Special Comment: Health Care and Civic Discourse

Forgive me for stealing one of Keith Olbermann's television staples, the Special Comment. In fact, before I get into my own with regards to the not-so-gradual eroding of our civic discourse when it comes to the health care reform debate, allow me to share with you his Special Comment from Monday night's show -- his second in as many weeks.

This time, the Republican leaders, insurance lobbyists and right-wing pundits were in Olbermann's proverbial crosshairs, as he took them to task for their stoking of irrational fears and turning what should be an honest debate into a contest of who can shout the loudest.

It's like an episode of SportsCenter, but with more violence.

Anyway, here's the video from Monday night's Countdown:

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Unfortunately, those who would likely benefit most from Olbermann's words -- those who would likely change their ways if they allowed thought and reason to permeate their minds for even five seconds -- will probably never see this. Olbermann was, in essence, preaching to the choir.

He often does, since those he calls out rarely, if ever, take the time to watch his show -- or anything else on MSNBC. For a lot of those Olbermann was talking to get their information from FOX News, which is anything but fair and balanced and has been granted legal permission to mislead its audience. On the off-chance they saw Olbermann and heard his words, it's likely they would just shrug and toss them aside, waiting instead for the latest nugget of "insight" to spew from the piehole of Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity.

Those Olbermann directed his Special Comment toward have already eroded our public discourse, because they let the likes of Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and insurance lobbyists overwhelm the opposition side of the conversation. Some of the "ordinary Americans" we see disrupting these town halls are likely people with legitimate concerns with regards to cost and availability, but rather than engage their elected representatives in vigorous yet polite debate, they've been encouraged to be loud, obnoxious, rude and at times borderline violent.

The GOP mindset? Yell loud enough, and you'll be right by default.

Palin's assertion on Facebook on Friday that her parents and her child with Down's Syndrome would be subject to "Obama's death panel" is not just misleading and irresponsible; her assertion that President Obama's health care plan is "downright evil" is not just misguided -- it is, in point of fact, just as evil as what she claims health care reform would be.

You cannot stuff the proverbial cat back in the bag either, Governor. Your Facebook post on Monday asking for civility is nothing more than a pathetic backpedal, and no one with a brain is fooled. We see through your veiled hate, just like we saw through it last week when Limbaugh likened Obama to Nazis (only to this week claim he never did), just like we saw through it last week when Beck, who grows more mentally unstable by the second, joked of poisoning Nancy Pelosi.

You might be able to scare the fringe that is either too simple-minded or scared to think, but you can't fool the rest of us. We know there is no death panel -- just as we know that if there were, everyone from the staunchest liberal to the biggest God-fearing conservative would stand in line to oppose such a travesty. The portion of the bill you "claim" to refer to actually talks about end-of-life consulting ... you know, living wills and deciding what to do should your mother or grandfather become so sick they can't make the decision themselves. This bill would allow Medicare to reimburse you for that conversation with your doctor.

That's it. No death panels. No euthanasia. No secret plot by the government to kill Grandma.

I wish the ordinary Americans who have honest concerns about health care reform would heed Olbermann's words, as well as mine. I'll be the first to admit the bills working their way through Congress aren't perfect -- HR 3200 has several inherent flaws with regard to the public option, and the bill stuck in the Senate Finance Committee might not even have one -- so I welcome honest questions and debate. That's one of the staples of this great country we call America.

If you have a concern about how much reform will cost, say so. If you want to know how a public option would affect the private insurance you currently get through an employer, speak up. But be polite and sensible about it. This is a bill that, if done right, will not only make us a stronger, healthier nation, but will also help get our economy back on track. Health care costs make up 17 percent of our national economy -- yet we're 37th in the world in quality of care, according to the World Health Organization.

This issue is far too important to let the right-wing fringe derail everything. We must stand up to their fear-mongering and their hate and their disguised racism -- but let us not match their anger with our own. That will serve no one and might ultimately get someone hurt or killed. We must bring logic and reason to a discussion that has been decidedly lacking in both, and when we see a middle-aged woman in tears begging for her America back, let us see that for what it is: someone who still can't handle having a black man in the White House.

