TheUnabashedLiberal

A means of offering friends and family a reprieve from my relentless musings on the matter of how I think the world should be.

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My Letter to Voinovich

Below is a copy of the letter that I just wrote to Senator George Voinovich regarding health care. Feel free to copy and paste it into your own letter which you can submit here.

Senator Voinovich,

I am writing to implore you to do the right thing on health care. You are in a unique political position. You are not running for re-election. For the first time in decades, you can vote to do what you feel is best without having to worry about any political ramifications. You must know that the right thing to do is to make sure that all Americans have access to affordable health care. You must know that a public option would not mean that the government would "take over" health care. It would simply be a choice available to Americans that would serve as incentive for insurance companies to make their prices more competitive. You must know that there is already someone standing in between all of us and appropriate health care. That person is not a member of the government like so many people fear. That person is an executive of an insurance company whose sole objective is to ensure that his company is as profitable as possible. It is more profitable for insurance companies to drop coverages and deny claims than it is to actually take care of people who are sick. You must know that we have a moral imperative to make sure that not one more American die as a direct result of the shortcomings of his or her health insurance. You must know what is the right thing to do. Get health care, with the public option, passed. Let that be your legacy.

Best, Carrie Curtner

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To recap, Fox News, you know, the totally unbiased folks who bring us the "news," had producers egging protesters on at the 9/12 rallies last weekend. I'm pretty sure that trying to manipulate a story in one direction or another is a no-no in journalism. Now execs at Fox are throwing the young woman in question under the bus. Here's the thing though, and it's just a hunch, this happened during a live report. She's on her phone. Are you going to tell me that she was on the phone with her mother or a friend and not with someone higher up at Fox who was perhaps coaching her to try to excite the crowd?

I also like the quote from Glenn Beck where he tells us that the goal is to bring America back to where it was on 9/12/01. If I remember correctly, the day after the 9/11 attacks, America was made up of a bunch of terrified, muslim hating bigots. It was this mentality that gave Bush a nice approval rating. This mentality that scared people into supporting a war in Iraq that was waged under false pretenses. This mentality that made people look the other way when they first heard of the horrible interrogation techniques that were being deployed against suspected terrorists. So good. Please, let's do go back to that.

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Via Anna Marie Cox's twitter.

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Effing Max Baucus.

Max Baucus is a tool-bag. The magical bill that has finally come out of the Senate Finance Committee is a joke. The only way this is a genius move is if it is intended to point out the unwillingness of republicans to work with dems on health care. Maybe that would be brilliant. Come up with a benign bill that republicans really can't object to, then when they object--call them out. Gaa!

By the way, Max Baucus represents a whopping .3% of the population.

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A Minor Point

I know I'm arguing semantics here, but I just want to go on record as saying I reject the notion that Joe Wilson, in his own words, plans, "not [to] be muzzled. I'm going to be speaking on behalf of the American people . . ." Now, just hold on there bucko. You do not speak on behalf of the American People. You speak on behalf the American people who happen to live here. You've got Columbia and Hilton Head and a wide swath of areas between the two, but as for me, I think I'll continue to let Sherrod Brown, Mary Jo Kilroy, and yes even George Voinovich speak on my behalf. With any luck by the end of 2010 you won't be speaking on anyone's behalf but your own.

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Above is a link to a fascinating article from this month's Vanity Fair by Sam Kashner about The Death of a President, a book about John Kennedy's commissioned by Jackie and Robert. The section I find especially interesting (and especially relevant) is the section beginning at the bottom of page 3 wherein we learn two important things.  1) Texans have always been crazy. 2) The fourth grade Texans of 1963 are (presumably) the same rich, middle-aged teabaggers that are so terribly desperate for Obama to fail at any cost. Read this then subscribe to Vanity Fair. It's only $1 and issue. To paraphrase Smokey the Bear, "Only you can prevent the death of print journalism."

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2 Glenn Beck Posts in the Same Day?

So, Fox has Glenn Beck on the air all afternoon covering the 9/12 march on Washington and MSNBC has Ed Shultz on the air covering Obama's health care rally in Minneapolis. Oh, and Jonathan Capehart, it seems, has a wide tie and wide shirt collar for every day of the week--even Saturday. Is this really where we've come? We're having to call our Monday through Friday Pundits in on a Saturday? 3:30 can't come around fast enough. My head might explode. Go Irish!!

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For those of you arguing that Joe Wilson's behavior Wednesday night was no different than the way they roll in British Parliament.

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Oprah Vs. Glenn Beck

I contend that if Oprah had not come out and endorsed Barack Obama, he would not be POTUS right now. The woman is that powerful. Until this morning I would have argued hands down that she is the most powerful puppet master in politics. Then I read about Glenn Beck's latest accomplishment. This is the same man who a few weeks ago said that Obama was a honkey-hatin' racist, and people listen to him. He has the same thing going for him that Rush and (to be fair) Randi Rhodes have going for them which is that they can go out and do the real dirty work that their party supports without having to worry bout any political ramifications. They're not worried about getting elected or re-elected to any office. They just have to keep preaching to their respective choirs and say whatever ridiculous things they want to keep their followers fired up. Glenn Beck knows that if he can get just 2% of his 2.81 million viewers to complain to the right people about whatever it is that he tells them to complain about, that's 56,000 angry phone calls, emails, rocks through windows, etc. that his enemy has to field. If you're the National Endowment for the Arts, and you've gotten 56,000 screaming lunatics accusing your communications director of being a being a nazi probably feels like a whole lot of phone calls for a relatively low-key organization that I wouldn't imagine has ever fielded more than 100 phone calls during any one day of its 44 year history, most of which are probably inquiries about the status of grant proposals. It's no wonder they felt pressure to act.

