Saturday, August 29, 2009

Right-Wing Loon Behind Glenn Beck Defense Exposed

Even if under the weak pretense of providing "balance," I cannot believe any legitimate news organization that gives any semblance of creedence to the hate-mongering extremists behind the website defending Glenn Beck's hate-talking on Fox and elsewhere.
KingOneEye in a Daily Kos diary offers a riveting profile of a group called "The United States Justice Foundation" and its leader, Gary Kreep.
Kreep, says KingOneEye,
...is the general counsel to the racist, anti-immigration group, The Minutemen. He has been affiliated with the radical and violent anti-choice group, Operation Rescue. He was a California delegate to the Republican National Conventions in 1976 and 1980.
Most recently Kreep has been a leader of the "birther" movement that seeks to nullify last November's election of the grounds that Obama is not a U.S. citizen. He has been one of the most vocal proponents of the birther myths going back to at least November 2008, when he tried to prevent California delegates to the Electoral College from casting their votes. He originally worked with birther queen, Orly Taitz, representing several clients, including Alan Keyes. He has since replaced Taitz as counsel to birther litigant "Rev." Wiley Drake. Drake is notable for publicly praying for the death of Obama. When a man like Drake selects you to represent him, over Orly Taitz, that is quite an endorsement.

That's bad enough. What's even worse, as KingOneEye points out, is the legitimacy the mainstream media is giving this nutcase and his new group in the name of providing counterbalance to the successful efforts of ColorOfChange to expose Beck's hate speech and dry up Beck's sponsor support to the point that he can no longer spouting his hate on the airwaves.
Speaking of the website, "Defendglenn" that this nutball has created to fight back efforts to cause Beck's show to get pulled off the air, KingOneEye wrote:
DefendGlenn was created to instigate complaints directed at the companies who pulled their ads from Beck, and to thank his remaining advertisers. Instead, the site has become a repository of lies and disinformation, as well as a sycophantic center of blind adulation for Beck.
It is impossible to gauge whether the site has any measurable influence, except to note that none of the companies boycotting Beck have reversed their positions, nor cited DefendBeck as motivation for their actions. However, the press has taken notice and is beginning to treat the site as the legitimate counterbalance to Color of Change. Consequently, whenever there is a mention of Color of Change, the media, in its misguided pursuit of balance, will mention DefendGlenn as well. This is another example of media laziness. Balance is not achieved by juxtaposing truth with lies. Color of Change documents its impact with letters from the companies they have solicited, and their leaders and staff are identified on their web site. But DefendGlenn provides no such documentation, and their leadership is a mystery to anyone who visits their site.

What part of this doesn't the mainstream media understand? There's nothing legitimate about a man with a right-wing nutjob background setting up a website defending another right-wing nutjob. This is no counterbalance. It's legitimizing hate.
It's time the media stopped acting like a bunch of sissies and call this pro-Glenn Beck organization and the nut job behind it what he is-- a loon who doesn't deserve a mainstream forum.

Our President's Moving Tribute To Ted Kennedy

Our president's moving tribute to a senator who one might as well say represented everyone as prolific a senator and advocate that he was:

Ted Kennedy Continues Healthcare Fight After Death

This was perhaps the most touching moment of Ted Kennedy's burial service at Arlington National Cemetery.
If you had any doubts about Ted Kennedy's long-standing commitment to healthcare reform, listen to these words as they ring out strong even as his body is laid to rest alongside his brothers John and Robert:

He was a giant in every way, and let's not let Ted Kennedy's valiant work to achieve significant healthcare reform go in vain.

