings. As an aside, the next time a Conservative asks how they can trust the government with health-care reform when it can’t administer “cash for clunkers,” ask them how we can trust conservatives with governance when they can’t talk about health care reform without it turning into a UFC match? So, then, after the tokenism of Sarah Palin as a feminist and Michael Steele as the new black American, the Republicans are left whiter than when Ron Reagan kicked off his campaign as the Republican nominee outside Philadelphia, MS talking about States’ Rights. As a swing voter, the utter implosion of the Republican Party is actually distressing. But I have hopes that one day maybe Mr. Powell, Mr. Martínez and I might have our own beer summit and plot our entry back into what is allegedly “the party of Lincoln.” For more perspective please visit That Minority Thing.com More on Sonia Sotomayor

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John Ridley: Mel Martinez and the Last Nail in the Republican Diversity Coffin

There is a social movement stirring on the far right of American politics and it bodes ill for our future. It is, in the classic sense, a movement, not an organization, with no coherent structure, no creed or litmus test for membership. Rather, it represents disparate currents, born of transformative developments and traumatic events that have impacted the US in recent decades. This movement has manifested itself in several forms. There are the anti-immigrant armed militias patrolling our southern border keeping out “illegals.” There are also the “tax party” demonstrators, many of whom have morphed into the angry chanting mobs that are now disrupting Congressional town meetings over health care reform. And there are the so-called “birthers”, a not so small fringe on the far- right, that questions Barack Obama’s birth in the US and, therefore, his right to hold the office of President. If the individuals involved in these currents have anything in common, it is that they are angry and alienated and have identified “government” as a source of their problems and, therefore, as a target of their wrath. Behind all of this discontent, of course, are real problems. The economic crisis in America did not just begin with the collapse of the financial sector in the fall of 2008. For years now, the US economy has undergone a steady transformation. The loss of our manufacturing base has resulted in dramatic social dislocation evidenced by the collapse of many once prosperous and stable communities. As factories closed, not only were jobs lost and economic security threatened, but people were forced to move, neighborhoods died and families were at risk. All during the 1990’s, despite gains on Wall Street, many middle class Americans were squeezed. Real incomes declined, costs of health care, education and basic commodities rose, resulting not only in a declining standard of living for many, but, for the 1st time in American history, a significant portion of the middle class began to question whether their children would be able to achieve the same economic status as their parents. The trauma of 9/11 and Katrina presented a double jolt, shaking to an even greater degree American’s sense of security and their confidence in the government’s ability to perform. Add to this a nativist/racist current, fueled by large numbers of immigrants from the south and fear of new foreigners (especially, after 9/11, Muslims) and the persistent presence of anti-black sentiment, and you have the ingredients of the lethal brew that is now coming to a boil. All of this, however, did not erupt spontaneously, it was helped, fueled by fires set by those who sought, in ways subtle and not so subtle, to exploit the fears afoot across the land. Radical talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Mike Savage, Fox News and even CNN’s Lou Dobbs exploited these issues–as did President George W. Bush’s political adviser, Karl Rove, who used it for electoral success. Even Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign playbook tapped into these currents, as did the McCain/Palin campaign strategists. And so here we are in the midst of a hot summer, with “birthers” fulminating about Obama’s “foreignness”, angry mobs breaking up town meetings, and polling numbers showing a deepening partisan divide across the nation.. All the while these events are unfolding, analysts and commentators are spending endless hours of airtime observing and pointing accusing fingers, without making an effort to understand how this came to be and where it can go. Some conservatives are surely at fault for thinking they can simply exploit this anger, turning it on and then off, at will. And some liberals, too, are at fault for dismissing the anger they see, suggesting that it is simply manufactured and artificial and, therefore, can be ignored. I am reminded of similar developments that occurred in 1919 at the beginning of the “Red Scare.” Then too, a national movement, fueled by fears of immigration, economic dislocation and war-time anti-foreign bigotry was exploited by some, ignored by others, until it got out of control, with lethal consequences. If we are not careful and understanding, and if we do not start now, both to address this troubling anger and alienation, and to hold accountable those who are stoking the embers of discontent, we could end up in the throes of a full-fledged nativist siege that could tear apart the fabric of our nation. More on Barack Obama

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James Zogby: Danger on the Right

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has laid pretty low since resigning. But on her Facebook page, Palin suggested Friday that President Obama’s health care plan might kill her child . Via Talking Points Memo : As more Americans delve into the disturbing details of the nationalized health care plan that the current administration is rushing through Congress, our collective jaw is dropping, and we’re saying not just no, but hell no! The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil. Health care by definition involves life and death decisions. Human rights and human dignity must be at the center of any health care discussion. Rep. Michele Bachmann highlighted the Orwellian thinking of the president’s health care advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the White House chief of staff, in a floor speech to the House of Representatives. I commend her for being a voice for the most precious members of our society, our children and our seniors. We must step up and engage in this most crucial debate. Nationalizing our health care system is a point of no return for government interference in the lives of its citizens. If we go down this path, there will be no turning back. Ronald Reagan once wrote, “Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.” Let’s stop and think and make our voices heard before it’s too late. Palin included a video of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), another fierce and hyperbolic critic of the president, saying Obama’s plan would mean depriving senior citizens and disabled people of proper care. Watch: Bachmann has described her opposition to reform as “like having a mother bear protecting her little cubs, and she’s seeing that she has to move heaven and earth to get her child what her child needs.” Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! More on Sarah Palin

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Palin: Obama’s "Death Panel" Could Kill My Down Syndrome Baby

Now the teabaggers are threatening violence against the SEIU: Hello, my name is Diana and I’m calling from Oregon. I just wanted to let the SEIU know that America is watching the thug tactics that you folks are using at health care meetings and various other public places, and the absolutely thuggish violent tactics that your group is using. I suggest you tell your people to calm down, act like American citizens and stop trying to repress people’s First Amendment rights. That, or you all are gonna’ come up against the Second Amendment. Stop the violence. Obviously, this is somebody who went took Sarah Palin’s class on constitutional law. The argument appears to go something like this: “If you say that you disagree with me, you’re revoking my First Amendment rights, and to defend them, I’m going to shoot you!” The insane threats against SEIU are also coming in via Twitter , as TPM reports: Based on the news that health care events are edging into violence, an anti-health care reform protester in New Mexico named Scott Oskay is calling on his hundreds of online followers to bring firearms to town halls, and to ‘badly hurt’ SEIU and ACORN counter protesters. [ Images of tweets at TPM ] Popularized in part by conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, the hashtag symbol he’s using, #iamthemob, has gone viral on twitter, appearing several times a minute according to a recent search. Anti-reform activists have scheduled a protest outside SEIU Missouri offices tomorrow, and officials there are taking these threats seriously. The New Mexico Independent has more information on the author of the tweets, a New Mexico libertarian activist named Scott Oskay.

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Violent threats target SEIU over health care town halls

Never a dull moment this cycle. Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) will be resigning from the Senate, according to several senior Republican sources familiar with his thinking. He made the announcement at a morning staff meeting, where he said he will not be returning to the Senate after the August recess. Martinez announced he wasn’t seeking re-election to the Senate last December, but he had insisted that he would be serving out the remainder of his term, which expires in 2011. “This was a closely-held and guarded secret and came as a surprise to all of us,” said one senior Florida Republican operative. Martinez has been rumored to be interested in the presidential opening at Florida State University, but had denied the speculation. The position just opened up in June, after university president T.K. Wetherell announced he was stepping down. The seat will be filled by a gubernatorial appointment until next year’s elections. And conveniently enough, Gov. Charlie Crist is running for Senate. Why not appoint himself and give himself a 1-year head-start of incumbency advantage? National and Florida Republican sources say it’s near-certain that Crist will not appoint himself, and instead is expected to appoint a placeholder to fill the seat through the 2010 election. How would these sources know what Crist will do if Martinez just dropped this bombshell this morning? Still, staying put would make more sense — serving in the Senate would pull him further away from home, making it harder to campaign and tainting him with the stench of DC. Furthermore, he already has the “incumbency advantage” by virtue of being governor, so he doesn’t need an extra boost in name recognition, On the other hand, the budget situation in Florida is dire, and it would be nice for him to punt those problems to someone else. He’ll undoubtedly give serious consideration to appointing himself, even if he’s not likely to do so in the end. The biggest losers will likely be Democrats — the most reasonable Republicans are retiring Republicans, and Martinez was getable on a number of important votes (like immigration reform). Now, Crist will likely have to appoint a raving wingnut to protect his right flank in his primary.

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FL-Sen: Martinez is pulling a Palin

I had the opportunity to speak with supermodel Christie Brinkley this week as the fifty something supermodel and political activist is promoting her new line of jewelry, CeleBrate, with Ross-Simons.. Naturally, the conversation took a political turn and the effervescent “Uptown Girl” had some strong words for Sarah Palin… http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/06/green-and-glover-undercover-90525732/

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Stephanie Green: Christie Brinkley on Sarah Palin

Republicans criticizing health care reform efforts are beginning to sound as principled as Groucho Marx, who once quipped: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them, . . . well I have others.” On the one hand Republicans complain that health care reform will cost too much money. On the other hand, they complain that Obama will ration care, killing your grandmother if he has to, to save money. These two arguments are as consistent as what British people call pudding, about as coherent as a Sarah Palin resignation speech. And yet, it is the Democrats who, according to common wisdom, are divided over health care reform? In fact, the battle over health care reform nicely summarizes the state of the two parties. The Democrats are deeply engaged in this important issue, struggling to find a way to pay for the health care our country needs, stumbling along the way due to the incredible complexity of our health care system, but nevertheless trying to move forward. Meanwhile, the Republicans (except for a small number of moderates) refuse to acknowledge the importance and seriousness of this issue. All they care about is to oppose whatever plan the Democrats come up with. Hence, they throw out inconsistent criticisms without regard for their inconsistency. The sad thing is, some Republicans really are concerned about the cost of health care reform. And others really are worried about how government will try to set limits on medical care. But to simultaneously complain about the financial cost of health care reform and about the cost savings that will follow from health care reform? This strategy merely reveals the current Republican Party as being uninterested in solving important social problems. It is easy for a Party to be unified if its members are allowed to make incompatible claims about crucial policy issues, without acknowledging their own internal inconsistencies. If Republicans were honestly trying to help shape legislation, they would be every bit as divided as Democrats. Their current unity is merely a sign of their political self-marginalization. We should all be concerned about the current state of the Republican Party. Health care legislation will be better if Republicans try to shape it, rather than merely trying to sabotage it. We should all be thankful that the Democrats care enough about health care reform to have honest disagreements with each other. A Party divided is the sign of a Party deeply engaged in the issues. We can only hope that Democrats will come close enough together in the near future to begin fixing our badly broken health care system. To read more of my blogs, and to learn more about my new book, Free Market Madness , check out my personal website.

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Peter A. Ubel: Republicans and Health Care Reform: Who’s Divided?

