Step Aside, Judas

Save your kisses, Judas Iscariot.  Stop praising Caesar, Brutus.  Make room in your special hell, Benedict Arnold, Axis Sally and all traitors of any age and stripe.  Make room for five United States Senators named  Max  Baucus, Kent Conrad, Blanche Lincoln, Bill Nelson and Tom Carper.

Today they gave their souls to the insurance industry, tacitly licensing private insurers to withhold health insurance from the sick, the poor and the dying; to amass fortunes on the pain of sick, suffering people; to thumb their noses at the quaint notions of compassion and human decency.

Today those five nominal members of the Democratic party voted to send out from the Senate Finance Committee a so-called health care bill that has no government-run option to compete with the rapacious private insurers.

Rapacious.  That's the word Sen  Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia rightly used in the debate before the vote.  Generous, I suppose, is the term the Traitorous Five would use, because their campaign funds -- which will one day augment their Senatorial pensions -- have been exponentially swollen by donations from the insurers.

Thus the United States of Goldman Sachs proudly admits to its ruling oligarchy the Supreme States of Blue Cross/ Blue Shield, Cigna, Aetna and United Healthcare.

Today, the Infamous Five not only betrayed the best traditions of their party.  That betrayal is minor compared to their greater treason: against the 50 million American citizens without health insurance today; against the millions more who have been victimized by loopholes, fine print, lies and bullying of the insurers and now will continue to be so victimized; and against the Constitution they swore allegiance to, whose preamble demands that they promote the general welfare, not the welfare of rapacious corporations.

This is a sad day for the Republic.  With representatives like Baucus, Conrad, Lincoln, Nelson and Carper, its people will suffer many more sad days.  Too many more.

Wave the Flags. Again.

   Few of today's journalists were around in the days when lazy editors who wrote wishy-washy editorials on subjects nobody knew or cared about were held guilty of "Afghanistanism."

   Of course, few of today's journalists are held to any of the standards that made journalism -- especially newspaper journalism -- a respected craft back then.

   One might conclude that mainstream journalism's inadequate, inaccurate or lazy coverage of what once was called "the good war" can be attributed to their perception that most Americans don't know and don't care much about what's happening in Afghanistan.

   If that were their perception, it would be only half right.  While American citizens are, on the whole, the most poorly-informed and ill-educated among the world's advanced nations, and know little about that part of the world, they do care about the war there.  Wherever "there" is.  They tell pollsters that they'd like it to be over rather quickly.

   For the most part, nobody in government is listening.  The military commanders want more troops there, a lot more.  The military always wants more of everything. The president is considering another option, but not one that would bring the end of the war appreciably closer.  The Congress is divided along party lines, which is meaningless anyway because the Congress is controlled by the vast, private, corporate shadow government that really runs the country.  What President Eisenhower called "the military-industrial complex" is by far the largest and most powerful component of the shadow government, and it sustains itself by perpetual war.

   If not Cold, then hot.  If not Korea, then Vietnam.  If not Panama, then Granada.  If not Iraq, then Afghanistan.  If not Afghanistan, then Iran.  Or Korea again.  Bush left us with a wonderful, cover-all phrase for the perpetual war that sustains our shadow government: war on terror.  Perfect!  Whatever we bomb, whomever we kill, wherever we establish bases and missiles and aircraft  and tanks and troops, we're waging a "war on terror."  Wave the flags!  Paste ribbon symbols on the SUVs!  Support our troops!  Round up some ragheads!  Torture them, depersonalize them, don't bother charging them with anything, keep them far away from any system of law or justice!  Hooray for our side!

   It's so easy for the American media to "cover" terror wars.  Transcribe what the generals say.  Send it to the bosses back home.  Hit the bar in the hotel that houses the journalists safely away from the bullets and bombs.  Swap gossip and report it as truth -- as long as it reflects "glory" on the troops and their leadership.  So it was our own fire that killed the football star?  Cover it up, make up a hero story, who'll ever know the difference?  So the bad guys simply let the captured woman warrior walk away from the hospital when she was well enough?  Make up a hero story about commando raids and a defiant machine-gun toting Amazon riddling al Qaida baddies like swiss cheeses.

