KEITH OLBERMANN GIVES SPECTACULAR SPECIAL COMMENT ON HEALTH CARE BILL

KEITH OLBERMANN GIVES SPECTACULAR SPECIAL COMMENT ON HEALTH CARE BILL
  –“Not health, not care, and certainly not reform.” Olbermann on MSNBC’s Countdown just did a terrific commentary on H.R. 3590. Sad but true. There’s a lot to be sad and true about.

Olbermann also did a really good quick version of political handling, advising Harry Reid to put the public option back in, put the Medicare buy-in back in, and let Lieberman be the one to commit suicide instead of Reid and senate Dems.

Sounds like good advice.

Olbermann also advised President Obama, with quintessential accuracy, that whatever he does is going to ignite the right–so he might as well move the way he wants to. Moving the way they (ostensibly) want him to is going nowhere, politically or otherwise.

Again, good advice. It is tempting to wonder whether anyone in the White House is giving advice equally good, anyone at all; but I don’t want to waste time speculating about personalities. Yet.

Olbermann also had among guests Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), crisp and clear as usual. It is generally reassuring when a politician can actually speak well and can be forceful and sufficiently energetic without getting offensive.

To continue the political thought enunciated by Olbermann: You have already given them enough rope, Mr. President; the GOP and
Lieberman have conclusively proven that bipartisanship is not going to
happen. Cooperation is not going to happen. There was never even the
proverbial ‘honeymoon.’ Get the legislation wished by the people who
elected you, not by the insurance industry.


Back to the Countdown special comment on the health care bill as currently proposed: sadly, Olbermann is right. We just cannot have a mandate forcing Americans to buy porous insurance that doesn’t insure, without strong competition from a public option, without expansion of Medicare, without federal and state insurance regulation with teeth in it. We just cannot have that. “Transfer of wealth” says it best.

This is not to underestimate the obstacles. Some of the broader problems are out there, not to be missed by any observer: the largest media outlets tend to skew pro-corporate and are seemingly incapable of reporting factually on issues such as insurance abuses; the remains of the GOP are dug in, tossing off any ludicrous statement that will get them ink and air time, regardless of destruction; etc.

But solving the problems caused by a horrendous redistribution of wealth upward in previous years will not happen by accelerating the unjust and arbitrary transfer of wealth. The U.S. tax burden was mainly shifted away from the immensely wealthy to the middle class and the working poor years ago. The tax burden was also disproportionately shifted away from corporations to individuals, and onto states and localities. We do not need to fine people for declining to pay 17 percent of their income–according to estimates–to insurance companies that currently are not even held to account clearly for the net/profit on which they should be paying taxes.

DFA calls for rejecting health care bill

Below is the message being circulated by Democracy for America, Gov. Howard Dean’s netroots organizing group, over the signature of Jim Dean. I dearly hope that the predictions expressed are too pessimistic. But they make a lot of sense.
[message follows]


I’ll get straight to the point.

If Democrats remove the choice of a public option, they can’t force Americans to buy health insurance.

Here’s
the deal, Senate leaders are all over Washington claiming they finally
have a healthcare reform bill they can pass, as long as they remove the
public option. After all, they say, even without a public option, the
bill still “covers 30 million more Americans.” The problem is that’s
not really true.

What they are actually talking about is
something called the “individual mandate.” That’s a section of the law
that requires every single American buy health insurance or break the
law and face penalties and fines. So, the bill doesn’t
actually “cover” 30 million more Americans — instead it makes them
criminals if they don’t buy insurance from the same companies that got
us into this mess.

A public option would have
provided the competition needed to drive down costs and improve
coverage. It would have kept insurance companies honest by providing an
affordable alternative Americans can trust. That’s why, without a
public option, this bill is almost a trillion dollar taxpayer giveaway
to insurance companies.

We must act fast. Both Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic Senators need to hear from you. Please stop whatever else you are doing and make the calls right now.

Senator Harry Reid
DC: (202) 224-3542

Carson City: (775) 882-7343
Las Vegas: (702) 388-5020
Reno: (775) 686-5750

Call your Democratic Senator too — Senate Switchboard: (202) 224-3121 

REPORT YOUR CALL AND TELL US HOW IT WENT

Without
the choice of a public option, forcing Americans to buy health
insurance isn’t just bad policy, it’s political disaster for Democrats
— a ticking time-bomb for years to come.