In 1996, Columbia Journalism Review published an article called “The Vincent Foster Factory,” detailing the role played by Joseph Farah, then head of the Western Journalism Center, in promoting conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Clinton White House counsel Vince Foster. It states: One of the Center’s major activities is trying to inject the dark view of Foster’s death into mainstream reporting and thinking. Last year, to this end, the Center bought full-page ads in several major newspapers, including The New York Times, to showcase Ruddy’s work and to offer for sale special Vince Foster reports, including a compilation of Ruddy’s stories, titled “The Ruddy Investigation,” for $12, and a forty-minute “riveting new video documentary” titled “Unanswered — The Death of Vincent Foster,” which Ruddy helped produce, and which goes for $35. Sound familiar? That’s the same playbook — promotion, conspiracies and selling trinkets to true believers — Farah is running against Barack Obama on the birth certificate conspiracy. As he did back then, Farah insisted his work isn’t partisan. In 1996, Farah claimed the WJC was merely “a vigorous watchdog on government”; on July 29, he asserted that “this is not a left-right issue. This is not a conservative-liberal issue. This is not a Democrat-Republican issue. This is not an ideological issue. This is a matter of what’s true and what’s not.” Both claims are, in essence, false. Farah’s WJC was interested in being “a vigorous watchdog on government” only when Democrats were in charge; the organization was dormant throughout the Bush presidency, and only recently sprung back to life under the leadership of right-wing political operative Floyd Brown just in time for a new Democratic administration. Brown, like Farah, is obsessed with the birth certificate issue. The WJC’s disdain for holding Republicans accountable carried over to WND. WND stayed away from the issue of Bush’s service in the National Guard in early 2004 when others were reporting on the issue and Bush’s reluctance to release relevant information (though WND found time to smear Bush’s eventual 2004 opponent, John Kerry, by publishing false and discredited rumors of an affair). It arrived late to the game with a single article that was more interested in covering for Bush than acting like a watchdog on the issue. WND was completely silent, however, on another recent birth certificate-related issue. Blogger Andrew Sullivan crusaded throughout the 2008 presidential campaign and beyond demanding that Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin release the birth certificate of infant Trig; Palin has presented Trig as her son, but rumors swirled that Trig was actually the son of Palin’s teenage daughter, Bristol. WND devoted no articles to the Palin controversy, and Palin to this day has refused to release the birth certificate. Yet, in an August 2 article , WND praised Sullivan for joining “the rising chorus of voices across the political spectrum calling for Barack Obama to release his original, long-form birth certificate to put aside growing doubts about his eligibility for the presidency.” WND made no mention of Sullivan’s longtime demand that Trig Palin’s birth certificate be released. Farah’s pursuit of Foster and the Obama birth certificate share another trait — a fondness for false claims. CJR reported in 1996: As 60 Minutes reports, Ruddy has acknowledged one serious error. In two chapters of “The Ruddy Investigation,” both copyrighted in 1994, he questions how the fatal gun could have been found in Foster’s right hand when Foster was left-handed. In fact, Foster was right-handed. Farah says, “Ruddy and I have been at the forefront of the information trail to correct” this error. But in early 1996, the Center was continuing to sell “The Ruddy Investigation” with the error still standing. Further, Ruddy’s book stemming from the WJC-linked Foster investigation was rejected even by conservatives like Ann Coulter, who wrote in her book “Slander”: “Even if Christopher Ruddy’s The Strange Death of Vince Foster was considered a conservative hoax book, it was also conservatives who discredited it.” All of that, of course, was counter to the numerous investigations by people without an ideological ax to grind — and, in independent counsel Kenneth Starr, someone who arguably did — that all came to the same conclusion: Foster committed suicide in Fort Marcy Park. IN that same vein, Farah and WND have reported numerous claims regarding the birth certificate that have been proven false, but WND has made no effort to correct the record. WND has also told numerous falsehoods about Obama in general. Since the truth does not appear to matter to Farah, WND’s falsehood-strewn trail would seem to put the lie to his assertion that “This is a matter of what’s true and what’s not.” Yet it’s also about something else Farah is loath to mention: It’s a matter of dollars and cents. At the end of Farah’s July 29 column was this note: “Want to turn up the pressure to learn the facts? Get your signs and postcards asking for the president’s birth certificate documentation from the Birth Certificate Store!” Indeed, WND has a cornucopia of items related to the issue. Among them: — Bumper stickers — Yard signs — Postcards — Videos — A special issue of its Whistleblower magazine In a rehash of the WJC’s purchase of full-page newspaper ads to reprint Ruddy’s dubious Foster reporting, WND is buying space on billboards across the country (and asking readers to pitch in ) asking the question, “Where’s the birth certificate?” The question, of course, can just as easily apply to Sarah Palin. WND even sold readers a letter it would send to Obama in time for his birthday Aug. 4 for the low, low price of $6.95. But even that letter contained a falsehood: It asserted that “The problem with the short-form certification is that it could easily be obtained for a birth that took place out of the state or out of the country. All it would take is the word of one parent.” That claim has been debunked by none other than the Western Journalism Center — the Farah-founded organization that attacked the Clinton administration over Foster. WND later claimed that it sent out “more than 1,200 personalized letters.” At $6.95 a letter, that’s a gross of more than $8,340. It most assuredly did not cost WND $8,340 to personalize those letters, print them out and FedEx them to the White House — meaning that WND made a tidy profit on the venture. CJR noted that “About half of the $500,000 that came into the Center last year [1995] came from individuals who bought Foster merchandise.” The same pattern appears to be recurring with WND’s birther pursuit. All those trinkets must keep the money rolling in. And unlike the nonprofit WJC (Farah claimed not to take a WJC salary), WorldNetDaily is a for-profit venture, so Farah — as WND’s majority owner — is making coin in a way he reportedly didn’t from the WJC. Since WND is privately held, it doesn’t have to release financial records. That’s ironic given Farah’s demand for transparency from Obama. Indeed, WND has operated in a very opaque manner regarding its birth certificate coverage, almost as if it were hiding something . Which would not be a surprise. After all, it was largely unknown at the time that the WJC was essentially a closed circle of promotion — it accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from right-wing philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife to finance and promote reporting by an employee of a Scaife-owned newspaper. It’s also not a surprise that Farah would run the Foster playbook on Obama. To Farah, Foster and the birth certificate are indistinguishable, serving only as a tool, a means to the end of smearing a president with whom he disagrees. Only this time, he profits directly from his activism. And if WND ever starts telling the truth and admits the birth certificate issue is bogus, a burgeoning source of revenue evaporates. Simply put, it’s not in Farah’s financial interest to tell the truth about Obama’s birth certificate, and WND’s coverage has borne this out. Ultimately, Joseph Farah’s record shows all too well what he really is. He is not a journalist — he’s a partisan political operative, just as he was before. He is not looking to uphold the Constitution — he wants to destroy a duly elected president, just as he tried to do before. He does not care about the truth — just as he did before, he peddles lies. (A version of this article appears at ConWebWatch .)

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Terry Krepel: Joseph Farah’s Birther Factory

Here’s some more evidence of Sarah Palin’s “fiscal conservatism”: according to Pro Publica ’s exhaustive database of the contracts, grants, and loans made under the stimulus, under her leadership Alaska led the nation in stimulus funds received on a per capita basis. Alaska’s per capita funding under the stimulus bill was $1,024.28. No other state came close, though DC rang in a strong $878.02. On a related note, you might recall that wingnuts like Sean Hannity have claimed that President Obama was using the stimulus to deliver political favors to states that supported him, but Pro Publica ’s numbers debunk that myth, showing that while the average McCain state received $448 on a per capita basis, the average Obama state received $421.

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Alaska top recipient of stimulus $ on per capita basis

The Republicans need to stop denigrating the troops. They keep saying that the government can’t get anything right. How about the biggest government project of all - the United States Armed Forces? Are the Republicans talking smack about the military - and hence, the troops? Support the troops! Support government! Does anyone disagree that the military is almost entirely government run? And if you agree to that obvious fact, when you attack all government run programs, aren’t you by definition attacking the United States military? And if there was any question about how socialist the army is, they removed all doubt when they adopted their last slogan - Army of One. That sounds positively communist. Why don’t they just call it the collective? And in the US military everyone pledges to support one another no matter what. No one gets left behind. Everyone gets government provided housing, healthcare, and even government clothing. The military is the most socialist institution we have. And while we’re privatizing things, I’ve always wanted to go after the commies in the Fire Department . Always talking about brotherhood, jumping into burning buildings to save others. These pinko commies disgust me. Time to break them up. Besides, I don’t want any bums milking the system for any free fire coverage. If you can’t pay, then burn freeloader burn. Private fire insurance would be so much more efficient. They can figure out if you have a pre-existing condition before they waste their time going into a fire. Were you a little hot before the fire started? Bingo, pre-existing condition. The free market will figure out who should burn to death and who shouldn’t. If the free market can decide who lives or dies based on who has health insurance or not, why not apply the same principle to who lives or dies in a fire? The free market is always the best judge. And if it says you should go down in a ball of flames, well, then you had it coming. Do you want the government getting between you and the flames? Finally, I’ve always loved the principle of love it or leave it. It applies to the old US of A. And it also applies to the government. If you don’t love the government, why don’t you get the hell out? Why don’t all of the Republicans quit their government jobs at once to show how much they hate the government? (Maybe this is what Sarah Palin was doing.) You want to talk about an inefficient government run program? How about the United States Congress? It doesn’t get any worse than that. So, John McCain, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, why don’t you all leave your government jobs - with your government provided incomes, government provided offices and government provided healthcare - and go home? Aren’t you tired of being faceless, nameless bureaucrats? Isn’t it time to put up or shut up about your distaste for government? Love it or leave it, baby! Young Turks on You Tube PS - On a serious note, isn’t it unbelievable that the media can’t understand the simple concept that the government does some things well and others not so well? How can they let Republicans keep making the same dumb point about how the government can’t do anything right? This should be a simple matter of logic. No one ever asks the Republican politicians why they think the government can’t run this particular program when it runs many other programs perfectly fine (even by Republican admission, since they would never say a bad word about the US military on camera). Finally, if Republicans are arguing the government can’t do anything right, wouldn’t they want to shut the whole thing down? Which leads to the obvious question - are Republicans anarchists?

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Cenk Uygur: Is the US Military a Socialist Institution?

{ First, a cheap plug for my blog Senate Guru . } Last cycle, I started an ActBlue page specifically for Democratic Senate candidates working to pick up seats held by Republicans. I named it the Expand the Map! ActBlue page because the goal was to expand the map of competitive Senate seats. The effort was a big success, achieving over 300 contributions and $40,000 for the Democratic Senate candidates included on the page. Today, I kicked off the 2010 edition of the Expand the Map! ActBlue page with three Democratic candidates for Senate: Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, New Hampshire Congressman Paul Hodes, and Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak. Click here to visit the Expand the Map! ActBlue page! In New Hampshire and Missouri, we have the strongest candidates available, candidates who will also make terrific Democratic Senators. In both races, however, fundraising will always be a top priority. Missouri Republican Roy Blunt will be able to tap his lobbyist buddies and corrupt cronies for cash ad nauseum. No doubt the NRSC will also make holding New Hampshire a top priority; and the D.C. GOP establishment has already begun fawning over Palin-esque quitter Kelly Ayotte. Carnahan and Hodes need our support! A few years back, all four of New Hampshire’s and Missouri’s combined Senate seats were held by Republicans. Wouldn’t it feel great to have flipped all four? In Pennsylvania, y’all know the deal. Arlen Specter was a Republican Senator for decades. Even though he changed his Party affiliation, he’s still not a Democrat as far as I’m concerned. Joe Sestak is a real Democrat, and he — not Specter — should win the Democratic primary. But Specter has a significant edge when it comes to campaign cash; and, Ed Rendell will do all he can to shut off Sestak’s fundraising. Let Specter, Rendell, etc. know that they can’t shut down the netroots by supporting Sestak! Please, please, please help kick off the 2010 cycle’s Expand the Map! effort by sending these highly deserving Democrats a few bucks. $100 makes a huge difference, $20 makes a huge difference, $10 makes a huge difference! Hop over to the Expand the Map! ActBlue page and make your voice heard. This is not just a contribution to these Democrats’ campaigns. This is a contribution toward slowing and eventually stopping Republican obstruction in the U.S. Senate. Thank you SO much! More on Arlen Specter

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Senate Guru: Kicking Off the Expand the Map! ActBlue Page for the 2010 Cycle

Specter : I thought that [McCain and Palin] were the better choice and I was trying to work within the Republican Party and trying to bring moderation to the Republican Party. So by voting for McCain and especially Sarah Palin, Specter would bring “moderation” to the Republican Party? That doesn’t even make sense. Bottom line is, Specter thought McCain and Palin would be better than Obama and Biden, and now he wants Democrats to ratify his poor judgment and lack of core convictions. Joe Sestak is the antidote.  

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PA-Sen: Arlen Specter thinks voting for McCain-Palin was the right choice

The Democratic National Committee released a notably aggressive web ad on Tuesday evening, accusing the Republican Party of being taken over by an angry mob of “birther” conspiracy theorists and disgruntled partisans. The spot, titled “Enough of the Mob,” is as engaged as the Democratic Party has been to date with what its own leadership has deemed a fringe element of the GOP. But, with boisterous protests routinely interrupting Democratic town hall events and dominating news coverage, one DNC official put it succinctly: “We aren’t going to back down from this shit.” The spot is a minute long. And the DNC official didn’t rule it being paired down to air on television. It includes a veritable greatest hits list of conservative attacks on Obama, looping it all together to make the case that “the right wing extremist Republican base” has overrun the GOP. “They lost the election. They lost on the Recovery Act, the budget and children’s health care,” the script reads. “They’ve lost the confidence of the American people after eight years of failed policies that ruined our economy and cost millions of jobs.” “Now, desperate Republicans and their well-funded allies are organizing angry mobs - just like they did during the election. Their goal? Destroy President Obama and stop the change Americans voted for overwhelmingly in November.” The spot reflects the strategy employed by Democrats in the wake of recent disruptions at local town halls: to conflate multiple fringe elements and issues of the Republican Party with conservative opposition to the president’s health care reform agenda. Though, in the case of the DNC ad, health care is hardly mentioned. Perhaps more telling is how quickly the DNC and the Obama White House have moved to turn the anger of the crowds into a rallying point for proponents of reform. Throughout the afternoon on Tuesday, the DNC was alerting reporters to particularly outrageous moments at various town hall gatherings; notably protesters who made jokes at an event in Connecticut about Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-Conn.) newly diagnosed prostate cancer. There is, of course, a template for this. During the late stages of the 2008 election, the Obama campaign effectively used the most inflammatory moments at rallies for Sen. John McCain, (R-Arizona) and Sarah Palin to define the Republican ticket.