   The flag-wavers back home lap it up. 

    But even the flag-wavers will tire of this war in -- where was it?  Oh, yes, Afghanistan, wherever that is --as it drags on and on.

   That's the exit strategy.

   By then everyone inside the Beltway will agree on a reason to move the perpetual war to Iran. And the media will applaud the flawless reasoning behind this invasion.  And the flags will wave again.

   Always, the flags will wave.

  

Do Not Tolerate Another Failure

 Succeeding the worst president in United States history, and doing so with the support of majorities in both houses of Congress, Barack Obama ought to have led us into a golden age of reform in American government.

 He has not.

   The private institutions that were allowed to wreck the economy under Bush have not been reformed.

   The unjustified foreign wars that Bush lied us into continue to be fought.  The military brass want still more troops to bleed and die in Afghanistan.

   The health care reform that nearly three-quarters of the American public demands teeters on the brink of disaster  under the weight of the money bags of unregulated health care profiteers.

   This week, the President and his majorities in Congress have an opportunity to undo the most sweeping desecration of the Constitution in the history of the republic: the so-called USA PATRIOT Act.

   Russ Feingold and nine other Senators have introduced the JUSTICE Act to correct the worst of the crimes of the PATRIOT Act.  It must pass.

   Hearings are scheduled also in the House.  Its members must remember and remember well the words uttered by one of its most distinguished members on Feb. 17, 2002:

How can we justify in effect canceling the First Amendment and the right of free speech, the right to peaceably assemble?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Fourth Amendment, probable cause, the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Fifth Amendment, nullifying due process, and allowing for indefinite incarceration without a trial?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Sixth Amendment, the right to prompt and public trial?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Eighth Amendment which protects against cruel and unusual punishment?
We cannot justify widespread wiretaps and internet surveillance without judicial supervision, let alone with it.
We cannot justify secret searches without a warrant.
We cannot justify giving the Attorney General the ability to designate domestic terror groups.
We cannot justify giving the FBI total access to any type of data which may exist in any system anywhere such as medical records and financial records.
We cannot justify giving the CIA the ability to target people in this country for intelligence surveillance.
We cannot justify a government which takes from the people our right to privacy and then assumes for its own operations a right to total secrecy.
   
Dennis R. Kucinich no doubt will remind his colleagues once again of their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution .  He will urge them to restore the Bill of Rights without compromising our national security.
   It can be done.  It should be done.  It must be done.

Portrait of the Evening "News"

   I am of the generation of print journalists who harbored some respect for certain of our competitors on the broadcast side -- especially if they worked for CBS.

  The likes of Fred W. Friendly, Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and their colleagues provided us with a great deal of good journalism -- and would have provided exponentially more if they had ever managed to persuade CBS to make the nightly news an hour long.

   Another of the truly fine journalists of my generation, Mort Persky, closely monitors the performers, actors and entertainers who pose as journalists on TV these days.

   This is one of his reports:

   Alas, I don't think Walter Cronkite met his maker before seeing what happened to the TV news business since his, Murrow's and Bill Paley's day. Even without Fox, we actually have non-cable TV news telling us what it wants to tell us, the facts be damned. And the network "newscasts," by being a bit stealthier, do a better job of fooling their public than Fox, which because it is believed in like God, doesn't need to fool anyone. I've watched this on the 6:30 newscasts for years, though the only way I can stomach even two minutes of Fox is when it shows up as a clip on Olbermann or Maddow.

 Here's CBS last week, following up its report on Obama's healthcare speech (or is it the "You lie" speech?) with what they call their "USERS GUIDE To Healthcare"  (official looking visual right here emphasizes how factual this is gonna be. NOTE: Beware when ABC or CBS does something official looking like a "Users Guide" or a "Fact Check"; that's when the distortions flow thickest). Anyway, this "USERS GUIDE" purports to explain what a Public Option really means. But its target is bigger -- "government-run healthcare." For balance, they start with a white couple in Florida who run a small accounting firm and have to pay $2,000 a month -- one-fourth of their income -- for health insurance to cover themselves and their two sons, one of whom has a chronic illness. They're in their 50s, and can't afford to hire the employee they need and pay for health care too, They're rooting hard for the public option.


