I’m going to let Rachel Maddow, as brilliant as she is, speak for herself on this one. She dissects the fake “protests” that are taking place at some of the town-hall meetings around the country about health care reform, showing all of the violence, hatred, and anger that come with these lynch mobs that are being bussed around from district to district and astroturfed by drug companies and other lobbying groups that are fearful of health care reform.

Their goal? If you can’t win on facts and you can’t win on spin, just try to crush the debate with violence, shouting, and anger. Eerily, it’s the same tactic the far-right used when faced with women’s rights, civil rights, and even today, gay rights. It’s a common tactic: try to shut down the debate when you can’t participate in it, and she exposes it and it’s dark history in one fell swoop.

[ Rachel Maddow on Fake Right-Wing Protests ]
Source: AlterNet

Every so often we get into this debate, where the media winds up showcasing people who are obviously on the fringes and categorizes them as “the middle.” Usually in election seasons these people wind up being classified as “undecided voters,” who can apparently swing any election they choose. In all honesty, “undecided voters” are usually the least educated about their own positions and the most pliable to irrelevant factoids that could prove false or personal, anecdotal stories that resonate with them. But this isn’t about those people.

This is about the right-wing lynch mobs (literally lynch mobs, as one of them appeared outside of a town-hall meeting to discuss health care and hung the congressman speaking inside in effigy outside of the meeting) that have been appearing in an attempt to not voice their opinions about health care reform, but to stifle and quiet the healthy, democratic, public debate that while I disagree even needed to happen, should be allowed to happen if it’s going to. Even venerable analysts at CBS have been making the mistake to characterize these far-right wingnutty mobs, complete with torches and pitchforks and entirely astroturfed from outside of Congressional districts by bus and plane, as “voicing concerns that voters in the middle may have.”

Sorry, but the same people who say things like “keep your government hands off my medicare” completely ignorant of the fact that medicare is government program, are not voicing concerns; they’re ignorant, uneducated about the debate on the table before them, and are happier repeating talking points fed to them by the organizations that have brainwashed them into believing they speak for them than they are actually studying the facts for themselves and debunking the lies they’ve been fed.

In the most recent CBS/NYT poll, a whopping 66% supported “the government offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan — something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get — that would compete with private health insurance plans?” Clearly, it is the left and center which share the fundamental common ground, with 27% opposing constituting the right-wingers ranting about socialized medicine.

Now, the same poll asked a litany of questions raising various concerns “if the government CREATES a system of providing health care for all Americans” regarding cost and quality of care. Concerns were high.

But the poll also asked a litany of questions raising various concerns “if the government does NOT create a system of providing health care for all Americans” regarding cost and availability of coverage. Concerns were also high.

So yes, the middle — being the middle — has some internal conflicts. But those in the middle absolutely are not coming from the same anti-government, conspiracy theory fever swamp as the conservative extremists disrupting town halls.

In their wildest dreams, these right-wingers would succeed in persuading the middle to share their viewpoint. And they have every right to try.

Except for the fact that they often are trying to shut down open dialogue in these public town halls, their protests would be legitimate expressions of their view.

Bill Scher has an excellent point – if this were about dialogue and weighing the points and the facts, conservatives would have every right to bring their viewpoint to the table. The problem is they have no viewpoint, they have no facts, and they have no alternative – the right-wing alternative is the same unsustainable status-quo that has thousands of Americans ill and dying every year because they can’t afford health insurance or health care, or the care they need to treat their illnesses.

So remember the next time you see media coverage of someone holding up a Nazi insignia and trying to compare it to Obama, or the next time you see one of those poorly worded and badly spelled sheet-signs saying “no to socialism” that these people would rather you die from an illness that could have been identified and treated than allow their tax dollars be spent on your health care instead of bombers, fighters, and giveaways to large corporations.

[ Memo To Marc Ambinder: The Right-Wing Is Not The Middle
Source: Campaign for America’s Future

I had to link this old old frame from a comic over at Sore Thumbs, a webcomic that’s occassionally political but regularly hilarious, because it’s the only thing I could think of when the news came down that Bill Clinton was making an unannounced personal trip to North Korea to request the release of two American journalists for Current TV, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, that were being held there and being prepared to serve a 12-year sentence in a North Korean labor camp. No sooner than the news broke that he was headed there and that he had arrived did we get news that not only had North Korean leader Kim Jong Il pardoned the two women, but that they would be flying home with Clinton on his private jet.

That’s right – Bill Clinton saves the day, and I say that while resisting the string of curse words I want to use to describe how emphatically pleased I am with this development. And I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that if this wasn’t Bill’s idea to begin with, this idea was born in the halls of the Obama Administration, wanting desperately to do something here, seeing an opportunity to engage North Korea, but understanding that doing it in any official capacity would appear awkward and like some kind of trade.

To that end, the right-wing pundits and officials who would rather drop bombs than say thank you, were, no sooner than the release of Ling and Lee were officially announced, claiming there had to have been some kind of trade, some kind of deal, where Clinton carried some kind of concession or agreement to the North Koreans in order to negotiate the journalists’ release. Even former UN ambassador (a title he couldn’t earn so he had to be appointed in recess behind the back of Congress) John Bolton had the nerve to sit in interviews and essentially say “well, it’s nice they’re back BUT…” and launch into a string of talking points designed to turn good news into doom and gloom like only a conservative spin-master could. Both the Obama administration and spokespeople for former President Clinton claim there was no such agreement or arrangement and that Bill was traveling as a private citizen and former head of state, not in any official capacity. Frankly, I agree.