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DNC Goes All In: Takes On Birthers, Conservative "Mob" In New Web Ad

Originally published on Youthradio.org , the premier source for youth generated news throughout the globe. By: William A. Nelligan It has now been a little over a week since your resignation as governor of Alaska, and thankfully you haven’t made many recent headlines. It seems America has been too busy discussing race relations, health care, and the economy to notice you. How refreshing! As a 17-year-old American who has to live in this country for probably the next 80-90 years, I formally request that you pack your bags and swim across to Russia. After all, it must be close enough if you can see it from your house. I have never seen, nor have I ever heard of, a politician less qualified and less engaged than you are, and I want you to leave politics for good before you start giving the impression to other politicians that somehow these deficiencies are acceptable. It’s not so much that you and I see two different Americas, or that we just have different perceptions of the same core American ideals. It’s that you fundamentally misunderstand America’s ideals. Every time you talk about freedom, or the future, or “the wisdom of the people,” I only have one question: what the hell are you trying to say? One of the most absurd “arguments” you made in your farewell address was that the “wisdom of the people” can solve our most complex problems. The day that the “wisdom of the people,” and I assume you are referring to white, Anglo-Saxon, gun-owning Republican people, solves health care, education, or really any part of domestic or foreign policy is the day I move to your state, start a gun shop, hunt caribou, and build homemade artillery shells to send to the minutemen on the US-Mexico border. You’re right in asserting that government can’t make us happy, just like it can’t tell women what they can and can’t talk to their doctors about, and can’t tell gays and lesbians what kind of love is moral. However, you are wrong in saying that government can’t cure the sick and insure their families; that it can’t educate our children and reform our adults; or that it can’t generate employment for those who need it and lift those who don’t have it out of poverty. Government has done all of those things for a very long time, and will continue to do them for even longer. We have very complex problems in America, problems that require complex solutions and intelligent leaders. I don’t want to grow up in this nation knowing that my destiny - and my country’s future - has been determined by a woman more concerned with maxing out the Republic National Committee’s wardrobe budget than tackling the tough issues. It gives me some hope that you’ve all but disappeared from even the cable news networks this past week, but I am still wary. I’m wary that when the “birthers” that replaced your news cycle finally implode into a racist, xenophobic spitball of self-righteousness, you might feel it appropriate to make more of a fool out of your party and your country by re-entering the national spotlight. I have had to grow up in this country, the land Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, under George W. Bush. A man who demonizes being smart and educated as “elitist,” and who somehow manages to make being uninformed and unengaged into something honorable. I’m lucky enough now to have a President who does none of those things, and quite frankly I don’t want to turn back the clock. Also On Youth Radio: Hypocrisy Lessons from Bristol Palin Our Day with Princella, Young Political Star Blaming Bill: O’Reilly Is an Enabler, Not a Perpetrator Youth Radio/Youth Media International (YMI) is youth-driven converged media production company that delivers the best youth news, culture and undiscovered talent to a cross section of audiences. To read more youth news from around the globe and explore high quality audio and video features, visit Youthradio.org

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Youth Radio — Youth Media International: Open Letter to Sarah Palin

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Penn.) and his two major senate challengers in 2010, Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.) and Rep Joe Sestak (D-Penn.), all hammered away at each other on Tuesday while speaking to Chris Matthews, a Pennsylvania native. Toomey, the Republican challenger, repeatedly blasted Specter as a political opportunist with no core ideals. Toomey alleged that “the only principle that’s important to Arlen Specter is his own reelection,” seizing on Specter’s recent switch to the Democratic party after 28 years as a Republican senator. “This is a guy who has made a career out of being on both sides of as many issues as he can,” said Toomey. Toomey described himself as politically “in the center-right,” and “a supporter of limited government, less government spending, ending the bailouts, lower taxes, free enterprise.” He also said he was “pro-life” and believed states should be allowed to outlaw abortion. He dismissed the “birther” viewpoint. Specter’s sights were set on the Democratic primary, as he focused his attacks on Sestak. Specter slammed Sestak’s voting record, saying “he’s missed 105 votes” and had the “worst record” of any Pennsylvania Congressman. In a series of tweets posted hours before his appearance on Hardball, Specter called into question Sestak’s competence, his work ethic and his integrity. But Specter also said of Sestak: “I think he’s a fine Congressman and ought to stay in the House of Representatives,” before defending his own legislative record on jobs, health care, education and the environment. Grilled on his decision to switch parties, Specter responded that he believed the Republican party had become too ideologically intense and for him. “[My] effort to bring moderation to the Republican party was not successful,” he said, adding “I feel very comfortable as a Democrat.” Specter touted his endorsements from President Obama and Vice President Biden, and admitted that his support for Republicans McCain and Palin in 2008 was a political decision, and not one based on conviction: “When you’re in a party and you work for a party and you’re trying to work within the structure to moderate the party, I think that’s the correct thing to do,” he said. Sestak, who officially announced Tuesday that he will challenge Specter in the Democratic primary next year, dismissed Specter’s allegations. “I don’t know” what he’s talking about, said Sestak, “and I really don’t.” Sestak went on to defend his record, particularly with middle-income Pennsylvanians and had harsh words for top leaders in Washington. “Washington never kept the middle-class, the working families in mind,” said Sestak. “That’s why I’m running.” A recent poll involving a potential battle between Specter and Toomey showed the two at a statistical dead heat. Another poll conducted late in May found Specter comfortably leading Sestak in a potential primary. WATCH Toomey: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy WATCH Specter: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy WATCH Sestak: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy More on Arlen Specter

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Pennsylvania Senate Battle Heats Up: Top Candidates Hammer Away At Each Other

by Caryl Rivers Why is Sarah Palin so popular? Because she is the Last Real American White Man. She leaves the governorship of Alaska trailing vibrations of Natty Bumpo, Davy Crockett, Paul Bunyan and Teddy Roosevelt. She shoots big critters like Moose, strides into the H20 in hip waders, has little use for effete book learning and thinks cities are for wimps. The fact that she’s a woman adds more than a dollop of irony to the mix. Sarah is a tintype of what we used to be–or who we believed we were: rugged individuals who charged across the continent, pushing everybody else out of the way, ripping up trees and taming the prairies. We relied only on our own brass and brawn, needing no help except for the neighbor who occasionally wandered by for a barnraising. (Plus, as judge Sotomayor pointed out, the slaves who picked our cotton or the Chinese who built our railroads, but they didn’t count.) The real America, Palin implies, is the one where fewer and fewer of us live, the rural America where the good hearted folks are the only ones who represent our traditional values. The others– in cities and suburbs– many of them several shades darker than the Deerslayer–read books, chat about foreign policy over white wine, probably hook up with people of the same sex and don’t like guns much. In a nation that just elected its first African-American president, where state after state appears ready to make same-sex marriage legal, where white folks will soon be a minority, Sarah Palin’s incarnation of a mythic past is bound to raise a storm of nostalgia; it’s nothing new. The historian Frederick Jackson Turner developed the notion that it was the frontier that forged the unique American character. The first settlers behaved and thought like Europeans, but as these immigrants pushed west, in the clash between their version of civilization and the “savagery “of the wilderness, a new identity emerged. Americans became more individual, more violent, less trusting of authority or government, and suspicious of Europeans, reading, art, and cities. The latter were seen as swamps of depravity and Un-Americanism. In the mid-19th century ,the closing of the frontier was bemoaned as signaling the end of manhood. “By midcentury,” writes sociologist Michael Kimmel of SUNY Stonybrook, “masculinity was increasingly threatened by the twin forces of industrialization and the spread of political democracy.” With the end of the frontier, critics worried, went the ideal of the free, unfettered American man, able to push west, to cut down trees and plow the prairies, and then just pull up stakes and move again. Urbanization was changing the landscape and altering men’s relations to their work. Before the Civil war, 88 percent of American males were small farmers or independent artisans or small businessmen. But by 1910, less than one-third of all men were self-employed. Americans worried that manhood was vanishing as men became mere cogs in machines, no longer having control over their labor; that city life was making men weak and cities represented “civilization, confinement and female efforts to domesticate the world,” as one critic put it. And no less a sage than novelist Henry James muttered in The Bostonians: “The whole generation is womanized. The masculine tone is passing out of the world. It’s a feminine, nervous, hysterical, chattering canting age…” Intellectual achievement was seen to be unmasculine, prompting Indiana Senator Albert Beveridge to counsel boys to “avoid books, and in fact avoid all artificial learning, for the forefathers put America on the right path by learning completely from natural experience.” The Boy Scouts were founded in 1910 in large degree because of a worry about the “feminization” of young boys who spent their days in the female world of school. It was against this backdrop that Teddy Roosevelt’s hyper-masculinity strode onto the world stage. It wasn’t secure manhood that the Rough Rider represented, but the anxiety of the time about what men and boys were, or ought to be. World War I represented another crisis for the male image; Americans were shocked when nearly half the recruits were physically or mentally disqualified for military service. “In these and other ways, writes psychologist Joseph Pleck, a leading authority on men’s lives, “American men in the nineteenth and early 20th centuries were having trouble meeting male demands.” In the early 20th century, it was the flood of immigrants from eastern Europe with their strange, foreign ways that made Americans uneasy. Today, immigrants from Latin America, Asia, and the West Indies are arriving –and often thriving and intermarrying with Caucasians, meaning that the face of America will soon likely resemble Barack Obama or Tiger Woods more that the pale faces of the past. Most people live in cities today; the frontier is long gone. Into this whirl of anxiety strides Sarah Palin, with her hip waders and her moose-blasting skills, to many eyes, a modern rough rider. The Last Real American White Man is a woman. Maybe that’s progress. Caryl Rivers is professor of Journalism at Boston University, and author of “Selling Anxiety: How the News Media Scare Women.” (University Press of New England.)

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Caryl Rivers: The Last Real American White Man is a Woman

Finally, at long last, we have an extreme right-wing personality making the rounds in the corporate media who tears down the facade of “legitimacy” and “respectability” the Far Right bestows upon its craziest enthusiasts. Orly Taitz, the Czarina of the “Birther” Movement, is not saying anything zanier than what we’ve grown accustomed to hearing from Michelle Malkin, Glen Beck, William Kristol, Alan Keyes, Sarah Palin, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh. The Orly Taitz phenomenon illustrates that when the Republican Party chose to fuel the white hot rage of its looniest elements to win votes (as the McCain/Palin campaign did in 2008) it sometimes becomes impossible to contain the fire. Orly Taitz raises the question: Where does the Republican Party draw the line? Dr. Taitz, whose curriculum vitae famously includes training as a lawyer, dentist, and real estate agent, is a very smart self-promoter who latched onto the nuttiest conspiracy theory ever cooked up and has made a kind of career for herself as an “expert” pundit on all things relating to the birth of the President of the United States. Orly’s shtick is no different than any other ubiquitous right-wing gasbag we’re forced to endure on the public airwaves — just look at Dick Morris, Bernie Goldberg, or Frank Gaffney — why these men are considered “experts” in anything defies me. Enter Orly Taitz. With her thick Russian accent, her fake eyelashes, her Euro-fashion sense, and her batshit craziness Orly Taitz has it all. In a perverse way the more I see her on TV the more hopeful I feel about America. It’s like seeing a tape-loop of Joseph Welch shaming Joe McCarthy during the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings over and over again. Ms. Taitz’s very existence as part of the American Right has the effect of de-legitimizing the American Right. It’s beautiful. No wonder even Ann Coulter — Ann Coulter! — has distanced herself from Taitz saying, in effect: “I don’t want to encourage that woman, she’s a nutjob!” When Coulter claims to be put off by a fellow traveler you know something strange is happening — Or maybe Anne is just pissed off that Orly is crowding in on her turf? Which brings me back to my original point: Orly Taitz is no different than the countless other right-wingers we see all over the airwaves. Both the New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine ran puff pieces on Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh, respectively. Last Sunday, George Stephanopoulos, host of This Week on ABC had on his show the former Chair of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner only to be followed by Michelle Malkin who spews bile every bit as goofy as anything that comes out of Orly Taitz’s mouth. Sitting at the same table where Greenspan and Geithner had held court with their erudite (but nauseating) remarks, Malkin went on to claim that the Tea Baggers and those who are currently disrupting town hall meetings represent grassroots “counterinsurgencies” against President Barack Obama’s health care agenda. Malkin said Obama advocated not only a “redistribution of wealth” but a “redistribution of health.” Catchy phrase. Forget about the fact that Malkin misused the word “counterinsurgency,” the point here is that given Malkin’s past remarks and writings she should never be allowed to come near a “serious” news/commentary show. Stephanopoulos might as well have had a segment with Orly Taitz follow Greenspan and Geithner. Media Matters had this that I found in about two seconds: Back in 1996, as a guest on ABC’s This Week : GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, I think that someone has to — should have to pass a bare threshold of credibility before they’re put on the air to millions of viewers. You know, his story couldn’t get past the fact checker at The National Enquirer , so I think before ABC News puts him on, then there should be some questions asked. George Stephanopoulos as host of ABC’s This Week last Sunday: GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: With that, we bring in … Michelle Malkin, syndicated columnist, also the author of the new book Culture of Corruption. What’s on next week George? A split screen debate between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Orly Taitz? Unfortunately, the Orly Taitz stuff might work (in a way) if the Stephanopouli let it. The Swift Boaters have never been held to account and the Supreme Swift Boater Jerome Corsi was back at it again in 2008 with his wretched hit job on Barack Obama (he’s now a big Birther). Only a thorough discrediting of the lies and right-wing smears from corporate media can stop this kind of thing. But seeing Andrea Mitchell the other day — the wife of Greenspan — allow Republicans to cite bogus health industry financed “think tanks” on health care without challenging them doesn’t bode well. The right-wing lunatics have infiltrated the mainstream media news shows because the corporations that own those shows like what they’re saying. More on ABC