   For Point B, CBS moves to its man in Tennessee, which has, or had, a public system called TennCare. First, they show poor black woman benefiting from TennCare, unable to do without it. 2. Now they "report," then repeat and repeat that it damn near broke state of Tennessee and had to be cut back. Two persons are quoted on camera: Rep. Phil Roe, a Repub from the state's NE corner who was an obstetrician and pisses all over Tenncare. Also quoted is,Mary Bufwack, CEO of United Neighborhood Health Services of Nashville. She says, "Tenncare's lesson is a cautionary tale for us all. Tenncare's lesson is "Control costs, control costs, control costs." Hmmm. Why quote her? I smell a rat, and think her organization is some kind of anti-healthcare outfit with a cover-up name (a common subterfuge on CBS and ABC; the few-seconds quote and who's saying it is quicker than the eye). So I look up Ms. Bufwack's group, and it appears to pass the smell test. I drop her an email asking how she feels about the way she was quoted on CBS News.

   She answers a day later: "Mort, let's put it this way....One of my comments that did not get into the story was that the issue of TennCare's runaway costs wasn't that the state was too involved, the issue was that the state wasn't involved enough in controlling costs.  I also noted that one cannot leave cost controls to the private sector. How perceptive of you. Mary."

   CBS segment continues: Mark Strassmann, their man in Tennessee, closes out with a glimpse of Rep. Roe and a few dark words about how TennCare didn't work, cost way too much. His last words are, "Another reason many here will never trust government-run health care again."

   Portrait of the unbiased evening news on Walter Cronkite and Ed Murrow's old network. Congratulations, Katie!
   --M.P.

The Nuts and the ACORN

     When I witness the hilarious mouth-frothing of the Foxes over the great ACORN scandal, my memory takes me back to a musical theater stage in post-riot Detroit.  In John and Dorothy Ashby's splendid jazz play, "Three Six," the approach of the white police would be signaled by the distant sound of sirens, whereupon the black cast would break out into song: "Ring around the ghetto, keep the Niggers in.  Let them knife each other, fighting' over gin."

   As the police arrived onstage they heard a torrent of misinformation that sent them scurrying off on wild goose chases.  Then their real prey, the king of the numbers books and his runners, emerged from hiding and resumed the day's business.

   "Three Six" was a whimsical depiction of real life in the black ghetto as it existed on the evening when a white police raid on a black after-hours drinking and gambling dive set off the rampage that killed what was then America's fifth-largest city.

   Against a similar  backdrop, the Foxes are shocked, SHOCKED!, that some ACORN employees were receptive to and willing to help establish a house of ill repute suggested by the Fox scammers who set them up.

   Fox conveniently did not mention the ACORN employees who saw through the ruse.  One threw them out of the office.  Another gave them some hum -- "Ah done kilt bof' ma husbins" -- which the big fools bit into and didn't even retract when the local sheriff reported that both men were alive and well and laughing like hell at Beck, O'Reilly and the other whiteys who were so easy to fool.

   ACORN is a grassroots outfit that has tasked itself with showing ghetto residents how to lift themselves up by the bootstraps.  One of its operations is a vast, nationwide effort to register poor blacks, hispanics and others as legal voters.  To give them a voice in a government that otherwise is hostile to them.  It recruits most of its employees and most of its fee-for-servicer voter registration workers off the streets of the ghetto.

   Is it really shocking, SHOCKING !  that some of these people, approached by slick-talking dudes in fine threads and flashing very long green, might think that a nice, clean, well-run whorehouse could be good for the neighborhood?  Bring in some tax-free white money, fix up a rundown place and make it look real nice, provide a few jobs.  What's surprising is that so many of these rung-in "Niggers" were smart enough not to fall for the Foxes' hoax.

   Virtually all of the legitimate voters enrolled by the ACORN workers vote Democrat, which is what really worms the Foxes.