Back In The Saddle, But Still Hungry For Healthcare Reform

Like Gene Autry once sung, I'm "Back In The Saddle Again."
After a few days of battling the fever (I was at 102 degrees at one point Thursday night) I'm back up and around following a much needed day of rest to bring my body back to normal.
And after watching as much of the tributes to Ted Kennedy as I could to go along with my doses of Texas (St)Rangers baseball and tonight's (Sorry)Boy game against the 49ers, I'm as loaded for bear as I could be.
To start with, one cannot discuss Ted Kennedy without discussing what he said was "the cause of his life," namely national health insurance. Contrary to what naysaying Democrats, Republicans, and their friends in the Washington pundit class are saying, healthcare reform is not subject to compromise-- especially when it comes to the public option.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid is out of his tree when he says that a public option can be privately run, and another Democratic senator, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, needs a strong dose of reality juice for continue to press for the total watering down of any reform by pushing weak co-ops to stand in the place of a public option.
What is there to be afraid of about the public option? There are already two single-payer government-run healthcare systems in this country, namely Medicare (for seniors) and the Veterans Administration, and both have been strong in delivering quality benefits for their participants.
And how about this poppycock about a public option driving private insurers out of business? Have these people ever heard of FedEx and UPS?
Both FedEx and UPS are privately-run delivery companies that have garnered large chunks of the national and international delivery businesses even with the availability of a strong public option, namely the U.S. Postal Service. If FedEx and UPS can win large chunks of the package delivery market by delivering quality service to their customers, why can't private insurers become just as inventive in producing quality products against a Medicare-like public option?
Are these private for-profit insurance companies so lazy about becoming more inventive and customer-friendly that they'd rather spend millions to defeat healthcare reform instead of doing what it takes to provide better services even in the face of competition from a robust Medicare-like public option?
America cannot afford anything less than robust healthcare reform with a real Medicare-style public option, and if lazy politicians like Harry Reid, Kent Conrad, and their ilk don't want to deliver it, they should step aside and allow those who really want to honor the memory of Ted Kennedy to step forward and ram this legislation directly to President Obama's desk even if it gets no Republican support.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Ted Kennedy

When I was young and immature, I was anything but a Ted Kennedy fan (or a fan of any Kennedy), but as I have gotten older, I have learned to appreciate the legacy of all the Kennedy brothers, especially Ted, who died earlier in the day.
Ted Kennedy was the senator from Massachusetts, but he might as well have been the senator who represented the entire United States. He championed just about every progressive cause that ever was hatched from the day he first walked onto the Senate floor to the day he died.
Up to the end, Ted Kennedy was in the front lines of the fight for meaningful healthcare reform, and I wish Ted could have been there when this important legislation gets passed and then signed by President Obama.
Ted Kennedy was a hero to me, and I'm DEFINITELY going to miss this Senate lion.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

United Healthcare: No Friend Of Healthcare Reform

This "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" investigation is very revealing:

So much for United Healthcare being neutral on the healthcare reform battle when it arms employees with anti-reform talking points and links to right-wing sites fighting against any reform.

The Heartless GOP In Action

The attitude of the Republican party toward those who are suffering because of our broken healthcare system can best be described by that oft-quoted Marie Antoinette line: "Let them eat cake."
My area's congressman, "Taliban" Pete Sessions (TX-32) might as well have given that answer as he refused to give a direct answer to a woman's concern about her situation that has been brought on by our healthcare crisis during a townhall last week at Irving's Ranchview High School.
Another Republican, this one from across the Red River, Sen. Tom Coburn (Oklahoma), showed the same callousness toward another constituent during another townhall.
Coburn's heartlessness was correctly exposed by CNN's Rick Sanchez. Here's that clip:

Coburn might as well have flipped the bird at the woman or have told his listeners, "Let her eat cake!" That's as mean as that response was.
Now, let's hear Sessions change the subject to the cheers of heartless supporters as a woman queries him about her healthcare concerns:

The Republican party has rightfully been called the party of no by many. With heartless and unconcerned senators and congressmen like Sessions and Coburn, there's little reason to think that that image is going to change anytime soon.
It's time for the Obama Administration to stop its efforts to negotiate with these callous critters and pass healthcare reform down their throats the same way these same Republicans when they controlled the Congress and White House railroaded morally irresponsible tax cuts for the richest 1 percent at the expense of the rest of us down our throats.