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Joseph A. Palermo: More Orly Taitz!

Small Choices Add Up What will Sarah Palin do now that she’s a private citizen? One thing’s for sure: she’ll be out and about. And expect dozens, if not hundreds, of reporters to trail her every move. Like bees to honey, the press pool swarms. Perhaps Palin will embark on a speaking tour. Let’s imagine. First stop, Thursday, October 29th, is downtown Chicago for CATO Foundation’s Institute Policy Perspectives 2009. That evening across town at the Hilton, she speaks at the Heartland Institute’s 25th Anniversary Benefit. Then she’s back to Wasilla for Halloween Saturday. Last stop, Monday, November 2nd, is the Alaska Miners Association Convention and Tradeshow in Anchorage. Let’s track Palin’s green ethos on this tour and tally up choices and their environmental effects. Most people want to be greener but may not know how their personal choices add up. Americans ranked lowest in National Geographic ’s recent survey on consumer progress toward environmentally sustainable consumption and citizen behavior. Over 17,000 consumers in 17 countries were asked about their energy use, transportation choices, food sources, attitudes towards sustainability, and knowledge of environmental issues. Consumers in wealthy countries had both a proportionately greater environmental impact and an ability and responsibility to make more sustainable choices. Palin’s personal choices - and that of her fellow citizens, the press pool - during her hypothetical week-long tour create a carbon footprint the size of a small country. Emissions estimates are calculated from authoritative data such as the EPA, EIA, and Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey. October 28th - 30th: Travel to and from Chicago Palin packs three suitcases and books a direct evening flight in economy class for herself, her bodyguard, and two aides from Anchorage to Chicago O’Hare Airport. A car service takes them to the Drake Hotel, her first speech venue. Less travel, fewer emissions. Two speeches are the same day in hotels two miles apart. Palin opts against a charter jet. Flying economy on this route produces 10x less C02 per passenger than the Westwind II jet, her VP campaign plane of choice. Direct flights take off once and cruise, burning 10% less fuel than flights with an extra leg. Smaller seat and legroom in economy, smaller share of the plane’s emissions. More weight, more jet fuel. Each 50 pound suitcase adds 108 lbs of CO2 emissions. Night flights’ jet contrails trap heat in the atmosphere, doubling daytime flights’ greenhouse gas effect. Cabs or car service emit 20% more CO2 per passenger than trains do. Many travelers take citizen responsibility for emissions created by unavoidable travel by buying high-quality carbon offsets. Palin doesn’t. October 29th: Show Time Palin’s “Individual Liberties and the American People” presentation at the CATO Institute draws 400 attendees and 25 press. Even larger crowds gather at the Heartland Institute’s big bash that evening to hear her expound on reinvigorating American morality. The Drake Hotel and Chicago Hilton are both green seal certified , with energy efficient equipment, low flow shower heads, and waste reduction programs. Programs printed on recycled paper generate 33% fewer emissions than virgin paper. Event organizers neutralize part of their environmental footprint with offsets that fund clean energy projects. Green venues still use energy, to the tune of 1300 lbs CO2 for hosting these two events. Large crowds traveling to the two events emit a whopping 415 tons CO2. Palin’s a hunter, so meat’s on the menu. Carnivorous habits generate 21% more emissions than vegetarian diets. October 29th: Side Trip Last year Palin spent $150,000 of RNC money on new clothes at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue. This year she stops off at Clothes Optional and Disgraceland thrift shops and ships four gently used but new-to-her outfits back to Wasilla. Manufacture and distribution of all the stuff that Americans buy add more to their footprint than transportation and home energy use combined. Buying recycled cuts down on demand for new materials and new emissions. Shipping via next-day-air may be more convenient, but shipping via ground costs less - in both dollars and carbon. October 31st: Back Home Palin makes Halloween costumes for Willow and Trig. Hemp is so difficult to work with, but walking door to door trick-or-treating creates no CO2 emissions. November 2nd: Anchorage The National Mining Association’s Convention & Trade Show is the hottest ticket of the season. Just down the road from Wasilla, Palin drives there and back in her Volkswagen Jetta TDI . When Palin left the Governor’s role, she also left the Chevy Suburban that came with it. Back behind the wheel of her fuel-efficient diesel Jetta, the round trip to Anchorage generates 0.02 tons of CO2. Now if she would just use biodiesel. Knowing her neighbors share her minerals passion, she offers to carpool to her keynote address. Palin’s commute is efficient, but attendee and staff travel and hotel stay, plus building energy use, totals a staggering sum of 380 tons CO2. October 28th - November 2nd: Press Pool Entourage A cadre of media elites often travels thousands of miles to cover Palin. Fewer reporters tagging along would save fairly substantial CO2 emissions. Fewer reporters, given the dozens that would remain, would not materially impact Palin-time in American homes. Two dozen press who travel to Chicago and Anchorage this week generate a carbon footprint of 82 tons. Add it up: three speaking events in two cities, hundreds of people turning out to hear Palin speak, dozens of press corps in tow. The environmental damage? More than 885 tons of CO2 emissions. That’s like driving from New York to Los Angeles 660 times. Or taking 79 American families off the road for a year. Palin and her political contemporaries emphasize the role that individuals, not governments, can play in determining the direction of a society. That collective impact also comes into play in the environment. While one’s individual actions - such as bringing one less bag next time they have to fly - might seem incidental for any given person, the collective force of a country of people all making small choices can be astonishing. Patti Prairie added Treehugger to her distinguished 30-year career spanning resume when she became Chief Executive Officer of Brighter Planet . This innovative company has a socially responsible mission: to help people manage their environmental footprint. With its practical, carbon emission reducing solutions, Brighter Planet is committed to making it easier for anyone to get involved in the fight against climate change. More on Sarah Palin

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Patti Prairie: Sarah Palin’s Fall Speaking Tour

I’m trying to figure out which lunatic fringe group the Republican Party is going to glom onto next. We started with the tea baggers, and now the birthers. Both have worked themselves into tiny lathers, but at least they got themselves air time, and that’s all that matters. It’s the fringe-political equivalent of the chowderheads who stand behind reporters and jump up-and-down, just to be on TV, no matter how ridiculous they look. They even don’t mind having Really Bad Names, though admittedly gravitas is of little concern. I keep waiting to see the protest marches, with their picket signs as they chant - “We are the birthers, the mighty mighty birthers…” And we’ve also had the Sotomayorers, riled up over a statement that, when read in full context, makes perfect sense. Reading statements in full context is not on the job description for fringe groups, of course - but then, in fairness, neither is reading of any kind. And now, as that fizzles out, we have the stupiders ready to take their place. (These are the people panicked over the president using the word “stupid” to describe something stupid). They are making a gallant effort for inclusion in the vaunted Republican base. I think they have a good chance. The Republican Party seems to be so desperate for members these days, with party identification plummeting to 23% according to Pew Research (down a quarter in only the past five years), that they appear to be willing to take just about anybody. The next frenzied group du jour embraced by the once-proud GOP is the deathers, who call radio shows in horrified alarm that the United States government is going to force old people to die. Okay, I know the GOP is working hard to get people to believe this, but honestly - how utterly insane to you have to be to actually believe it ? And no, that’s not a rhetorical question. When last week a woman asked the President of the United States to his face whether the new health care bill would require doctors telling the elderly how “to decide how they wish to die” - if she had asked that 40 years earlier, she would have been asked, “Are you on acid?” Time was when the lunatic fringe was the protected domain of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. But that time has long since passed. Now, all Democrats have actual and serious concerns to deal with. This comes with thanks to George Bush and the Republican Party screwing up the country. For Republicans though, they’ve been left out on a limb with a mere two paltry concerns to frazzle them - 1) getting back in power, and 2) accepting that a black man is president. And no, I’m not saying every Republican concerned about Barack Obama is concerned because he’s black. You can figure out whatever percentage you’re comfortable with. But at least when Democrats ranted against George Bush, they had the decency to come up with real, substantive reasons. Lying a nation into war. Destroying the U.S economy. Ignoring a city that got wiped off the map. Disregarding a memo that Osama bin Laden would attack with airplanes. Stuff like that. With the Republican Party these days, they’re flailing so desperately in thin air that they’re limited to birth certificates, calling something “stupid,” misinterpreted statements, unraised taxes, and the government planning to kill you. And they work themselves into their maniacal frenzies, as the Republican Party warmly welcomes them all into their fold. Once upon a time, the GOP stood for something. Now, they are just struggling to stand. Whatever it takes to win an election, go for it. If it takes whipping people into a mindless frenzy to get a few votes - never mind how many more you lose - so be it. Do your best to terrify the populace into thinking that That Man is going to kill you. Call him a “racist,” as Glenn Beck did. Say he “pals around with terrorists,” as Sarah Palin did. Suggest that he’s a Muslim radical, claim that he’s a Socialist, hint that he’s not an American. Anything, anything, anything. So long as it can terrify the terrifiable. God forbid anyone takes sick action. And so, after the Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter and Lou Dobbs of the world whip up the fear, they run off declaiming any responsibility. It’s not their fault when a gunman shot up a Knoxville church so that he could kill liberals “who are ruining the country” - and police found “Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder” by far right-wing Michael Savage, “Let Freedom Ring” by Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly’s “The O’Reilly Factor.” It’s not their fault, after a white supremacist shoots up the Holocaust Museum in Washington, yet not before Glenn Beck spews his lies that Adolf Hitler was a left-winger. It’s not their fault. And Ann Coulter was just joking about killing liberal Supreme Court Justice John Stevens and killing Democrat congressman John Murtha. Or when CBS golf commentator David Feherty kids about putting a bullet in Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden. Or when Republican state nominee Catherine Crabill anticipates that we may “have to resort to the bullet box.” And the ever-demagoguing Michele Bachman declares to Mr. Hannity, “We’re at the point, Sean, of revolution.” It’s not their fault. None of them, as they whip the whippable, the scared, the malleable into believing their lunatic fringe, crackpot theories and spin like whirling dervishes. In Billy Wilder’s brilliant 1951 film, “Ace in the Hole,” a slick, cynical newspaperman stumbles on a nothing story of a man trapped in a well - and by manipulating the media with the help of the local government, turns it into a supposedly-important national mania with crazed believers camping out, as carnival rides are brought in for the amusement of the empty-minded populace. The film is nearly 60 year old. But the Republican Party has turned fiction into present-day reality.

