Progressive Viewpoints

Report Says Health Care Will Cover More, Cost More

The story misses the point and the headline and some of the text get it wrong.  The headline item many people are focusing on is that this projection says the healthcare reform act will cost about 1% more than previous projections (while they accept/ignore the confirmation that 34 million more people will be covered!).

The 1% difference is essentially meaningless since the 1% difference is far less than the % uncertainty in the 10-year projections themselves!  I mean, tell me who can tell, within 1%, what their salary will be in 10 years?  Or what the GDP will be in 10 years?  Anyone that good would become a gazillionaire.  

In fact, given the slightly different assumptions and models, to be off by only 1%, is actually a confirmation that the estimates are all very, very close. 

Whereas adding 34 million (plus or minus even 1% or 0.34 million) is a huge improvement in health coverage in the US.  Adding healthcare for around 75% of those who don't have it today.

The story line should be: Report confirms: 34 million more people will be covered for the expected cost.

Economic experts at the Health and Human Services Department concluded in a report issued Thursday that the health care remake will achieve Obama's aim of expanding health insurance -- adding 34 million to the coverage rolls.

via www.nytimes.com

The Filter That Protects Palin From Scrutiny

The problem here is not really Palin. Every delusional, ignorant nutcase should have a chance to get away with running for national office. The problem here is the system - a system that allowed someone no-one knew anything about to get very close to being a 72-year-old's heartbeat away from the presidency, a system that deems some questions unaskable, a press that is more concerned with maximizing ratings and avoiding offence than in getting answers. This system is dangerous. If you construct a sealed media cocoon, and false narrative, and a massive money-machine, you can get further than most people imagine. And remember, presidents have been elected with 43 percent of the vote before. 

via andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com

The Tea Party in Context

The inanity of the media narratives is unbelievable compared to objective reality in America:

• 65% - Pass comprehensive health-care reform
• 60% - Republicans aren't doing enough to forge compromise
• 33% - Iowans support the "tea party"

But the stories glorify tea partyists and a narrative that health care reform is bad and Obama is too left.  But the real problem is that Democrats haven't delivered (which of course was the Republican strategy).

These two stories, almost back to back!

The Tea Party in Context -- Political Wire.

Matt Yglesias puts yesterday's poll which showed 33% of Iowans support the "tea party" movement into context, noting that "38% of Americans have a favorable view of Cuba and 36% are favorably disposed toward socialism, but I don't see anyone writing newspaper articles about how a populist wave of socialism is sweeping the country."

"The number of Iowans who like the tea party movement is smaller than the number of Americans who want marijuana legalized or the number of Americans who believe the government has had secret contact with extra-terrestrials."

Most See Republicans as Unwilling to Compromise -- Political Wire.

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that nearly six in 10 Americans say the Republicans aren't doing enough to forge compromise with President Obama on important issues; more than four in 10 see Obama as doing too little to get GOP support.

In addition, nearly two-thirds of Americans say they want Congress to keep working to pass comprehensive health-care reform.

Re: GOP and Fox linking Obama to Nixon

LOL!

Think Progress » Buchanan on GOP and Fox linking Obama to Nixon: ‘It is the most idiotic comparison I’ve ever seen.’ .

“I also have to laugh,” liberal talk radio host Bill Press said during the segment. “When two Republicans want to hurt a Democrat, what do they do? They compare him to another Republican. It’s crazy.”

County presidential electoral map

Today the Oregonian published a map purporting to show that the country hasn't become more “blue” based on the blue-shift of counties, using this sort of map:

It seems from the map lie most of the country is “red”!  This supports the false meme that the US is a “center-right” country.  But it flies in the face of reality: not only did Obama win, but Democrats took many more US House seats, Senate seats, and strengthened state positions.  It was a rout!  But you wouldn't know it from this map.  Why is that?  This is because they ignore the fact that we are NOT a “geocracy”, but are a democracy (leaving aside the Electoral College and the fact that the presidential race is not the only way to define red/blueness).

When a cartographic projection of the counties is made, which adjusts the county size to make it proportionate to the population of the counties, it becomes much more obvious why Democrats did so well across the board:

Most of the county is in fact “blue”.  When viewed this way, it is much clearer why a so-called “red” state of Montana just reelected a Democrat as governor.

In fact, except for the presidential Electoral College county, areas aren't red or blue, they are purple -- a Democratic vote counts toward a Senator wherever in the state it is.  Here's what the real balance looks like:

Technorati Tags: right-wing_myths

Re: The Omen In My Mail

Conservative commentator, Kathleen Parker criticized Palin's qualifications to be VP and learned what it has been like to be a liberal for the last 30 years.

Re: The Omen In My Mail:

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a dumpster, but since she didn't, I should “off” myself.

Those are a few nuggets randomly selected from thousands of e-mails written in response to my column suggesting that Sarah Palin is out of her league and should step down.

Who says public discourse hasn't deteriorated?

The only reason that she thinks that public discourse has deteriorated now is that it is only now that her conservative compatriots have aimed their bile at her instead of at liberals.  The previous 30 years of vicious, bigoted, violence-tinged commentary targeted at liberals didn't count somehow in her book.

But better late than never:

More important in the long term is the less tangible effect of stifling free speech. My mail paints an ugly picture and a bleak future if we do not soon correct ourselves.