   The registration teams, recruited right off the ghetto streets and paid serious Johnny Walker Red money for each voter they signed up, of course gamed the system and registered thousands of non-existent voters, or ineligible ones.  Grow up on the streets and that's what you know: game the system.

   Who's guiltier, the ACORN dudes with sixth-grade educations in ghetto schools who enrolled fictitious voters, or the Yale and Liberty Law School educated lawyers and shills who disenfranchised thousands of legal voters in  Florida, Ohio, Indiana and elsewhere to steal elections for the GOP?

   American racism comes in subtle tones, not always in black and white.  The hypocritical flap over ACORN is just one more racist bleat from the white far right.

   They cannot get over the fact that there's a black man -- A BLACK MAN! -- in "their" White House.
 

 

Why Are We Such Cowards?

   Chris Hedges, whose work as a reporter and thinker I have long admired, has issued a call to anger to Americans outside the madness of the far right.  Although our deluded national passion for war is an important target of his essay,  citizen passivity that enables war and other government failures is what he's really railing against.

   This is his concluding paragraph:

   It is we who are guilty, guilty for sending (our) young men and women to wars that did not have to be fought. It is we who are guilty for turning away from the truth of war to wallow in a self-aggrandizing myth, guilty because we create and decorate killers and when they come home maimed and broken we discard them. It is we who are guilty for failing to defy a Democratic Party that since 1994 has betrayed the working class by destroying our manufacturing base, slashing funds to assist the poor and cravenly doing the bidding of corporations. It is we who are guilty for refusing to mass on Washington and demand single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans. It is we who are guilty for supporting Democrats while they funnel billions in taxpayer dollars to sustain speculative Wall Street interests. The rage of the confused and angry right-wing marchers, the ones fired up by trash-talking talk show hosts, the ones liberals belittle and maybe even laugh at, should be our rage. And if it is not our rage soon, if we continue to humiliate and debase ourselves by begging Obama to be Obama, we will see our open society dismantled not because of the shrewdness of the far right, but because of our moral cowardice.

   Why are we such moral cowards?  Why do we permit parrots of the trash-talkers to perpetuate hateful myths and utter falsehoods in our local media?  Why do we allow the far right to rewrite the political vocabulary, so that "liberal" becomes a term of derision, "pro life" becomes the euphemism for those who believe in killing abortion providers, and the moral imperative of government-guaranteed health care for every citizen becomes "socialism?"  Why do we demean the handful of courageous members of Congress who saw through the emotionalism and deliberate falsehoods and dared to vote against the so-called Patriot Act, against the invasion of Iraq and against the Military  Commissions Act that makes a mockery of our Constitution? Why were we not present in greater numbers than the confused and angry right-wing marchers, outshouting them and demanding that the failed policies of the preceding eight years be overturned, reversed, repealed, undone and that true reform begin to take place . . . .NOW!

Why not a better country?  Why not NOW?

Memo to Bill Moyers

FROM: Mort Persky

Dear Bill-- I learned some worthwhile things from your Nancy Youssef interview, but was troubled by most of what I heard. Aren't two of the most important things Ms. Youssef said at irreconcilable odds with virtually everything she says about the situation on the ground in Afghanistan, especially the war?

These are the two things I'm talking about:

1. She said Gen. McChrystle wants and needs more time to get it right, and that it would be a good thing if he gets that time. How much time? Years? Months? And more importantly, to do what, to achieve what? As far as I can tell, she doesn't know, nor does anyone else.

2. She said it was good news that the U.S. seemed on the verge of "committing itself" to the war. Can it be good to commit ourselves to a war that fits her description of it?

She describes a war and a country in which we aren't sure what we're doing or need to do, don't know who the enemy is even when we see him (or think we see him), a country so big and uncontrollable it resists any strategy we can execute or envision now (or with "more time"?) a country filled with people who want desperately to be left alone by us and the Taliban, who will never leave because it's their country and "they own it.".

Under these circumstances, how can it be good news that Gen. McChrystle might have "more time to get it right" or that our country would commit itself to doing the job? What job? Ms. Youssef either doesn't know or can't say, and she's hardly alone.