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Robert J. Elisberg: The Republican Lunatic Theory of the Week

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran said Tuesday the three Americans who strayed across the border from Iraq are under arrest for illegal entry and claimed their case is being used by the West for propaganda. State media cast doubt on whether they were really hikers who lost their way, saying Western reports identified some as journalists. Shane Bauer, a freelance journalist and photographer, Joshua Fattal and a woman media reports have identified as Sarah Shourd were hiking July 31 along the mountainous border area between Iraq’s northern Kurdish region and Iran. They wandered across the frontier, which is not clearly marked in that area, and were detained. “While BBC said they were mountain hikers, some Web sites say they were journalists,” said the newscaster on Khabar TV, Iran’s main state news channel. “Since occupation of Iraq by the U.S.-led forces, American journalists in Iraq have traveled to neighboring countries illegally.” The hard-line Fars news agency, considered close to Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard,” quoted the deputy governor of Iranian Kurdistan province near the Iraqi border as saying the three illegally entered Iran and were arrested. “The three, who are not identified yet, were detained at the Malakh-Khor border point near the town of Marivan,” about 370 miles (630 kilometers) west of the capital Tehran, Fars quoted Iraj Hassanzadeh as saying. “Two of the three are men. They were not interrogated,” he said, adding that anyone who crossed the border illegally would be arrested. He said the Americans had Iraqi and Syria visas. Friends and family say Bauer, his girlfriend Shourd, and Fattal, were adventurous travelers who accidentally stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time. Bauer is a freelance journalist and photographer based in the Middle East who has reported from Iraq, Syria, Sudan’s Darfur region and Yemen, according to his Web site. He may have been in the region to cover the July 25 regional elections in Iraq’s self-ruled Kurdish area. Family members identified Fattal as another one of the detained. His father Jacob told The Associated Press on Monday that he did not have any updates from the State Department about his son, who graduated from the same university as Bauer. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appealed Monday to Iran for information on the three Americans to help determine their whereabouts. Swiss diplomats have been trying to obtain details from Iran on behalf of the Americans. Switzerland represents U.S. interests in Iran because the two countries do not have diplomatic relations. In the U.S., Pacific News Service Executive Director Sandy Close, who hired Bauer to cover the elections in Kurdistan, said she does not believe the freelance journalist ever intended to go to neighboring Iran. In an e-mail, Bauer told Close he wanted to “feel out the situation (in Kurdistan) and get some ideas for deeper stories.” “Kurdistan is the big story in Iraq now,” Bauer wrote in the e-mail provided to The Associated Press. “I’m off to Kurdistan … ” Close said Bauer sent her e-mails on Monday and Wednesday, then went backpacking with Shourd in a popular tourist area renowned for its scenery. It was unclear how the two met up with Fattal. A fourth member of the group, Shon Meckfessel, was to have gone on the hike but did not because he felt sick. Close said Bauer would not have deliberately tried to enter Iran. “He did not express any interest in going to Iran. He did not speak Farsi, his passion was Arabic,” she said. Bauer has traveled to the Middle East and North Africa and was most recently based in Damascus where he is working on a film about Darfur. Bauer’s mother, Cindy Hickey of Pine City, Minn., and Shourd’s mother, Nora Shourd, said they are concerned for the safety and welfare of the group and hope they return safely. Fattal’s father Jacob, who runs a tech magazine outside Philadelphia, also told reporters: “All we care about is the well-being of Josh and his two hiker friends.” A Kurdish official in Iraq has said the three contacted a colleague to say they had entered Iran by mistake on Friday and were surrounded by troops. Iran’s state television initially said only that the Americans were arrested after they did not heed warnings from Iranian border guards. Bauer and Shourd, both graduates of the University of California, Berkeley, had been living in the San Francisco Bay area. Close described Bauer as “an artist whose first love is photography. He’s also linguistically gifted and just wanted to immerse himself in the Middle East.” Shourd has written for a number of online publications, including Brave New Traveler. She has also has taught English. Ross Borden, founder of an online travel magazine that includes Brave New Traveler, described Shourd as “very professional. She wrote a great story for us.” “She’s obviously a professional traveler, as you can see by her latest adventure, going hiking in Iraq,” he said. “Not many people go hiking in Iraq.” Fattal spent three years recently living with a group dedicated to sustainable farming near Cottage Grove, Ore. He lived with about nine others and worked as the group’s intern coordinator before leaving about eight months ago, according to Jason Brown, who now holds Fattal’s job. From January to June, Fattal traveled overseas as a teaching assistant with the International Honors Program, visiting Switzerland, India, South Africa and China on a global ecology program. Fattal had been a student in the program during college, president Joan Tiffany said. “He’s a very thoughtful, caring person, soft-spoken, smart, bright. Has lots of travel experience, and is someone that I would expect to be an experienced camper,” Tiffany said. ______ Jason Dearen in San Francisco, Patrick Condon in Minneapolis, Maryclaire Dale in Philadelphia and Michelle Locke in Berkeley, Calif. contributed to this report. More on Iran

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Iran Says 3 Americans Arrested For Illegal Entry

The fate of health care reform could be determined by progressive and labor groups’ ability to fight right-wing lies and health industry lobbying against health care reform during the August Congressional recess . But even as debunked smears continue , such as the claim the bill aims to kill old people through “death care,” progressives are being hamstrung by mainstream media outlets. That’s because respected news organizations, not just Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, have allowed lies, misinformation and other distortions about health care reform to flourish. One little-noticed reason: the media’s never-ending emphasis on covering the political “horse-race” of a story, rather than the policy side in a clear, emotionally compelling way. As one union lobbyist tells In These Times , where this article first appeared : “What is so frustrating is that the media is so focused on the political process, not on what reform will do for people. They are not focused on the value of reform and what everyday people face: whether they will have in fact insurance if they lose their jobs. The [reporters] are more stuck in covering the political maneuverings, the tug of war.” Into that vacuum, enter the headline-grabbing GOP zealots from stage right, bearing tales of Obama’s plan to kill your grandparents. This sort of mindless coverage also helps spur mobs protesting healthcare reform, organized by right-ring and corporate front groups, that are now harassing members of Congress holding public forums. Here’s the result: Angry protesters shouting “just say no” to healthcare change, like this group greeting Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX): As Think Progress has reported, these harassment campaigns have been organized by lobbyist-controlled groups, such as FreedomWorks, run by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. A FreedomWorks memo from an organizer advised followers on “Rocking Town Hall” meetings with the aim of shouting down members of Congress by such tactics as “Yell,” “Stand Up and Shout,” and “Rattle Him.” As a corrective to the media’s general influence in helping spur such fear-driven intimidation campaigns, Rachel Maddow explored on Monday’s show the role of conservative lobbyists in promoting GOP thuggishness: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy Let’s look at how the “granny-killing” lie spread that helped fuel these mobs’ reactions, and how it was pushed by influential media outlets. The myth that the legislation’s proposed voluntary advice offered about living wills was a plot to kill old people originated in mid-July with a right-wing shill-for-hire whom critics call a “serial fabricator .” That’s Betsey McCaughey , of course, a well-funded Hudson Institute fellow, medical devices firm board member and former Republican lieutenant governor, who helped kill President Bill Clinton’s health reform plans. Now she’s back, and here’s how her latest misinformation missile was first launched: As chronicled by Media Matters for America, her claim that the bill promotes euthanasia may have started on right-wing talk radio, but then, like many useful smears, wormed its way into mainstream coverage, despite being blatantly false: PolitiFact: McCaughey’s claim is a “ridiculous falsehood” McCaughey’s original claim gets “Pants on Fire” status. On July 23, PolitiFact.com reported: “On the radio show of former Sen. Fred Thompson on July 16, 2009, McCaughey said ‘Congress would make it mandatory — absolutely require — that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner.’ ” PolitiFact.com stated: For our ruling on this one, there’s really no gray area here. McCaughey incorrectly states that the bill would require Medicare patients to have these counseling sessions and she is suggesting that the government is somehow trying to interfere with a very personal decision. And her claim that the sessions would “tell [seniors] how to end their life sooner” is an outright distortion. Rather, the sessions are an option for elderly patients who want to learn more about living wills, health care proxies and other forms of end-of-life planning. McCaughey isn’t just wrong, she’s spreading a ridiculous falsehood. That’s a Pants on Fire. Even as Fox News and Limbaugh continued peddling the falsehood (Limbaugh talked about the government planning to “get rid of your clunker grandparents “), the story continued to be pushed along by other conservative and more mainstream outlets. One strategy to keep such stories alive is to refer to it as a “controversy” or cite “rumors” that won’t go away, thus keeping it in the news. The bogus claim ultimately lead President Obama to deny it during a public forum. Here’s how the media aided the spread of just this one piece of misinformation: Debunkings, McCaughey’s backtracking doesn’t stop media echo chamber [ Washington Examiner political correspondent Byron] York says according to bill, “there will be consultation … to discuss … end-of-life issues,”… which he claimed raised the question of “whether there’s any coercive element to this.” [Fox's Special Report with Bret Baier, 7/28/09] Washington Post promoted falsehood . In a July 29 Post article about President Obama’s AARP forum on health care, Ceci Connolly wrote that “[o]ne woman asked Obama about ‘rumors’ that under the proposed legislation, every American over age 65 would be visited by a government worker and ‘told to decide how they wish to die,’ ” but did not report that the “rumors” are not true, as Cuthbert and Obama noted during that forum. Hannity: “I don’t want somebody at the end of my life from some bureaucrat counseling me about whether or not I need antibiotics.” Buchanan: “Now we’re hearing all this stuff about people at the end of their life are gonna get visited by some guy.” … After Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) said, “[T]hat’s why we’ve got to straighten out some of these untruths. Some of these things are actual lies,” host Joe Scarborough replied: “Are you saying you do not have the Grim Reaper clause in this health care bill? They’re all saying the Grim Reaper’s gonna come visit them.” Cummings responded, “That is absolutely untrue.” The Washington Post later deconstructed the spread of the myth on its front page, but by then the damage was already done, taking proponents of health-care reform further off-message after the Henry Gates controversy as they were forced to rebut health care lies. Indeed, in a perceptive column by the Century Foundation’s Maggie Mahar, she notes that the downbeat reporting about health reform’s prospects has seemingly become self-fulfilling. And that in part was due the media’s penchant, including by progressive publications, to focus on the political “horse-race” element of health care reform rather than substance: The Press Fails to Analyze the Arguments In light of the compromises that Senate Democrats are making, one could argue that the press was correct earlier this month, when it declared that health care reform was headed for trouble. But I can’t help but wonder: to what degree did the headlines become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Less than two weeks ago, it seemed that Senator Baucus’ political capital was falling, and that the Senate HELP committee bill, along with the House bill, might well define the terms for reform. But the media continued to “highlight setbacks far more than progress.” Moreover, Media Matters is right in pointing out that the press failed to analyze the contradictions in the Blue Dog’s arguments as they simultaneously criticized progressive Democrats for creating reform bills that “did not include enough cost savings,” and at the same time, insist that any public plan should pay doctors and hospitals more than Medicare pays. The Blue Dogs seem to be winning on that last point. Paul Krugman has skewered the hypocrisy of the Blue Dogs, who eagerly accepted billions in lost revenue from Bush-era tax breaks and favor across-the-board increases for all rural providers, rather than paying more for effective care — or using a public health option that would lower costs through competition. But that still hasn’t prevented them from dominating the debate on health care, abetted by fawning, uncritical media coverage. Mahar and writers for The Columbia Journal Review , among others, point to the underlying dynamics of the superficiality and the profit motive driving media coverage that also keeps the issue a captive of special interests. Mahar observers: What I find most disappointing is that when the 1,018 page House Plan was made public, even progressive newspapers failed to give readers much-needed, solid information on the strengths of the plan… What all of this adds up to is security. No family would ever again go bankrupt because a child suffering from cancer had blown through their insurance plan’s life-time cap on reimbursements. No parent would have to worry that her twenty-something might be in a car accident–and then find himself in a situation where he received subpar care– because he didn’t have insurance. No one would have to fear watching a loved one die in screaming pain because the doctor never explained that “palliative care” was available. (Palliative care specialists are trained in the fine art of controlingl pain.They also counsel critically ill patients, explaining treatment options.) Yet journalists have been so cowed by the challenge of explaining the bill clearly that corporate and right-wing interests, with simple and inflammatory messages about government control of health care and Obama’s plan to kill your grandparents, now dominate the debate. Journalists admit they’ve viewed health care reform as not being “journalist-friendly” and, essentially, too boring for TV . As a result, journalists turn to covering the story they know best, political machinations, rather than policy. That leaves the details of highlighting what’s in the bills to special interest groups, from GOP henchmen eager to destroy Obama to the insurance industry , that have their own ideological reasons for spreading falsehoods. As Trudy Lieberman noted in The Columbia Journalism Review, citing a Politico story on how health reform “sinks ratings”: NPR’s Julie Rovner added her two cents, saying that health care is “so big and so complicated that the public is never really going to understand all the moving parts of this.” That makes them vulnerable to the fear-mongering ads bought and paid for by special interest demagogues of all stripes, she explained. [Emphasis added.] Jon Banner, Charlie Gibson’s executive producer over at ABC News, believes “there are too many bills with too many details, which are all different…. That’s confusing to people.” So should we stop explaining to the public how they will be affected by whatever comes forth from Congress because, as Rovner suggests, they will never understand it anyway? Should we forget about the details, as Banner implies? For months, we at [CJR's]Campaign Desk have criticized the president and members of Congress for being too vague, and have urged them to explain–in detailed terms–how reform will affect their constituents. Failing to do so leaves the public susceptible to special interest propaganda. What exactly does a “public option” or “bundled payments” mean to an auto mechanic on Main Street? She points to the work of a San Francisco public radio station, KQED , as a model for valuable reporting. For instance, she observed: Health reporter Sarah Varney separated the facts from the fiction currently being spread by TV ads purchased by conservative interests who oppose single-payer systems. Varney traveled to Vancouver to learn what health care is actually like in Canada. Contrary to popular belief, she found health care works pretty well. In a note to me, Varney said: “I would say as an American health reporter there is a lot of pressure inside news rooms to give the Canadian horror stories equal footing with what my reporting actually found—which was that the Canadian system is by-and-large a functioning system that covers everyone for half the cost with enviable health outcomes.” Varney told a compelling and interesting story that directly contradicts the ads now running on U.S. television….As for the long waits Canadians supposedly endure, the number of people who do that is “vanishingly small.” The illusion has been created, said [Canadian health expert Robert] Evans, that there are lines of people near death wanting services in Canada. He called that “absolute nonsense.” The government has recently taken steps to alleviate whatever waits existed, by establishing national benchmarks and allocating more money for certain types of care. But instead of such thoughtful reporting, instead we get some of the Sunday talk shows and recent articles spreading granny-killing claims or the notion that health reform is a budget-buster that will bankrupt the government; that latter claim is based largely on an early partial draft of one bill assessed by the Congressional Budget Office, later supplanted by a more thorough review, which has been rarely mentioned. In fact, as Media Matters for America, reported yesterday on claims of $1 trillion for health reform by Fox News pundits Mara Liasson and Chris Wallace : Suggestion the bill has a $1 trillion “price tag” is false CBO found that the House tri-committee bill would increase the federal budget deficit by $239 billion over 10 years — not $1 trillion. In its July 17 cost estimate of the bill as introduced, CBO explained that its “estimate reflects a projected 10-year cost of the bill’s insurance coverage provisions of $1,042 billion, partly offset by net spending changes that CBO estimates would save $219 billion over the same period, and by revenue provisions that [the Joint Committee on Taxation] estimates would increase federal revenues by about $583 billion over those 10 years.” CBO thus concluded the legislation “would result in a net increase in the federal budget deficit of $239 billion over the 2010-2019 period.” Wallace and Liasson join New York Times, CNBC’s Bartiromo, Fox News’ Rove in advancing false cost estimate…. Add all that misinformation to the $133 million the health industry spent on lobbying in just the second quarter of this year, it’s not surprising why progressives are seeking so much citizen support in the fight for health care reform. Now they have the extra public relations burden of showing, as Bill Scher of Campaign for America’s Future has pointed out, ” A Right-Wing Mob is Not A Majority .” So organizations such as the AFL-CIO, SEIU and Health Care for America NOW know that grass-roots activism will be critical in the dog days of August will to overcome the fog of media-fed untruths — and GOP-driven thuggery — clouding their drive for reform. More on Rachel Maddow