Who knows who Glenn Beck is going to go after next, but what we need is for the same administration who said on Wednesday night that they were going to start, "calling out," the bullshit spreaders to apply the same set of standards across the board. Protect the people excited to work for them from the people eager to work against them, eager to work against the ideals that nearly 53% of U.S. voters came out in support of.

[notthatkindagay]

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notthatkindagay:

via tlbb's facebook

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Is it De Ja Vu All Over Again?

The fact that Progressive, David Sirota thinks this and Conservative David Brooks thinks this makes Carrie Curtner the cynic feel . . . well . . . cynical.  Meanwhile you've got Tom Harkin on the Ed Show saying:

"But it‘s like a lot of things, Ed.  You know, you get a bill through here, and maybe there‘s something you don‘t like in it, but there‘s a lot of other things you do like.

And so, I would like to see—I would like to see the Democrats and the Republicans here in the Senate vote on a bill that does away with pre- existing conditions, that does away with lifetime caps, that lets your kids be covered until they‘re 26, that doesn‘t allow the insurance companies to rip you off.

Have that all in there with a public option.  You mean to say people will vote against that bill just because of the public option?  I don‘t think so."

Imagine that, the politician is telling me what I want to hear and the pundits are scaring the ever-loving-shit out of me. I don't know where I stand anymore. The idealist in me wants to call my representatives and yell and scream at them that I will personally see to it that they don't win re-election if they pass healthcare without a public option that will force the private insurers to stop financially raping the insured. The pragmatist in me can't help but remember that fateful day in November 1994 when my extremely conservative English teacher, Alice Pace, came to find me in 8th grade French to rub in the fact that the Republicans just cleaned the floor with my guys in the midterm election. It's those people who took control of Congress in 1994 who impeached Clinton, passed Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest 1%, and went to war in Iraq. How did they get there? Clinton shit the bed on Healthcare. He threatened Congress and said that he would veto any bill that did not provide for universal coverage. Well, healthcare legislation fell apart, the Democrats were viewed as completely ineffective, and the next thing you know, Newt Gingrich is running washington.

So, again I ask myself, do I want to Call Sherrod Brown and Mary Jo Kilroy (I'd be thrilled if Voinovich would vote yes on any healthcare legislation) and tell them that they've lost me and anyone else I can convince if they vote yes for a bill with no public option? I don't know. Do I want to wake up one winter day in 2011 to find that John Boehner is Speaker of the House? Maybe Obama and David Brooks are right. There's a sentence I never thought I'd string together.

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Click the link and read Obama's health care speech.

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Healthcare Speech Drinking Game

I would typically have left this up to Rachel Maddow, but I'm thinking that now that she's with MSNBC, she's not supposed to be inventing this sort of thing. So--take a drink every time the camera cuts to Olympia Snowe. Take a drink every time the Dems stand to applaud. Take a drink every time the camera cuts to a Kennedy. Take a drink every time to president makes some reference, vailed or otherwise, about "death panels."  Take a drink every time Obama tells an anecdote about some unseen person who has been a victim of the broken healthcare system. Take a drink every time the president says, "pre-existing condition." If that doesn't have you good and liquored up 10 minutes in either I have no idea what I'm talking about, or you are a drinking rock star.

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Friedman calls republicans out and tells us why the U.S. may be China's bitch by 2020.

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Hope

House Majority Whip Clyburn just predicted eventual passage of healthcare legislation that includes a public option on MSNBC. Let's hope he's right.

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Just because I think it's cool.

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Above is the link to President Obama's prepared remarks for today's school speech. I can see why folks are upset. "Stay in school. Do your homework. Succeed in spite of any obstacles you might be facing at home," that's commie talk if I've ever heard it. And what is that garbage about washing your hands to help out this flu season? It's like President Obama doesn't want people to get sick or something.

The far right is a well oiled machine and, frankly, their tactics are working. President Obama probably thought that giving this speech to kids in school was a slam dunk. A guaranteed positive to help recover from the "death panels" of August. That's not how this works though. The directive of the right is to dig in heels and shoot down anything and everything the president tries to do.

The reason Obama is getting his ass handed to him is that he is a rational idealist. I say this in a nonpartisan way. A republican can just as easily be a rational idealist. What I mean by the description is that in his brain, certain things are irrefutably, patently true or irrefutably, patently good. The thought that anyone could negatively spin speaking to students and telling them to work hard and stay in school probably never occurred to him because it is so unbelievably irrational. President Obama is clearly still having a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that this sort of irrationality exists. It never occurred to him that there were enough people in this country to completely derail his healthcare plans who could actually believe that their government would start shoving people out on ice flows. The reaction is too absurd to anticipate.

This is why Obama needs to start thinking like the right. Before he rolls anything out--even something as benign as telling kids in school to do their homework and wash their hands--he needs to consider all possible ways that the right can spin it out of control. He needs to come up with the most laughably ridiculous objections to any new proposals that he wants to make, and he needs to prepare to react to responses from the right before they spin out of control. The best way to do that will be the least political. Call the lunatics out. Don't be afraid to alienate them while they're still in the margins. These people didn't vote for you in November. They're not going to vote for you in 2012. Keep them in the fringes before they get the chance to win over the middle. The middle are the malleable. Mold them.