"We wanted that war to be relevant," she says, "and that's an important goal." Is that what we've got a "too small" contingent of 100,000 coalition troops fighting for -- the goal of being relevant when nobody knows what that means, much less what it requires of us?

Dealing with Race (Part II)

Three widely separated recent events underscore the insidious way in which racial tensions have risen in the United States to a point unequaled since Watts, Newark and Detroit exploded into deadly rioting.

One of them famously brought a white Cambridge policeman and a black Harvard professor to a beer-sipping truce talk at the White House. The sudsfest accomplished little except to bring a modicum of civility into the adversaries' agreement to disagree.

Another was the white South Carolina congressman's shouted insult, "You lie," on the floor of the House of Representatives during a joint session of Congress for a Presidential address on the most important issue facing the reppublic at this time.

The third was on a tennis court in Flushing, N.Y., when a white linesman made a call that triggered a profanity-laced rage by a black player at a critical point in a United States Open semifinal match.

There were different complexities surrounding each episode, but in each the first and most profound question was essentially the same.

Case No. 1: Would the white policeman have responded in the same manner if the Harvard professor breaking into his own home had been white?

Case No. 2: Would the white congressman have been treated with the same kid gloves, even hero worship in some quarters, if the President had been white?

Case No. 3: Would the tennis player have been treated so severely if she had been white?

I suspect that roughly 47% of Americans would answer those questions one way, and 53% would answer the opposite way. No, it is NOT coincidental that those were exactly the percentages of the votes cast last November for the Republican and Democratic candidates for president.

Rather than bringing us together in a new era of melting-pot American togetherness, the election of our first Black President has brought the dormant racism in the body politic to boil to the surface.

It is time for President Obama -- who has been a disappointment to me and many other supporters -- to dart into a phone booth, change clothes, and emerge as Candidate Obama. To punch out the lying villains with forthright, carefully engineered, moderately progressive policies on the economy, peace, justice, health care and civil liberties, and to lead us vigorously to their enactment.

And on race.

Mr. Obama should re-read the words he spoke to the nation on March 18, 2008, in the shadow of those icons of American democracy, Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell.

We have come far, he said, because "Americans in successive generations were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time."

Where are the risk takers now?

To the haters, the gun-and-sign-toters, he said: "we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren."

For that appeal to unity he got Rush Limbaugh pasting a Hitler mustache on his image, "birthers," tea-party nuts and Joe Wilson.

Candidate Obama pointed to his primary victories against a white opponent in states "with some of the whitest populations in the country" including Joe Wilson's South Carolina. He did not mention the deep racial divides revealed in any analysis of those votes.

Candidate Obama addressed the Christians on the other side of the divide:

"What is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well."

Our politics. It's not a game wherein our better angels often prevail.

Take off the gloves, Mr. President. Take off the gloves and put on the brass knuckles and wade into the bigots and ignoramuses and draw some blood.

GOP Looks in Mirror, Sees Joe Wilson

The true nature of the opposition to health care reform was exposed on national television Wednesday night for all the world to see.
A South Carolina Republican leapt to his feet and shouted "You lie!" to the President of the United States during a special session of both houses of Congress.
It was an unprecedented breach of civility for such an occasion -- and a perfect demonstration of the tactics the Republican right wing has used over and over again to turn the public debate on the most important national issue of the day into a hate-spewing shouting match.
Joe Wilson was simply following the playbook.
The media bought, hook, line and sinker, the "spontaneity" of the shouts at the disrupted town hall meetings, where similar uncivility was directed at congressmen and senators. At that same time, the media ignored what was happening at free, public health clinics all around the country: the uninsured, and the under-insured, camped out and stood in line for eight to 28 hours, just to see a dentist or get a prescription for Grandma. There could be no more powerful case for significant health care reform -- now.
Yet it went unreported.
And we are left to realize that the president's eloquent and cogent and detailed message for health care reform is not carrying the day.
Joe Wilson is carrying the day.
To our everlasting discredit.