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Art Levine: How the Mainstream Media Helps Fuel Right-Wing Lies, Mobs vs. Health Care Reform (VIDEO)

“Leave his kids alone!” Thus spake the ex-almost-one-term governor of Alaska . She was talking about newly installed Acting Governor Sean Parnell and his “nice family.” And the media, obediently heeding her hand-wringing plea has not invaded Alaska, to seek out the innocent children of Governor Parnell, even though he and his wife mention them all the time, and dangle them in front of cameras, and talk about their unplanned pregnancies and lemonade stands, and military service and basketball prowess to the national media, using them as examples of the kind of people the Parnells are. Oh, that’s right. They don’t. Anyway… the “leaving kids alone” philosophy shouldn’t be applied too broadly, according to the Palins. The latest dastardly deed from Palin lawyer and Snidely Whiplash Wannabee, Thomas Van Flein, involves bringing down the iron-fisted, pointy-knuckled wrath of Sarah Palin in front of…(wait for it)… a classroom full of five-year-olds. The Palin legal team thinks it’s a great plan to keep threatening to sue people, like local Alaska bloggers, and media outlets like the Washington Post and the New York Times because they won’t “quit makin’ things up.” The last Alaska blogger to be threatened by Van Flein, Huffington Post contributor Shannyn Moore , knuckled under to intimidation by standing before a group of TV cameras and journalists in front of Palin’s office and saying, “Sue me!” All eyes turned to the Palin camp. (crickets) Never ones to learn a lesson from epic failure, they’re at it again. The best way to deal with a strategy that didn’t work last time? Try it again. This time, it’s the newly outed blogger of The Immoral Minority blog who goes by the pseudonym Gryphen, and Dennis Zaki of The Alaska Report . Zaki and Gryphen each received an ominous letter from Van Flein this weekend. They each, citing separate sources, claim among other things that the Palin’s are in “splitsville.” This was met with an almost immediate Facebook response from Palin mouthpiece Meg Stapleton. Soon afterward, Van Flein had fired off an email to Gryphen. This one had something new - a time limit! That added a nice dash of drama…like one of those movies where you see the glowing red numbers on the explosive device ticking down… :05, :04, :03, :02, :01… and then exactly at 3:00pm… (crickets) Yup, the announced deadline, sent via email came and went. In addition the letter included a thinly veiled threat to pull a “gotcha,” by serving a complaint and summons in a kindergarten , where Gryphen works as an assistant. Way to keep kids out of it. Apparently, it’s only the kids of governors the Palins are concerned about. Regular Alaskan kindergarteners can just suck it up and watch Mr. Gryphen get served with legal papers by Snidely Whiplash during “circle time.” Nice. Non-government Mommies and Daddies can just deal with the emotional cleanup later. Maybe it’s a good “teachable moment” about bullies. This dubious legal strategy appears to do one thing, and one thing only successfully - make Alaska bloggers relevant to the conversation. If you give someone power, they have it. So, unless Palin’s strategy is to shine the national media spotlight on everything the Alaska bloggers have been reporting about her transgressions, and her track record in Alaska, and the big fat mess she’s left the state to clean up, it might be a good idea to have Van Flein and crew take out one of those little roll-up rugs, and lie down in the corner with a book for some quiet time. [Cross-posted at The Mudflats ] More on Sarah Palin

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AKMuckraker: Leave the Kids Alone! Except the Kindergarteners

My husband has often tried to convince me that men are simple to understand. For the most part, they are motivated by their sexual desires. Each time I try to argue with him otherwise, a man proves me wrong. This time it was Donny Deutsch. This morning, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Donny Deutsch was a guest-anchor turned into mush. A man who just a month ago accused Palin of “manufactured outrage” during the Letterman debacle and criticized her for parading her family around during the 2008 presidential election, had a change of heart. No, Palin has not defected and become a Democrat, nor has she become more scholarly and well-reasoned in her discourse about government. Instead, it was a little rumor about Palin’s pending divorce that turned Donny into a junior-high school boy with a crush. He expressed–a number of times–that he was going to cease with the aspersions and criticisms (despite how dead-on they are) because he would like a date with Palin. Donny may be on to cracking the mystery behind why white women advance where women of color don’t. What if white women are given preferences and breaks–where women of color are not–because white men are attracted to them? It’s no secret that men don’t check their sexual attraction to women at the office door. According to the NY Post article, “Lust for Life,” 92% of male managers admitted to being physically attracted to the women they manage. Since white men still make up over 80% of the CEOs in Fortune 500s, they are in a position to create or stymie career opportunity. And since only 7% of marriages in 2005 were interracial (according to a Stanford University study), most white men are probably married to white women are most likely going to be more attracted to a white woman that a woman of color. As a result, when a white man is in a position of authority to provide promotion opportunities, dole out quality assignments, or allow someone to recover from mistakes, a white woman might get a pass where a woman of color will not. When we apply this theory to the legal profession, it helps to explain the clear disparities between the advancements of white women and women of color. Ten years ago, women only made up only a handful of law firm partners. Today, women now make up 17% of partners and they are one of the fastest growing groups to attain partnership. To their credit, women have been very clear in demanding help, and as a result law firms have created a number of initiatives to support women’s advancement, such as professional development initiatives, women’s committees and other similar programs. However, these initiatives are mostly helping white women. Their counterparts of color are left in the dust, making up only 1.84% of partners. How could this be? Some experts surmise that white women have an advantage that women of color don’t; they share race with white male partners–the ostensible decision makers. However, after watching Donny this morning, I would go one step further and posit that white women also have the advantage that white men are probably more attracted to. Beyond the structured women’s development programs, there are probably white male partners giving additional feedback and critical support to white women–all in the name of hormones and attraction.

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Natalie Holder-Winfield: Why Women of Color Can’t Pull a Sarah Palin

Former Palin speechwriter Dan Tubagoo - who has spoken exclusively to HuffPost several times in past, sometimes intentionally - has broken the silence of the Palin inner elite on rumors of a divorce, affair or something else equally amusing. This video was apparently recorded sometime over the weekend by a possibly sober Dan Tubagoo, who issued the following statement though his publicist; “Dan Tubagoo owns me money and I is no longer his publicist.” More on Sarah Palin

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Lee Stranahan: WATCH! Former Palin Speechwriter Speaks Out On Divorce Rumors