We must look at the man standing at a health care rally in Connecticut wearing his Anthem Blue Cross-Blue Shield shirt -- a man so concerned with his own corporate interests, he didn't even attempt to hide his true nature. We must look at the Republican officials who not only condone this sort of behavior, but encourage it; when "Astroturf" protestors threaten union organizers with "the Second Amendment," our nation's discourse and the democratic process have suffered more than anything else.

Our national health care debate is no longer about health care -- which is the way the opponents want it. They prefer to focus on Kenyan birth certificates, corporate interests and attempting to mask their contempt for a President they don't view as their own. I'm often hesitant to play the race card, but in this instance, I believe it is warranted. All this vigor -- not to mention the teabag protests earlier this year, and the hatred spewing from McCain/Palin rallies last year -- has one root cause:

A black man is in the White House.

We cannot accept this. We must stand up for what we believe, we must put the right-wing fringe in their place. We must point out when they're wrong, take action when they present a danger. The fringe and the corporate interests tugging on their puppet strings have steered the conversation away from the facts, and it's up to us to bring the conversation back. If we want health care reform -- true health care reform -- we have to fight and desmonstrate the same vigor and passion we had back in November, when we made Barack Obama our new President.

He needed us then, and he needs us now.

Given Olbermann's recent penchant for quoting Abraham Lincoln, I offer another quote from our great President that might be appropriate under given circumstances:

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew."

It is up to us, ladies and gentlemen, to not only take the health care debate back, but the country as well. Yes, we have a Democrat in the White House, as well as sizeable majorities in both chambers of Congress, but the right-wing fringe still has such a hold on this nation and its debates -- our fight did not end Jan. 20, 2009.

If anything, it just began.

Grassroots, You Say? Hardly ...

While most of the mainstream media has done a good job of recognizing that the outrage in health care town hall protests is faked on the part of right-wing supporters and health care companies, no one has tackled the issue quite like MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, who has devoted significant time to her last three shows on the subject.

And yes, I do cite her show and offer clips in this blog a lot. Her show is one of the most informative on cable news right now, and her intelligence, matched with her wit and keen eye for the truth, makes it a must-watch for anyone who wants to go a little further than watching guys in suits yell at each other for an hour.

Chris Mathews, I'm looking at you ...

Anyway, Maddow devoted a large chunk of her show Thursday night to the topic of health care town hall protests, hammering home the point once again that these are not actual concerned citizens staging these protests. Between jokes of lynching to a Maryland Congressman being hung in effigy, between Congressmen being shouted down as they try to talk to their constituents to Washington Rep. Brian Baird canceling all town hall meetings during his recess, this is a serious issue.

Not just in terms of personal safety for the Congressmen and other involved, but for the safety of democracy itself. Town halls are a hallmark of the democratic process (lowercase d, and yes, there is a difference) -- Thomas Jefferson was a fan of them, as is John McCain today.

Aside: Props to John McCain for denouncing the protestors and their tactics. But ... over Twitter? Really? I'm impressed the Senator from Arizona even knows what Twitter is.

Anyway, to become so loud and beligerent that you refuse a concerned citizen the right to share his or her concerns harms our democractic process. These meetings were designed for everyday Americans to share their questions and concerns with their Congressmen, and for these "grassroots" protestors to shout all that down with their hatred and their outrageous rhetoric ... it's a wonder we haven't yet seen more episodes like Thursday in Tampa.

Anyway, here's Rep. Baird talking to Maddow Thursday night about the protestors.

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Her coverage didn't stop there, though. She also spent a segment talking about Rick Scott, a former ally of George W. Bush and head of Conservatives for Patients' Rights. Scott, as you may know, got blasted on-air earlier Thursday by CNN's Rick Sanchez. I wonder if FOX News will twitter about it ...