North Korea’s irrational actions on the world stage are very easily explained when you understand the mentality of a threatened child – and I don’t say that to belittle the North Korean regime: I say it because it’s frankly accurate. Every time the North Koreans feel like the international community is ignoring them, disrespecting them, or threatening them in some way, they launch a few missles, make some loud declarations, and maybe sentence some trespassing journalists in a border region to hard labor instead of sending them home and showing their good side. Then attention is turned to them and they feel like the trend of negotiations is turning their way, they show the good side again, wanting to impress to the world that the last thing they would want is to cause harm to others, and what they’re really interested in is self-security.

Which side is the real side? I think most people have made up their minds, myself included, but I would warn anyone that there are always two sides to every coin, whether you believe it or not. But the reaction to this wonderful news should be clear proof to the American people who’s interested in their well being versus who’s interested in their own well being – someone willing to go out on a limb for them, each and every one of them, and those who would cast their countrymen aside in favor of their own pride.

[ Bill Clinton Departs North Korea With Two Freed US Journalists ]
Source: TruthOut

You may think that the current debate over health care will culminate in action that will presumably provide health care to every American and finally fix our broken system. You might think that, but you’d be wrong.

That’s right – no matter what plan Congress winds up passing, health care and reforms to the system will be on the table for years to come. This is by no means the end of the health care debate, or what we’ll hear about it. Right now, even if the plan that’s currently on the table passes, it’ll require everyone in America to have health insurance, but it doesn’t necessarily provide for their care, and making everyone have insurance and making sure everyone gets care are two very different things.

That and the current plan is in so much danger of being watered down to cut costs that we’ll eventually have to dredge it back up and reform it again. I’m a huge fan of incrimental progress, don’t get me wrong, but I really do hope that Congress gets its act together, pushes the PR campaign with the American people, and makes sure that the people are on board with the plan that we elected President Obama to bring to us in the first place. He was elected on a platform of change, hope, and reform, and he’s trying to bring that to us – we just have to push Congress to let him do his job.

But back to health care. Marc Ash, writing for TruthOut, has some choice words for the show going on at the Capitol right now:

Watching the Dixiecrats supposedly impose fiscal responsibility on the “unrealistic liberals,” who, in theory, would go off and provide health care to all Americans if someone didn’t put a stop to them, you have to wonder if this isn’t all for show.

Speaking of shows, the mainstream media is in full-onslaught mode on health care reform now. They’re going after Obama and his health care, trouble-making with everything and the kitchen sink. One more poll published today illustrating how “the public” is turning against Obama on health care reform will make an even hundred. How informative, so impressive.

In fact there is some real news out there that mattered: A quick read of the independent press might reveal, as David Swanson reports, “Nine More Go to Jail for Single Payer”. [1] These were not hooligans or persons of low moral character; they were doctors and Catholic workers, an 11-year-old child and ordinary citizens who cared enough that all Americans would be entitled to health care that they voluntarily forfeited their liberty.

Or, as Nayla Kazzi reports, “More Americans Losing Health Insurance Every Day”. [2] To wit: 46 million Americans are currently uninsured, but that the number is rising at an alarming and accelerating pace. Further, Kazzi reports that many of the uninsured are currently working.

The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports, “Percentage of Americans With Private Health Insurance Hits 50-Year Low”. [3] So, that’s a drop in the percentage of insured Americans from an estimated “nearly 80% in the 1970s and early 1980s”, to a 2008 estimated level, according to the CDC, of 67 percent of non-elderly Americans. That’s down 2 percent in the past year alone apparently, according to the report.

I love Marc’s recollection of the term “dixiecrats” to describe the so-called “blue dog Democrats,” the conservative ones who represent areas of the country that could very well vote them out and vote Republicans in next election. I understand their concerns, but the best thing they could possibly do is explain why the GOP talking points are full of crap and how this plan will neither tax middle class families or cost some exorbitant amount of money – and that it WILL cover every man, woman, and child in America and give us all access to some kind of health care.

This leads into why I’m kind of displeased with the Congress I elected right now. Even the Democrats in Congress called the vote on this plan off until after their August vacation – a decision I’m incredibly opposed to. The Congressional majority should have ignored the calls from the right that this is too soon and too fast (while in the same breath trying to call up demons from the decades past that we’ve been trying to re-work health care in America) when nothing is father from the truth. I wanted them to get this done, push it out, and let’s be done with it. Unfortunately they decided to do the opposite and drag their feet, like that have with so many other critical issues.

If the majority in Congress doesn’t take this opportunity to make the full court press in favor of health care and pretty much everything else, the lobbyists and conservative groups who want to see progressives fail more than they want to save their own lives and the lives of their neighbors will do it for them, and send the wrong message. And if they wait too long, the support for it will be dead. The same applies for almost every other one of Congress’s initiatives. If they wait too long, we’ll be in the 2010 election season, and then all the political will in Congress will be sapped, every member instead focused on keeping their jobs.

Let’s get this done.

[ Why Health Care Isn't Going Away ]
Source: TruthOut