The picture is this: Anyone who dares express an opinion that runs counter to the party line will be silenced. That doesn't sound American to me, but Stalin would approve.

Readers have every right to reject my opinion. But when we decide that a person is a traitor and should die for having an opinion different from one's own, we cross into territory that puts all freedoms at risk. (I hear you, Dixie Chicks.)

Technorati Tags: Freedom_of_Speech, Freedom_of_the_Press

Broadcast media: agents of American destruction

Sent to MSNBC:

Your recent decision to replace Olbermann and Matthews from hosting the debates and election night coverage is deeply disappointing.  The kowtowing to right-wingers and the McCain campaign is inexcusable political interference in a time when America needs bold voices.  During the conventions, the right-wing bias shown by ABC and CBS was appalling as they hosted 2X the number of right-wing commentators as Democrats during [Day 2] the Democratic convention and then had NONE from the Democratic side at all during the first days of the Republican convention.

These decisions are preventing Americans from being able to make informed decisions about the future of our country and the world.  This is malfeance on a grand scale by American media.

We will not watch MSNBC during these events as a consequence of allowing yourself to be a tool of the “agents of intolerance” of the right wing in America, as even John McCain calls themselves.

Partisanship Appears to Sway Opinions on Palin - washingtonpost.com

Partisanship Appears to Sway Opinions on Palin - washingtonpost.com:

Republicans and Democrats have deeply contrasting first impressions of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, suggesting partisanship, not gender, is paramount in the initial public reviews.

This analysis is backwards: McCain picked Palin in a partisan move to appeal to the right-wing ideologues of his party.  The fact that the electorate splits on partisan lines after that is the obvious, natural result.

Mc-Been there. Mc-Done that. Time for a change for the better.

The two conventions are making the choices crystal clear to Americans.

The McCain-Palin ticket offers more of the same failed policies of the past that got us into the current mess: a belligerent foreign policy, even more tax cuts for the wealthy, a you're-on-your-own healthcare, our county held hostage to oil, and so forth.  Policies promoted by a impulsive and reckless McCain president who doesn't even vet his vice president pick yet who thinks this means he's a “maverick” and a hard-right ideologue for a vice-president who can feed red meat to the party wolves.

A ticket promoted by the Republican party's small-minded mockery, derision and demonization of anyone who disagrees with them.

A party and ticket who views are backed up by a media that holds Democrats to a standard of perfection in policy and flawlessness of character where they would be pilloried for personally attacking Republicans while the same media excuses outrageous and insulting and hateful conduct by establishment Republicans in nationally televised speeches (as we’ve seen in these first days of the Republican convention), speeches of little substance to frequently half-empty convention island of mostly old white people in a sea of American diversity which goes unremarked, a network media at ABC and CBS that even while refusing to host Democrats to critique the Republican convention had twice as many Republicans as Democrats critiquing the Democratic convention.

This is what Bush and the Republican party for 30 years have been promoting and doing.

Mc-Been there.  Mc-Done that.

Enough already; our country can't take any more of this.

Time for the change for the better that Obama-Biden can bring: bringing us together not tearing us apart, accepting our shared responsibilities to each other not just our personal responsibility to family, for an accountable government in our common interest not a secretive government for the special and wealthy interests of the Republican party.

Time is of the essence: Oregon's ballots go out in just 1 1/2 months; the election is over in two months, so
won't you join me in donating now to Barack Obama and Joe Biden to lead this country out of these dark days of torture, lies, politicization of ... well, everything ... and rank incompetence from the top down?

You can donate here: http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/willNeuhauser

HisSpace

Re: HisSpace:

It is still unclear how far Barack Obama’s talent for online campaigning will take him. But it’s worth noting that some of the best-known presidents in U.S. history have stood at the vanguard of past communications revolutions—and that a few have used those revolutions not only to mobilize voters and reach the White House but also to consolidate power and change the direction of politics once they got there.

The communications revolution under way today involves the Internet, of course, and if Barack Obama eventually wins the presidency, it will be in no small part because he has understood the medium more fully than his opponents do. His speeches play well on YouTube, which allows for more than the five-second sound bites that have characterized the television era. And he recognizes the importance of transparency and consistency at a time when access to everything a politician has ever said is at the fingertips of every voter. But as Joshua Green notes in the preceding pages, Obama has truly set himself apart by his campaign’s use of the Internet to organize support. No other candidate in this or any other election has ever built a support network like Obama’s. The campaign’s 8,000 Web-based affinity groups, 750,000 active volunteers, and 1,276,000 donors have provided him with an enormous financial and organizational advantage in the Democratic primary.

Obama clearly intends to use the Web, if he is elected president, to transform governance just as he has transformed campaigning. Notably, he has spoken of conducting “online fireside chats” as president. And when one imagines how Obama’s political army, presumably intact, might be mobilized to lobby for major legislation with just a few keystrokes, it becomes possible, for a moment at least, to imagine that he might change the political culture of Washington simply by overwhelming it.

What Obama seems to promise is, at its outer limits, a participatory democracy in which the opportunities for participation have been radically expanded. He proposes creating a public, Google-like database of every federal dollar spent. He aims to post every piece of non-emergency legislation online for five days before he signs it so that Americans can comment. A White House blog—also with comments—would be a near certainty. Overseeing this new apparatus would be a chief technology officer.

Technorati Tags: Barak_Obama