Video of Maddow talking about Scott:

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After taking on Scott, Maddow was (surprisingly) joined by Tim Phillips, the National President of Americans For Prosperity, yet another group against health care reform. Phillips tried to convince Maddow -- and her viewers -- that the disruptions and protests were genuine, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Even more amazingly, Phillips asked, on-air, for corporate donors (cause that really helps the cause of sticking up for the common man). He also asked Maddow to join him at one of the rallies in the future, despite the obvious conflict of interest that would be for her, considering Americans for Prosperity's connections.

Watch for yourself. I do so enjoy watching slime wriggle in discomfort.

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For the most part, I've avoided talking about the protestors and their fake outrage for much the same reasons I've ignored the birther conspiracy and the Crowley-Gates incident. They were horribly off-message for one thing; with health care reform of such importance right now, spending significant amounts of time on the birthers or the Gates controversy did no one any good -- except for reform opponents.

It's far less important to me that health insurance advocates are shouting at Congressmen than it is to know exactly how much money these elected officials are receiving from the industry. Right-wingers screaming about Kenya and birth certificates matter far less than whatever bill comes out of the Senate Finance Committee. Rush Limbaugh comparing President Obama and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Hitler adds nothing substantive to a very important discussion.

Which is exactly what the Republicans and insurance advocates want. They want to change the subject, because they know they'll lose if they don't. A recent poll suggested 39 percent of Republicans wanted more coverage of the birthers on the news -- because more time spent talking about Obama's birth certificate is less time talking about health care reform.

The longer we stare at the angry mobs disrupting town hall meetings, the less time we spend discussing potential bills and what happens to this debate once the August recess is over. I've tried over the past few weeks to stay on-message when it comes to health care reform, and it appears that I'm one of few doing so.

In the age of the Internet and 24-hour cable news, it's easy to get distracted. Health care reform opponents know that, and they're trying to do everything they can to distract us. It's up to us to fight back with facts; we have to refuse to back down from the "angry" protestors and we have to ignore the wacky conspiracy theories.

Forged Kenyan birth certficates are not important. Ensuring quality, affordable health care for all is.

Sotomayor Confirmed

This just in ...

With a vote of 68-to-31 in the Senate, Sonia Sotomayor has been confirmed as the next Justice of the Supreme Court.

Sotomayor is the first Hispanic to ever serve on the nation's highest court, and she is the first nominee by a Democratic President since Bill Clinton nominated Stephen Breyer in 1994. Sotmayor replaces retiring Justice David Souter, a liberal, and is not expected to change the court's ideological balance.

The Supreme Court has grown more conservative thanks to recent Republican appointees under George W. Bush, and several Republicans in the Senate were worried about Sotomayor's stance on gun rights and discrimination against whites -- referencing several times her "wise Latina" comments and pointing to a Connecticut case in which Sotomayor ruled against white firefighters.

Still, with an anonymous show of support from the Bar Association and a large Democratic majority in the Senate, Sotomayor's confimation was virtually assured even before her hearings began. Republicans, probably realizing they had no real shot at turning down her nomination on the basis of her record, chose to focus on out-of-context comments and their own racial concerns in expressing dissent.

Still, nine Republicans -- including Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee -- voted for Sotomayor. John McCain of Arizona, who just last week said his party needed to do a better job of courting Hispanic voters, voted against Sotomayor.

While Sotomayor's confirmation will likely not shift the ideological balance of the Supreme Court -- did I already say that? -- her confirmation process could be a portent of things to come should President Obama face having to name another Supreme Court nominee. He does face such a possibility, particularly if he serves two terms.

How he -- and the Republicans -- handle that could be influenced by how Sotomayor's confirmation played out.



Information from The Associated Press was used in this entry.

Fannie-Freddie Divorce?

According to a story by The Washington Post on Thursday, the Obama administration is considering an overhaul of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that would likely split the mortgage finance giants and strip them of billions of dollars in bad loans.

I'll leave the details to the article itself (because frankly, there are parts of it that I still don't understand), but on the surface this seems like a good move. The mortgage crisis is but one of the factors that led to this recession, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were a large part of that. Of course, the connections between those two firms and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Donn.) are impossible to ignore, which makes them partly to blame for the financial downfall, even though these companies now have private shareholders.