Does anyone think Republicans won’t use this against Democrats in 2010?

What
about in 2014 after the mandate goes into effect and the press reports
all the horror stories of Americans forced to choose between paying
their monthly health insurance bill to Aetna or paying rent?

The mandate is toxic and Democrats will own it. By the 2016 presidential election, is there any wonder how this will play out for Democrats?

CALL SENATOR HARRY REID NOW AT (202) 224-3542 THEN REPORT YOUR CALL HERE

The message is simple: No public option? No Mandate!

Thank you for everything you do,

-Jim

Jim Dean, Chair
Democracy for America

Bravo, Please keep your ‘real housewives’ away from D.C.

Open letter to Bravo:

 –Bravo, please stay away from D.C.

Unreal

Dear Bravo, I’m begging you, in all earnestness–please keep your ‘real’ housewives out of Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital, the metro area I have lived in since 1982. I have reared a child here, a young adult whose character puts to shame many of the pseudo-independents and phonies who rail against “Washington.” That word real in your title is bad enough in itself: any word that beggars the term ‘misnomer’ is putting too much power in human hands. The term “housewives” does not do much for the twenty-first century, either, not for people who defend homemakers and not for people who like the idea of a career, not for anyone anywhere on the political spectrum. Even the show’s title is a minor calamity; the show itself would be a local disaster. It already is.

U.S. Capitol at night

Maybe I should confess up top—well, near the top anyway—that I have never watched an episode of Real Housewives. There’s a reason for that: I have been force-fed enough promotions for the show in its various locations—CA, Atlanta, wherever—to add up to the length of an episode, and seeing the promos is enough for me, more than enough. From everything I can glean—and this is from you, you understand, from your very own cable presentations designed to entice viewers—the ‘real housewives’ are a bunch of over-painted loudmouths.

I have yet to hear, even secondhand, that they have done anything much for humanity, done anything for this country, done anything for the world; that they have any talent or skills unrelated to using so much hairspray that they deserve to have a hole in the ozone layer named after them.

 

Truckloads of complexion-destroying makeup, yes; gallons of hair dye, yes; women’s clothes that suggest someone at Bravo hung onto a warehouse left over from the Eighties, check. Creepy rudeness, uninteresting conflict, bumptiousness that challenges any notion of humankind as the last word (to date) in evolution. This is the way a reasonably popular cable channel wants to present women?

 

Why?

 

Top Chef dvd

As you may have figured out, Bravo, there’s a reason why I even know this stuff in spite of being so revolted at the concept of Real Housewives that I have promised myself never to watch it. Here it is: One of my guilty pleasures is watching Top Chef. Speaking of a Bravo program, Top Chef could use the skills of the phenomenal Tyra Banks, of whom I am a fan. If only some of the female contestants on Top Chef could get a pep talk from Ms. Banks, we might have a less unbalanced competition in some ways. I intend to watch tonight’s cookdown—I admit it—partly because I enjoy the vicarious cooking experience on the show, and partly because I’m curious to see who will come out ahead. The Big Question awaits answer as always: Which will the show send home first—The Woman, or The Southerner?

 

The Southerner

But I digress, as Tom Lehrer would say. Back to your disaster program, the single worst thing about watching a show like Top Chef is being subjected to promos for Real Housewives. Do I really deserve that?

I don’t mind entertainment; I’m for it. I’m not even against reality shows, as long as they involve talent and skill. The existing reality shows that do involve talent and skill—cooking, singing (American Idol), dancing (Dancing with the Stars)—trump the ‘reality’ shows that involve an unskilled ensemble of non-actors who are also non-writers, every time. The latter seem to be mainly an excuse to put on a television series of sorts that stiffs writers.

Maybe that’s their purpose.

Striking writers

Seriously, I’m begging you: Send the ‘housewives’ home.

I would never say that about real housewives, of course.

[Note: Sure enough, the woman lost out first, then the southerner. Last men standing, an uninteresting sibling rivalry.]

[This article, deleted by the system among hundreds of articles and blog posts in summer 2011, is re-posted using archives and Word files.]