Note: This post contains spoilers Welcome to Sucker Punch, the only blog post that ranks the gaudiest moments on this week’s episode of True Blood . — (We begin with an argument already in progress) Are you serious True Blood ? Are you really going to spring Godric on me in the last moment of Episode 7 (”Release Me”) and then cut to the credits? Don’t you realize that I have to wait an entire week to see what happens next? God! Why are you… it’s just… selfish! Oh… hey everyone. Sorry. True Blood and I are having a lovers’ quarrel. I mean, we’ve been dating for a while, and even though he’s not the perfect boyfriend—Don’t you roll your eyes at me! You’re not!—um, anyway , even though he’s not the perfect boyfriend, we usually get along great. But then he pulls this crap, where he teases me with things I love—chocolate covered peanuts, flavored seltzer, the long-awaited emergence of a vampire sheriff—and then hides them for days. It’s mean, and I hate it. That’s why I acted like I forgot his birthday last year. You heard me! I was pretending I forgot! How did you like it? Wait… what? You’re walking away? Where are you… ? I can’t leave! I’m talking to these… Okay. I’ll deal with him in a second. Sorry. The point is, this week’s episode had some character inconsistencies, but in the end, it gave me an hour of zippy entertainment. Like, I have to applaud when Hoyt seduces Jessica by decorating her hotel room with blood-scented candles and playing “Bleeding Love” by Leona Lewis. “Bleeding Love!” Even if Jessica were human , that’s the exact song a softie like Hoyt would play for her. But because it mentions blood, he probably thinks cranking it on the stereo makes him extra smooth. Can’t you just imagine a rack of “Bleeding Love” CD singles in the vampire hotel gift shop, and Hoyt buying one with a shy little grin? That’s exactly who he is. Speaking of welcome touches, I love the return of Lafayette’s attitude. His descent into fear has given him new depth, but it’s even more intriguing to watch him cloak his fear in sasstalk. When he tells Tara that Eggs is “Satan in a Sunday hat,” we smile at the top-notch zinger, but we also see the deadness in Nelsan Ellis’ eyes. He’s a time bomb, y’all. When do you think he’ll go off? On the other hand, I’m frustrated with the Maryann storyline, since it highlights the show’s tendency to turn smart characters momentarily stupid. Is Tara really such a moron that she can’t see how dangerous Maryann is? Because let me tell you this: If I blacked out, and my fellow waitress blacked out, and the town deputy came in screaming that everyone was at an orgy in the woods, and my weirdly witchy new mentor rolled up with bloody feet and a dead rabbit in her arms, then I might just put it together. And Tara’s smart enough to put it together, so why insist on keeping her in the dark? She deserves a story that lets her take action instead of being victimized, and her passivity is even more irritating because the writers have to ignore her well-established shrewdness in order to keep her ignorant. Likewise, can Sam Merlotte take an action? Any action? I appreciate getting some clear information from Daphne about Maryann—she’s an immortal Maenad who can control everyone but “supernaturals”—but when Daphne tells Sam the truth, why doesn’t he do anything? And why doesn’t he talk to Andy after the poor man hollers about the orgy that Sam also saw ? Again, this is inconsistent with a character who is hungry to open up about himself. His perpetual inaction suggests the writers see him as a character who gets “told things,” and not as a central part of the story. That said, I don’t hate these scenes. I could watch Michelle Forbes’ loopy performance as Maryann all day, and that scene where she chases Sam in her Minotaur head, and he escapes by turning into an owl, literally puts me on the edge of my sofa. Bravo to director Michael Ruscio (and his editing team) for crafting such a nail-biting moment. And bravo to Raelle Tucker, the episode’s chief writer, for doing such clever work with the Fellowship segments. The crisscross of loyalty and deception gives emotional heft to the mounting danger for Sookie and Jason. Granted, I wish Sookie could save herself from getting raped, instead of needing some vampire man to rescue her, but I can let that go. Overall, I enjoy learning who cares for whom in the shadow of this church. Hugo’s shifting loyalty to his vamp girlfriend, the Fellowship’s shifting loyalty to Hugo, and Reverend Steve’s wild mood swings are all good fun. On that note, a friend and I have been debating whether <em>True Blood</em> respects its Fellowship characters. I think Sarah Newlin proves the writers want to do more than take potshots at conservatives. Her tortuous moral code lets her find holy love in her affair with Jason, so long as she confesses her indiscretions to her husband. To me, that reads as the effort of a very devout woman to somehow balance her faith with her human weakness. She’s really trying to believe in something, which makes her more than a cheap joke. Plus, who knows what her need to feel pure will make her do next? At the beginning of the episode, did any of us think Steve was going to tell her something that would make her shoot Jason in the chest? And that’s why Sarah’s gunshot is our Sucker Punch of the Week. It’s more than just the advancement of a plotline: It’s a metaphor for a woman’s desperate attempt to keep a grip on her faith. She’s so confused that she can love a man in the morning and shoot him that night… all in an effort to get closer to God. If we find out next week that she plugged him with one of those Holy Water bullets that Steve’s been showing off, then her gunshot will be even more operatic. There’s more I could talk about, of course, but I’ve got to get True Blood out of the bathroom. He’s sulking about the stuff I said earlier, and if I don’t calm him down, then I’ll have to sleep on the porch. For more, please join me at The Critical Condition .

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Mark Blankenship: True Blood Sucker Punch: Episode 7

We’ve seen a growing chorus of voices recently questioning the direction of American foreign policy when it comes to Israel. A number of these voices — including some recent editorials — appear disconnected from the facts; they seem to ignore President Obama’s commitment in word and deed to our strong U.S.-Israel relationship as this administration thoughtfully pursues peace. But others willfully and hypocritically distort this administration’s stance on Israel to drive a wedge in the Jewish community, and to peel off support from this overwhelmingly Democratic voting demographic. And that just makes me crazy. Enter Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Jim Jordan (R-OH). They circulated a “Dear Colleague” letter this week expressing their supposed “deep concerns” about President Obama’s commitment to foreign aid for Israel, which has regularly been deemed a key vote by the American Jewish community. In total, 23 House Republicans signed the letter. The only problem? Like more than half of House Republicans, just a few weeks ago these two voted against foreign aid, including $2.2 billion in aid to Israel — a measure which the administration supported, along with 95 percent of House Democrats. So they’re hypocritically circulating heart-wrenching “Dear Colleague” letters, warning the President darkly that on his watch, “foreign assistance to Israel may be in danger.” Yet most of the Republicans signing the letter just got done doing their best to kill the bill. It is in fact comically hypocritical; do they think nobody is watching or keeping track? As it so happens, the very voting block they’re cynically targeting — the American Jewish community — does notice these things. Between votes and letters like these and the broad common ground between most American Jews and the policies of House and Senate Democrats and this White House, it’s no surprise that Jews continue voting so reliably for Democrats. It’s also no surprise that of the dozens of members of Congress who are Jewish, only one is Republican — Eric Cantor (R-VA). He told the Israeli English-language newspaper Haaretz this weekend, “My sense is that we need the Sarah Palins, Dick Cheneys, Rush Limbaughs, the Colin Powells…. We need all of them.” Keep talking, Mr. Cantor. You’re just helping to keep Jews pulling the lever for Democrats. This is crossposted on Politico’s Arena. More on Barack Obama

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David A. Harris: Comical Posturing on Israel

The facts are still very sketchy . Additionally the difficulty of getting hold of anyone on a weekend in an official capacity to explain what’s going on, forced me to send the following e-mail a few hours ago to the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, the Israeli Ministry of Interior, and the Israeli Consulate in Chicago, as well as a copy to both of Minnesota’s U.S. Senators, Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken: Dear Israeli and American Embassy in Tel Aviv Officials: We have just received news of the arrests of Minnesotans Sarah Martin and Katrina Plotz by Israeli security officials and nobody here in Minnesota understands what the rationale for this might be. I and numerous other Minnesotan peace activists have enormous concern that Sarah Martin who is a much beloved and respected, dedicated justice and peace activist, and Katrina Plotz, also a cherished and respected member of the justice and peace community in Minneapolis, are being held in an Israeli jail and threatened with imminent deportation. No one here understands how this could have happened and what the reason for their deportation might be as they came to Israel to learn about the Palestinian people, which have often been concealed from international scrutiny and especially here in the U.S. We are trying to contact Israeli and American Embassy officials as well as our U.S. Senators in Minnesota Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken to demand that their case against deportation be allowed to be heard as soon as possible in court. I myself just tried to call to the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and did talk to someone who put me on hold to talk to the duty official but I could not wait longer than a few minutes due to the expensive long distance charges. Could someone contact me at my home phone number to update me about the facts of the situation involving Sarah and Katrina? I am also a “citizen journalist” who writes for various on-line news and opinion sites and I have an interest in ensuring that the facts of this international situation are being accurately reported. I also tried to call the Israeli Consulate in Chicago but was repeatedly cut off by an automated recording system. Coleen Rowley, Apple Valley, Minnesota Is it possible that the Minnesotan peace activists’ detention and deportation by Israel is just standard procedure since it’s no secret that the peace activists sympathized with the Palestinians’ plight? But other peace activist groups, including members of Code Pink, were recently allowed to travel to Israel and even Gaza. Is the peace activists’ detention-deportation the result of some kind of mistaken or overboard intelligence collection like the Homeland Security Reports that, in the lead-up to the Republican National Convention, disparaged various Minnesota peace groups as connected to terrorism? (I’m reminded of the time that the U.S. would not let Cat Stevens into the U.S. as he had mistakenly been put on some terrorism watch list.) It’s hoped that either or both of our Minnesota Senators would take active roles in finding out some basic facts and answers to these questions but of course no one is answering the phones in their offices over the weekend. If, in fact, it’s no longer possible to travel to Israel-Palestine these days if one is is critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, shouldn’t that travel restriction be made known in advance to all potential tourists?

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Coleen Rowley: Minnesota Peace Activists Jailed in Israel

Sarah Palin’s lawyer threatened to serve a blogger with libel papers at the kindergarten where he works for writing a post saying the former Alaska governor was getting divorced. Gryphen, who writes a blog called “The Immoral Minority,” wrote on Saturday that “according to my source Sarah is finished with Todd and has decided to end their marriage.” Palin’s lawyer, Thomas Van Flein, wrote a letter to the blogger, asking “if you want to be served with the summons and complaint at the kindergarten where you assist or at your residence.” Gryphen laughed off the threat, telling Alaska Report , “Nothing that I wrote in my post was meant to be malicious. I trust my source and simply reported what I had been told. Threatening to serve legal papers to an educator in a room full of five year olds? Now that is malicious.” Palin’s spokeswoman issued a statement denying the divorce story on Saturday . Yet again, some so-called journalists have decided to make up a story. There is no truth to the recent “story” (and story is the correct term for this type of fiction) that the Palins are divorcing. The Palins remain married, committed to each other and their family, and have not purchased land in Montana (last week it was reported to be Long Island). Less than one week ago, Governor Palin asked the media to ‘quit making things up. We appreciate that the more professional journalists decided to question this story before repeating it. Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! More on Sarah Palin

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Palin Lawyer Threatens To Serve Libel Papers At Kindergarten

***SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO*** Senator John McCain, (R-A.Z.), lamented on Sunday the treatment of the woman he tapped to be his vice president, declaring that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin had been the victim of “vicious attacks” the likes of which he had never seen. McCain insisted, during an interview with CNN’s State of the Union, that Palin would continue to play an active and important role in Republican politics despite stepping down from the governor’s chair. He called that decision to leave office a year-and-a-half prematurely, the “best” one Palin could have made for herself, her country, and her family. Pointing to the Alaskan’s critics, McCain said he was “kind of be saddened by the fact that there’s still such vicious attacks on her and her family.” “I mean, I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” he said, though it was unclear which critics he was referring to. “I respect her. I appreciate her. I think she has a role to play in the future.” Later in the segment, McCain said he would gladly have Palin campaign with him in Arizona, as he runs for re-election in 2010. He would not, conversely, commit to voting for her or any other potential Republican candidate for president in 2012, citing the distance between now and then, and the uncertainty of who, in fact, was going to make a White House run. More on John McCain

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McCain "Saddened" By "Vicious Attacks" On Palin (VIDEO)

But if you think the “liberal” media make up everything they write about Sarah Palin, you’re not reading, you just have a fetish for middle aged women who look like cheerleaders. But if you think Barack Obama was born in Kenya, you are willfully ignorant. But if you think that the majority of illegal immigrants are gangsters,you secretly wish they were Swedish,so you could welcome them with open arms. But if you decide to go to a public forum and scream your views out like some redneck moron, you deserve to be arrested for creating a public disturbance,and serve time in Angola State Penintentiary loading sacks of mud to fortify levees near New Orleans. But if you think that the answer to the health care crisis is to send poor people to emergency rooms, you are virtually lost in the Sea of Duh. But if you are anti-choice and pro-death penalty,it is not about life and death,it is about not getting enough oxygen to your brain. But if you think insurance companies are on the right side in the health care issue, I hope you lose your coverage so I can ask you how you like it now. But if you think the NRA is on the right side of the Constitution, don’t move to the inner city where illegal guns take the lives of children, even yours. It guarantees “life” first,right Rush? But if you voted for Mark Sanford,Newt Gingrich,John Ensign, or David Vitter,you must feel like an enormous sap. If you don’t,you should. But if you ever smoked pot AND favor strict penalties for recreational drug usage,you should serve time retroactively. More on Insurance Companies

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Sam Greenfield: I Hate To Say This…