A Tale for Texas Children

When the Texas schools decided to protect their students from the President's seditious teachings about responsibility and hard work, they offered readings of fairy tales instead.
This is one of them (translation from the original Algonquian Arapaho dialect by Ann White Feather):

A giant came into the forest and began to harvest all the walnuts. Soon, squirrels were starving.
The surviving squirrels summoned a council and elected one of their number, Bushy Tail, to appeal to the forest gods.
"Only you are powerful enough to control this giant," Bushy Tail told the gods. "Please save some walnuts for us to eat."
"The nut market regulates itself," the chief god said. "Stop whimpering."
And so all the squirrels in the forest died.
Another giant appeared in the forest and began to take all the berries and honey. Soon the bears were starving.
The bears summoned a council and elected one of their number, Smokey, to journey to the forest gods and appeal to them for succor.
"Only you are powerful enough to regulate this giant," Smokey said, "and save some berries and honey for us to eat."
"Sorry," said the chief god, "but it's not a bear market. Stop whimpering."
Soon all the bears in the forest were dead of starvation.
Another giant came into the forest. This giant dug up the bushes and small trees and sold them to landscapers in Las Vegas. Soon the deer were starving.
The surviving deer summoned a council and elected Bambi to appeal to the forest gods on their behalf.
"Only you are powerful enough to stop this giant," Bambi told the gods. "Please save some forage for us to eat."
"That would make you a welfare queen," the chief god told Bambi. "Stop whimpering."
Soon all the deer in the forest were dead.
Another giant came into the forest. Before this giant could decide what to take from the remaining resources of the forest, the surviving animals and birds and insects held a council.
"Let us organize," said Bobcat. "Yes," said Beaver, "together we can protect everyone's food supply and force the giants to go elsewhere." And so they formed a union.
When the giant went to harvest walnuts, Eagle clawed at him and Woodpecker drummed a Gene Krupa riff on his skull while Groundhog gnawed on his anklebone. So the giant left the walnut trees alone and went to harvest berries and honey. But the bees stung him and Skunk sprayed him and Turtle gummed him a wicked one on the great toe.
The giant appealed to the forest gods. "The animals formed a union and now they're stinging me, biting me, pecking me, clawing me and otherwise preventing me from pillaging the forest resources."
"This is socialism," the chief god decreed. "It must stop."
The giant summoned other giants and they took what they pleased from the forest.
All the birds and animals and insects of the forest died.
The giants called a meeting on the mountaintop and threw a grand old party.
"I've got more walnuts than any giant in the history of the world," the first giant declared.
"My supply of berries and honey is so large that I can charge any price that I want for them," the second giant said.
"I've got the last remaining green things in the world," said the third giant.
When the party was over, the first giant, gorged on walnuts, began to suffer the worst symptoms of dyspepsia. Being near him was so unpleasant that the other giants shunned him.
The second giant tried to sell his berries and honey for a great deal of money, but there was no one to buy them.
The third giant had no place to plant his greenery, so it withered and died.
The giants asked the gods for help.
"Your walnuts are moldy," the chief god said, "your berries are rotten, your honey is stale and your plants have died. Why should we save you?"
"Because we're too big to fail," the giants said.
"OK," the chief god said. "Restore the forest to the way it was when you found it and you can have anything you want."
The giants agreed. By now they were very weak and hungry, but they stumbled down the mountain and made their way to the forest.
"What now?" asked one of the giants.
And that's when they realized they only knew how to take. They hadn't the foggiest notion how to give back.

Civil Discourse. RIP.