Still, splitting up these two mortgage giants makes sense. It does beg the question, though ... why not do the same to banks and other financial institutions? Why are they deemed "too big to fail," while the administration can toss around the notion of splitting up Fannie and Freddie? I happen to think that if a company is "too big to fail," then it's probably too big period.

Then again, given the Wall Street contacts within the administration -- I'm looking at you, Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers -- I guess it should come as no surprise that the White House would look to bail out those firms.

Still, such a split occurred with AIG, a move that should provide benefits in the long term. Applying that to the banks deemed "too big to fail" might be a smart move ... but like I said, those in the White House who could authorize such a thing would never hear of it. Which is a shame, because breaking up huge corporations that have been poisoning Wall Street is one of the best ways to help those of us on Main Street.

Still, breaking up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is a positive step.

Middle Class Voice in Health Care Battle

With members of Congress, the mainstream media and the health "care" industry debating on television, radio, in newspapers and on the Internet, it's easy to lose sight of those who could be most affected by a possible reform bill -- the middle class.

Senator Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), one of the so-called Blue Dogs, came under attack in a recent TV ad in his home state. The ad, featuring a small business owner named Michael Snider, made a strong case for a public option. Snider mentioned in the commercial that he had to cancel the private insurance he had for himself and his family because his premiums went up 42 percent. He also mentioned the more than $2 million Nelson had received from the health insurance industry and asked ... just whose side is Nelson on?

The ad was all well and good, promtping the apparently thin-skinned Nelson to claim such attack ads would result in killing reform. The organization running the ad responded by tripling it air time.

Nelson then called Snider, who owns a restaurant called The Syzzlyn' Skillet. Details of the conversation were scarce ... until Snider appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show Wednesday night.

Video of that interview, complete with the commercial itself, is below:

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The most important part of this segment isn't necessarily the ad itself -- it's the fact that someone in the mainstream media actually took the time to sit down with an average American citizen and ask them what they thought about health care reform and the public option. With all the right-wing bluster about how health care reform would hurt small business owners, Snider's appearance on Maddow's show on Wednesday did a great job of showing how false those claims are.

Also of importance was the fact that Maddow led off the segment showing video of a pro-health care reform rally. With all the video in recent days of "grassroots" right-wing opponents overtaking Congressional town halls by sheer volume, the mainstream media was making it easy to think there wasn't anyone out there on the side of reform.

I only wish she'd focused more on the pro-reform rallies.

Still, having Snider on her show, giving him a national platform to express his concerns as a constituent of Nelson's, has the chance to give the pro-reform side some momentum. If the rest of the mainstream media can get over itself long enough to actually report on how reform might affect people, we might see more of Snider and others like him.

Then again, considering most cable news channels feature countless ads from insurance companies and Big Pharma -- not to mention CNN refuses to air a pro-reform ad because it singles out an insurance executive -- that's not likely. Which makes the efforts of those like Maddow and Keith Olbermann (watch his Special Comment from Monday night's show, further down on this page) even more impressive.

If health care reform -- true health care reform -- is going to pass, we're going to need more stories like Snider's to counter the needless bluster of the "outraged elderly constituents" ... who are actually minions of the insurance companies and lobbies who oppose reform because it would hurt their bottom line.

Kudos to Snider for speaking up, and even bigger kudos to Maddow for talking to him.

The Family: The Avant-Garde of American Fundamentalism

With the August recess just underway -- resulting in a relatively slow news cycle when it comes to most things politics -- I figured I'd use this blog to talk about another issue boiling under the surface in Washington. Not the birthers, whom I refuse to give the time of day, and not the health care town halls supposedly being overtaken by pawns of the insurance industry. No, I'm talking of an issue that almost no one in the mainstream media -- aside from MSNBC's Rachel Maddow -- is touching.

I'm talking about C Street, the house in Washington where several members of Congress have lived over the years under the guise of spiritual and religious assistance to those Congressmen. More specifically, the Family.