We are genuinely intrigued. Intrigued, that is, by how much she intrigues you . For someone who was fulminating against Hollywood in her final speech in office, the subtext was classic Obi-Wan Kenobi: If you strike me down I will become more powerful than ever before . The delicious irony of using a national media platform to announce finally she didn’t care what the media thought of her was not lost on us. Equally curious is the great question now posed by her very resignation: will she run for the Presidency in 2012? It looks to us as if even she herself doesn’t yet know. Is there a Grand Plan? Certainly. Although it is likely to be, Let’s get a Grand Plan . Perhaps what America is observing is political opportunism in its freshest form. We see this a great deal in the new order of the entertainment industry: fame without responsibility. Except, in the cut-and-thrust of politics, one might describe it as public office without public service. But what could be exciting here is the advent of a new breed of Anti-politician. But hopes may be quickly dashed when one examines the track record of the former Governor of Alaska. Running for office on wasteful spending tickets is, of course, not rocket science. It is a reactionary rather than pro-active kind of politics: identifying abuses and promising fixes is the meat and potatoes for many seeking office. So why should the former mayor of Wasilla be any different? She isn’t. Being a woman and the youngest in Alaskan gubernatorial history to hold office, however, has been a shot in the arm both for the state and national politics itself. But polls show many to believe that this goodwill has now been squandered. Slipping from a pre-Veep nomination approval rating of 89% to a reported 53% at final count, in her own state, takes some doing. So what’s next? She may perhaps pick and choose issues which resonate around the country, blurring the lines between soft-campaigning and self-aggrandizing. But the Palin doctrine will have to graduate beyond drill, shoot and abstain. She will be a mouthpiece for certain quarters of the population but on which issues and across what media platform is not yet clear - even to her. But she’ll know it when she sees it - you betch’ya! It is over this proving ground that she will glad-hand her base, carefully counting them off to see if they amount to a hill o’ beans. For it is difficult to see how someone of her reported character traits would not secretly covet (at the very least) the ‘top job’. Her broad-brush approach to politics suggests that she might only ever be interested in the Presidency or nothing at all. Who needs the minutae of a cabinet post? Indeed, for someone who is resigning suddenly from a high-profile political position, we’ve yet to actually hear the phrase, ‘To spend more time with my family…’. In British politics this usually indicates culpability in something akin to an Elliot Spitzer-level event (scandals involving rubber, Nazi uniforms and unusually-shaped vegetables are not uncommon here). But going so far as to allude to numerous policy areas in a resignation address might seem odd if she had truly put the thought of further political office from her mind. But with tough economic times ahead for Alaska, and much of the country, could it not be the very fact that Palin has chosen to abandon her voters at this crucial time that will return to haunt her, should she pretend to the GOP nomination in 2012? Liberal media bias has, of course, been blamed by the outgoing Governor and her Republican supporters. Of course, in America it is the Democrats who are often accused of being the more media-savvy, over-educated, East-coast liberal elitists. Ironically, in Britain, it is the Conservatives to the right who are accused of same. So as it falls to the Republicans to sometimes parody themselves as the working man’s party, so too is it left for Gordon Brown’s Labour party to do the same, for his is the party long-favoured by Trade Unions, miners and champagne socialists. Tony Blair was a blip. But if it is a media career that the Idaho native truly craves, one wonders how she will cope. It is fair to say she hasn’t handled her media appearances all that well. Ever. American media have not had to break a sweat to portray her as a low-hanging fruit. She’s abetted that all by herself. As a politician, Palin is superb in straight lines yet doesn’t appear to corner all that well. Like the great American automobiles, pretty to look at but we wouldn’t want to own one, if you don’t mind. In fact, we are still trying to figure out how so many in the great North West can be pro-gun and pro-life. And if you carry anything less than a .357 Magnum handgun you’re quite clearly homosexual. Of course none of us carry around light artillery in Blighty. Where would we put our umbrella? Don’t answer that. We certainly don’t subscribe to the notion that the main difference between men and women, in that part of the world, is that the men spit further. In the same way that we are reasonably sure that most Americans don’t believe that Gordon Brown becomes Susan Boyle at weekends. But the well-documented string of Palin mistakes only really caught our own eye last year. It was during the 2008 Presidential campaign that the British Foreign Office felt obliged to contact Palin’s representatives to remind them, apologetically, that she hadn’t in fact held diplomatic talks with then British ambassador Sir Nigel Sheinwald — despite thinking she had. Of course, wars aren’t always started that way. There are other triggers too. With promises of unfettered vitriol soon to ‘fly from her fingertips’ and onward to Christian souls through her Twitter page, the addition of micro-blogging to the news source trickle via the likes of Politico and Twitter sets the news cycle permanently to ‘Spin’. David Axelrod recently put it as, “…[contributing] at times to sloppy journalism and a dumbed-down public debate. It’s become a carnival where every day is Election Day; Where we’re consumed with who’s up and who’s down; Where we book people on TV to do nothing more than argue with one another, generating more heat than light.” And it is in this low earth orbit, that the narcissist can both rise and be felled by their own hand, in the land where it is showtime all the time, everywhere for everyone. As life imitating art imitating life, politics is showbiz is politics. Lew Wasserman understood that more than fifty years ago. He was the Democrat powerbroker who spotted the political potential of the young, photogenic and charismatic Republican Ronald Reagan. From his early Presidency of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), to his Governorship of California in 1960 to the White House in 1980, Wasserman wielded major influence in Reagan’s political life. Yet despite success as political kingmaker, Wasserman never gave up his day job. He was, of course, Hollywood’s super agent responsible for the success of some of the most recognizable stars and films of the twentieth century. Were he alive today, Wasserman would have found the prospect of mentoring Palin too enticing to resist. He would have curtailed the torrent of incoherent ramblings, muted her right-wing platitudes and sharpened her folksy wit. Only then would the Democrats have had something to worry about. But since her shock resignation, someone is honing the media monster that could be Sarah Palin, keeping her off the air, away from her BlackBerry and behind closed doors from the baying tabloids. Finally, she may be listening to someone’s wise counsel and, managed correctly, this could be to devastating effect. Of course, contracting a virulent case of the tabloids is just as easy in Britain. Could the same meteoric media rise be possible on this side of the pond? Absolutely. The British love an underdog. She would perhaps have come from ‘up North’, Yorkshire even. She would be a straight-talking lass, blessed with a common touch and all the finesse of an All-You-Can-Eat. She would be the winner of one of the nation’s most-watched reality shows, doyenne of many a vacuous weekly glossy and, with a bit of luck, a Page-3 girl. We would know what she ate for breakfast and what she weighed at any given moment. We’d be all-too-familiar with her hit-and-miss lovelife conducted with members of our finest football clubs and recognize, at ten paces, her Marks and Spencer knickers each time she was photographed falling out of a taxi in the wee small hours. Every indiscretion trumpeted. Every thoughtless gem quoted, printed, celebrated. Yes, she would run as a Labour candidate in a local by-election and have the support of the Prime Minister as poster-girl of ordinary, hard-working Brits all over the land. Then upon winning the seat in Parliament for her small constituency of Bell End & Lickey, her voters would line the streets to wave her off triumphantly to London, filmed from the air by a BBC News helicopter. And there, in the coliseum that we’ve built to democracy that is our venerated House of Commons, the people’s champion would take her rightful place, where she would be fed to the lions. Ultimately dismantled and ridiculed by the media, as an indictment on the power of the media, she would be hung out to dry in a bitter wind. This is England me ol’ fruit and we do love a loser. As for Sarah Palin, yes admittedly she fascinates us. But then so does Mickey Mouse. More on Susan Boyle

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Cedric Perrier: Sarah Palin: What the British Might Think…

The blogosphere in Alaska is on fire this morning after explosive new allegations about former governor Sarah Palin and ex-First Dude Todd. Reports say divorce is in the air, although the Palin’s continue to appear together in public. The story, first reported by The Immoral Minority blog who claims sources close to the Palins has been picked up by many other blogs and local media including the Alaska Report , source of the infamous “Iceberg Scandal” reports that promised Palin’s demise just weeks before she stepped down as governor 18 months before the end of her first term. Palin cited ethics complaints, lame duck status, and mounting legal bills as the reasons she was resigning, and said she was doing so in the best interest of Alaskans. Recent poll numbers released yesterday suggest that Alaskans may not be buying that line of reasoning, showing Palin’s unfavorable ratings in the state surpassing her favorable ones for the first time since taking office back in 2006. In addition to the divorce allegations, which state that Palin’s wedding ring, conspicuously missing from her finger recently, now resides at the bottom of an unnamed Alaskan lake, IM reports that “explosive” news from the recent Levi Johnston interview with Vanity Fair, is due out in October. Also reported is that Levi Johnston’s mother Sherry Johnston, who stands accused of drug charges in Wasilla, had her court case moved forward from yesterday’s scheduled date to August 19 in order to enter into negotiations which were not possible under the Palin administration. IM’s sources say that Palin as governor was pushing for the maximum possible sentence, and that the new Parnell administration is not. Within hours of the blog post, the rapidly spreading story prompted a harsh response on Facebook from Palin’s spokeswoman Meg Stapleton of SarahPAC denying at least some of the allegations in the story. Yet again, some so-called journalists have decided to make up a story. There is no truth to the recent “story” (and story is the correct term for this type of fiction) that the Palins are divorcing. The Palins remain married, committed to each other and their family, and have not purchased land in Montana (last week it was reported to be Long Island). Less than one week ago, Governor Palin asked the media to “quit making things up.” We appreciate that the more professional journalists decided to question this story before repeating it. A slow news day in Alaska? No such thing. More on Sarah Palin

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AKMuckraker: Palins to Divorce?

Several years ago, the owners of Bookshop Santa Cruz gave birth to a bumper sticker. “Keep Santa Cruz Weird” it read. Residents of the curious seaside haven dug it. Sales skyrocketed. Now, I see the stickers whenever I drive around town. I also see a lot of weirdness. But that’s what makes Santa Cruz one of the most unique coastal towns in California. I moved here nine years ago to take command of a funky weekly dubbed Good Times . As editor, I wanted to change the name and revamp the entire editorial direction and more. I may have succeeded on the latter two items — it didn’t hurt to win an General Excellence Award in a state competition — but the name, Good Times , would remain. I guess that’s good. The paper, launched by Jay Shore in 1975, embodied everything Santa Cruz — its liberal views, that free-spirit, the fascinating desire to pound some bongos in the middle of the day on the main drag and take in the never-fading scent of patchouli floating around town. Oh, I exaggerate — a bit. Actually, the town is a creative vortex and I’m grateful to have been here. With the help of a fine Good Times editorial and production crew, we turned the paper around and gave the readers of Santa Cruz County something meaty to embrace. In between, Santa Cruz remained “weird” and we kept chronicling some of that weirdness. Why, it was just earlier this week, right here on HuffPo, that some of the oddities of Santa Cruz popped up in a column titled “Sarah Palin vs. That Crazy Santa Cruz Lady.” I had to set the record straight–a little. The woman, featured in a “This Week in Public Comment” video, wonderfully spawned by Jeff Dinnell , who co-hosts his own show on Community Television in town, is more unique by way of weird …. with a dash of “oh isn’t that interesting?” tossed in for good measure. Crazy? Not so sure. If anything, the “Public Comment” videos allow us to witness some of the stand-out characters that attend local city council meetings. (And there are many here, believe me.) Here’s the entire unedited “This Week in Public Comment” video. Take a peek: More on Sarah Palin

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Greg Archer: That Santa Cruz Lady — She’s Not Crazy, She’s Just Keeping Things ‘Weird’

Several years ago, the owners of Bookshop Santa Cruz gave birth to a bumper sticker. “Keep Santa Cruz Weird” it read. Residents of the curious seaside haven dug it. Sales skyrocketed. Now, I see the stickers whenever I drive around town. I also see a lot of weirdness. But that’s what makes Santa Cruz one of the most unique coastal towns in California. I moved here nine years ago to take command of a funky weekly dubbed Good Times . As editor, I wanted to change the name and revamp the entire editorial direction and more. I may have succeeded on the latter two items — it didn’t hurt to win an General Excellence Award in a state competition — but the name, Good Times , would remain. I guess that’s good. The paper, launched by Jay Shore in 1975, embodied everything Santa Cruz — its liberal views, that free-spirit, the fascinating desire to pound some bongos in the middle of the day on the main drag and take in the never-fading scent of patchouli floating around town. Oh, I exaggerate — a bit. Actually, the town is a creative vortex and I’m grateful to have been here. With the help of a fine Good Times editorial and production crew, we turned the paper around and gave the readers of Santa Cruz County something meaty to embrace. In between, Santa Cruz remained “weird” and we kept chronicling some of that weirdness. Why, it was just earlier this week, right here on HuffPo, that some of the oddities of Santa Cruz popped up in a column titled “Sarah Palin vs. That Crazy Santa Cruz Lady.” I had to set the record straight–a little. The woman, featured in a “This Week in Public Comment” video, wonderfully spawned by Jeff Dinnell , who co-hosts his own show on Community Television in town, is more unique by way of weird …. with a dash of “oh isn’t that interesting?” tossed in for good measure. Crazy? Not so sure. If anything, the “Public Comment” videos allow us to witness some of the stand-out characters that attend local city council meetings. (And there are many here, believe me.) Here’s the entire unedited “This Week in Public Comment” video. Take a peek: More on Sarah Palin

Excerpt from:
Greg Archer: That Santa Cruz Lady — She’s Not Crazy, She’s Just Keeping Things ‘Weird’

As another week draws to an end, “Morning Joe” co-host Willie Geist offers another Week In Review. His top stories this week: 3. Palin’s “Bitter Goodbye”: The ongoing battle between the former AK Governor and the media. 2. “Reality Check”: Developments on “The Bachelorette”, “Dating In the Dark” and “More To Love” 1. Obama’s Beer Summit: Pres. Obama, Prof. Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. James Crowley come together for a beer on the White House lawn. Watch: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy More on Morning Joe

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Willie Geist’s Week In Review: Palin, Reality TV, And Obama’s Beer Summit (VIDEO)