Jonathan Daniels, the firebrand editor and publisher of the Raleigh News and Observer, so offended many readers with his views that the newspaper was widely known as "The Nuisance and Disturber." His wife, Lucy, used to say that periodically, she would "put on my bonnet and walk around downtown just to see who wasn't speaking to me."
Those were the days of civil discourse, before "concealed carry" laws and open sale of machine guns to yahoos.
As David Sirota put it the other day, "We are becoming a nation of haters."
The haters, he said, "have succeeded in turning political discourse into a war of attrition against their personal demons -a war won by those who can go nuclear the fastest. That's clearly been the story of the summer on health care - and it continues to be the story on most major issues. I mean, conservatives are quite literally calling the president's plan to promote the value of education to the nation's schoolchildren a secret socialist plot. All of it has convinced me we are living through one of the darkest periods in the last 50 years - one in which intense hatred has now become an accepted - even celebrated - part of our democracy."
The boorish goons who disrupted recent town hall meetings with Congressmen won admiring attention in the mainstream press. During this same period the media ignored several genuine news events that took place around the country: free public health clinics set up in some of the poorest areas of the U.S., both rural and urban. They were inundated beyond the capacity of the doctors and nurses who volunteered to conduct them. Thousands of people camped out in line for several nights to get a tooth fixed, a baby's cough treated, or medicine for grandma's arthritis. The clinics had to stay open round the clock and still couldn't give care to everyone who needed it.
Sirota and other real journalists are constantly subjected to really vile public insults by the parrots of Limbaugh, Beck, Dobbs, O'Reilly and their ilk -- overpaid performers, like dancing bears and trained seals, who dominate what broadcasters call "news." This is what passes for public discourse today.
Oh, for the good old days when a lady could put on her best bonnet and safely walk around town to find out who wasn't speaking to her.

Missing the Gunslinger, Sort of. . .

By Steve Klinger

I’ve been watching with a buttoned lip as Obama has had a town hall meeting with half the country and still found time to appear on every news show plus Colbert. I’ve watched him extend an olive branch to Republicans, sweet-talk blue dog Democrats and provide a collegiate lecture on everything from fiscal policy to health care. Every day I am thankful that we dodged the McCain Express and have a president who thinks rationally, solicits advice, considers alternatives and expresses reasons for at least some of his decisions. I remain convinced that Obama cares about ordinary Americans and believes in his heart he is doing his best by them.
I don’t want to jump on the bandwagon of critics who will never be satisfied with anything short of absolute pacifism and total, instant redistribution of wealth, or the doomsayers who continue to predict societal collapse on a daily basis.
But all that said….don’t you miss Dubya the gunslinger even a little bit? There’s something about having a president swagger up to the podium, plant his hands on his hips and say, “I’m the decider!” that fills the belly with gross comfort, like eating a pound of chile cheese fries, even if you know they’ll do you in.
Of course, the kinds of things Bush decided almost destroyed civilization. Most of Obama’s problem is that he has inherited Bush’s infernal mess. But that’s not my point.
I am increasingly starting to believe that Obama underestimates himself. He needs to think back to LBJ and across the spam of generations to his role model, Lincoln. When he’s tempted to compromise on health care and back away from a public option (not to mention the single payer approach he knows in his heart is best), or when he pushes a watered down energy bill that perpetuates the coal industry, he needs to remember his own miraculous election campaign.
The man has public opinion on his side. His charisma (Republicans excepted, of course) is unparalleled in recent political history. He has science and history on his side to support arguments for stronger positions on global warming, against big banks and insurance companies, etc. He has the example of eight years of catastrophic failure by the very forces who oppose him now.
You can argue all you want that the votes aren’t there, that it’s all he can do to get weak legislation through because conservative Democrats and obstructionist Republicans – all bought and paid for by the obscene power of the corporate lobbyists – just won’t support progressive change. And it’s true from a certain perspective: mathematically, the votes aren’t there now indeed. But they weren’t there in 1965 either, when Lyndon Johnson hammered through civil rights legislation and Medicare, lacking even a shred of Obama’s personal appeal but knowing he held the high moral ground — and he could use his leverage as president to twist arms in Congress and win votes one by one. They weren’t there a century earlier when Lincoln determined he had to free the slaves to save the Union and then wage a war to restore it. And they weren’t there in 1933 when FDR envisioned the New Deal that produced the CCC, the WPA and Social Security.
I was resigned to the expediency of passing the wimpy energy/climate bill currently before Congress until I read Dennis Kucinich’s withering analysis of its shortcomings – on coal, on compromised timelines for greenhouse gas reductions, on all the pulled punches that undermine the good intentions of the original legislation. Even then, ordinary logic tells me a weak bill is better than none at all.
But are those really the alternatives when a leader as unique as Obama has the bully pulpit at his disposal and public approval ratings in the mid-70s? Just as he came from nowhere to beat a field of strong candidates, he has that rare capacity to captivate public imagination and support as chief executive, if he chooses to use it and does so with passion and conviction. Only his fear of failure can hold him back.
Ironically, and he’s way too smart not to realize this, it’s his lowered sights and his readiness to compromise that will likely produce failure in the longterm and provide the forces on the right with an avenue to regain power.
I’m not sure what tactics will best get his attention, though I can think of a few things I’d say to him at a town hall meeting. But I do know that those of us at the grassroots level must not buy into the conventional wisdom that compromise is better than gridlock. It’s a false equation, because strong leadership can change the dynamic and break the gridlock.
We must find a way to hold Obama’s feet to the fire on the crucial issues of global warming, health care, financial reform, nuclear disarmament and an end to empire building. But first we must reawaken his belief that together we can accomplish the change we know is desperately needed.
Steve Klinger posts regularly at http://www.grass-roots-press.com/