While the Family seems well-intentioned on the surface -- who would really take issue with a Tuesday morning prayer breakfast or a Bible study session? -- this secretive organization is much more. If it wasn't, almost every Senator and Representative tied to it wouldn't suddenly be sewing his lips shut.

The Family, while doing everything it can covertly to bring back a sense of fundamentalism to all aspects of American life, has been linked to, among other things, the extramarital affairs of several politicians -- namely Nevada Senator John Ensign and even South Carolina governor Mark Sanford.

Insert Argentina and/or Appalachian Trail joke here.

In 2008, Jeff Sharlet (he of TheRevealer.org, Harper's and Rolling Stone) wrote a book called The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. Sharlet has been a guest on Maddow's television program in recent weeks, giving shocking and at-times disturbing accounts of what goes on within the walls of the house on C Street, called Ivanwald.

It saddens me that Maddow is the only member of the mainstream media who seems willing to take on this story, because it not only describes an underground political movement that I think would scare most sane American's, but because it threatens the separation of church and state that our Founding Fathers felt was so critical to our nation's survival.

I happen to firmly believe in the separation of church and state. Not just because I'm not Christian -- I don't want any faith leaking its way into government, even my own -- but because I realize how vast and diverse this country is. Not every Christian is the same, nor is every Jew, or Buddhist, or Muslim or pagan or atheist.

To have government lean toward one faith is to exclude -- on purpose or otherwise -- those who do not follow that spiritual path. It's one of the many reasons I abandoned the Republican Party; by embracing the evangelicals and painting the picture that all good Americans are God-fearing Christians, the party excluded and alienated those like me who did not believe as such.

While that was a minor annoyance, the Family and C Street have the potential to be much more. As Sharlet -- who spent several months at C Street undercover to write this book, puts it, this is the avant-garde of American fundamentalism.

From the introduction to Sharlet's book:

"Avant-garde is a term usually reserved for innovators, artists who live strange and dangerous lives and translate their strange and dangerous thoughts into pictures or poetry or fantastical buildings. The term has a political ancestry as well; Lenin used it to describe the elite cadres he believed could spark a revolution. It is in this sense that the men to whom my brothers apprenticed themselves, a seventy-year-old self-described invisible network of followers of Christ in government, business and the military, use the term avant-garde. They call themselves the Family, or the Fellowship, and they consider themselves a core of men responsible for changing the world." (page 3)

Also from the introduction:

"I have lived with these men for close to a month, not as a Christian -- a term they deride as too narrow for the world they are building in Jesus' honor -- but as a follower of Christ, the phrase they use to emphasize what matters most to their savior. Not faith or kindness, but obedience. I don't share their faith, in fact, but that does not concern them; I've obeyed, and that's enough." (page 2)

That sound very Christian to you? I could be wrong -- it's been quite a while since I read the Bible or attended church services -- but I remember Jesus as a loving sort of fellow, teaching the world to respect and love their fellow man. Unless we're talking Old Testament here, I don't remember much of anything about obeying.

That's not a religion. That's a cult (though I realize there are those who view religion and cults as one in the same). This is the underlying philosophy of a group of men (yes, men ... the Family is quite misogynistic) -- that these men have been chosen by God to rebuild the world in their image of Jesus. By using their positions of influence within Washington's political structure, the members of the Family are covertly blurring the line of separation between church and state.

Again, from Sharlet's introduction:

"I offer these explanations not as excuses for the consequences of American fundamentalism, an expansionist ideology of control better suited to empire than democracy, but to point to the defining tension of a creed that is both fearful and proud even as it proclaims itself joyous and humble. It is a martyr's faith in the hands of the powerful, its cross planted in the blood-soaked soil of manifest destiny. It is the strange and dangerous offspring of two intensely fertile sets of stories, 'America' and 'Christianity.'" (page 5)

This, I feel, examines the latent hypocrisy within the Family and its teachings. The members of C Street claim this to be a Christian place, thus implying everything that is good and admirable about the faith and those who practice it. However, given the thirst for power innate within the house's members and center of power, there's a conflict.

How can a Christian be at once joyous and humble, as well as fearful and proud? How can a Christian talk of loving his fellow man and extole the virtues of helping the less fortunate, only to turn around and call those who do not follow the teachings of Christ un-American? We saw plenty of that in the previous administration -- particularly in the 2004 elections, when George W. Bush wanted to place an amendment in the Constitution that would outlaw same-sex marriages.

I don't think Bush is a member of C Street, but you get the idea.

Another excerpt:

"Before moving to Ivanwald, I spent several months on the road, researching God in America for an earlier book. My quarry soon became the gods of America: a pantheon. Not Vishnu or Buddha or the Goddess, though they reside here too, but a heaven crowded with the many different Christs believed in by Americans. There's a Jesus in Miami's Cuban churches, for instance, who seems to do nothing but wrestle Castro; a Jesus in Heartland, Kansas, who dances around a fire with witches who also consider themselves Christians; a Jesus in Manhattan who dresses in drag; a baby Jesus in New Mexico who pulls cow tails and heals the lame or simply the sad by giving them earth to eat; a muscle-bound Jesus in South Central L.A. emblazoned across the chest of a man with a gun in his hand; a Jesus in an Orlando megachurch who wants you to own a black Beamer.

"So many Jesuses. And yet there has always been a certain order to America's Christs, a certain heirarchy. For centuries, the Christ of power was high church, distant and well-mannered. The austere, severe god of Cotton Mather, the Lord of the Ivy League and country club dinners." (page 5)

I've long held the belief that religion, regardless of the path one follows, is a deeply personal journey. Whether one is Christian or Jewish or pagan, your relationship with your deities is your business and your business alone. As such, our personal relationships with our deities are formed by our ideals and life experiences. My view of the Goddess may not resemble another pagan's, just as one Christian's view of Christ might not necessarily be the same as the person sitting next to him in church.

That's the beauty of spirituality -- that people can take over-reaching ideals and apply them to their own lives in ways that make sense to them. Religion isn't about who's right or wrong, and it's not about who's in power -- despite what the members of C Street might have you believe. Religion is a way for humanity to explain the often unexplainable, to find hope and love in what would otherwise be a bleak situation.

Jesus Christ means different things to different people; as long as the overall messages of love and tolerance get through, that's really all there is to it. The members of C Street view Jesus and Christianity not as a spiritual path of love and acceptance, but as an ideal with which to sharpen their swords and brandish their shields heading into what they believe is a moral battle for the fate of America.

If that strikes you as a scary thought, that's because it is.

One last thing; I'm not reading this book or writing these blog posts to decry Christianity. At its core, Christianity is a beautiful faith. Those who truly adhere to the teachings of Jesus Christ are excellent, caring people, and they understand that the way of the Lord is not to force their beliefs on others. To force your belief on someone else, or insinuate they are lesser than you because they disagree with your ideologies ... that's not only un-American, it's not very Christian.

It also appears to be one of the most frequent practices at C Street. We need to shine the light of truth on this group, expose it for what it is so we have a better idea of what's going on with our elected officials in Washington. We didn't elect these people to join secretive Christian cults; we elected them to do the will of the people. I think Sharlet's book is a must-read, even though I've just started it, and I think everyone needs to know what goes on in that house.

I leave you with these parting words, taken from page 9 of Sharlet's book:

"This is not a book about the Bible thumpers portrayed in Hollywood, pinched little hypocrits and broad-browed lunatics, representatives of that subset of American fundamentalism that declares itself a bitter nation within a nation. Rather, it's a story that begins on (C Street's) suburban lawn, with a group of men gripping each other's shoulders in prayer. It is the story of how they got there, where they are going and where the movement they joined came from; the story of an American fundamentalism, gentle and militant, conservative and revolutionary, that has been hiding in plain sight all along."

Keith Olbermann's Special Comment, Aug. 3

In his (triumphant) return to MSNBC's Countdown Monday night, Keith Olbermann took on the right again, killed his supposed truce with Bill O'Reilly and brought back such show staples as Worst Person in the World.

But the highlight, without a doubt, was his Special Comment, regarding the health care debate. Watch it below.

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