Read the &*#@!*! Bill

Frank Luntz, the architect of the right wing strategy to deprive Americans of improved health care, has made it easy for the True Believers to frighten the ignorant. The strategy enables them to pretend to have read and understood the various bills under consideration in the House and Senate.
It feeds them page numbers and snippets of text to support their utterly false assertions about what the legislation would or would not do. One by one, these lies that were created by and distributed by the right wing have been discredited.
One such lie, however, dies hard. The lie contends that Section 102 (a) of the House bill specifically denies consumer choice. A screed in my local "news"paper went on and on about the dire effects of this alleged denial of choice. Another ranter simply quoted captions from the bill and said, in effect, trust me, these things will put Big Brother in charge of your every breath.
Utter nonsense. Here is the pertinent text:

TITLE I—PROTECTIONS AND STANDARDS FOR QUALIFIED HEALTH BENEFITS PLANS
Subtitle A—General Standards
SEC. 101. REQUIREMENTS REFORMING HEALTH INSURANCE MARKETPLACE.
(a) PURPOSE.—The purpose of this title is to establish standards to ensure that new health insurance coverage and employment-based health plans that are offered
meet standards guaranteeing access to affordable coverage, essential benefits, and other consumer protections.
SEC. 102. PROTECTING THE CHOICE TO KEEP CURRENT COVERAGE.
(a) GRANDFATHERED HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE DEFINED.—Subject to the succeeding provisions of this section, for purposes of establishing acceptable coverage under this division, the term ‘‘grandfathered health insurance coverage’’ means individual health insurance coverage that is offered and in force and effect before the first day of Y1 if the following conditions are met:
10 (1) LIMITATION ON NEW ENROLLMENT.—
11 (A) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of Y1.
LIMITATION ON CHANGES IN TERMS OR CONDITIONS.—Subject to paragraph (3) and except as required by law, the issuer does not change any of its terms or conditions, including benefits and cost-sharing, from those in effect as of the day before the first day of Y1.
8 (b) GRACE PERIOD FOR CURRENT EMPLOYMENT
(1) IN GENERAL.—Individual health insurance coverage that is not grand -fathered health insurance coverage under subsection (a) may only be offered on or after the first day of Y1 as an Exchange-participating health benefits plan.

Read it carefully. Here's what it says: An existing plan can be continued as long as it remains exactly the same when the new law takes effect. Employees who choose to may remain covered by it. The insurer may not continue to enroll new people in the plan after the reform law takes effect. If it wants to continue to enroll people it has to move the plan into the exchange where it will compete with all the other approved plans, including the public plan. This in no way limits consumer choices; it in fact expands them and prevents insurers from "dodging" the more stringent consumer protections of the exchange by continuing to enroll people under the old plan. It also prohibits stealthy changes in benefits, rates and provisions in a grandfathered plan.
Indeed, the legislation explicitly protects full and free choice for consumers in Sec. 202 (B):

EMPLOYEE CHOICE.—Any employee offered Exchange-participating health benefits plans by the employer of such employee under subparagraph (A) may choose coverage under any such plan. That choice includes, with respect to family coverage, coverage of the dependents of such employee.