and Public Option Readied to Vanish In One More Capitulation
by Danny Schechter - News Dissector
IN MEMORIUM: RAW STORY: The woman whose life inspired the 1979 film Norma Rae has died of cancer after struggling with her health insurance company, which had delayed her treatment. Crystal Lee Sutton was 68. She had struggled for several years with meningioma, a form of brain cancer.

She became a hero to the labor movement in the 1970s, when she took on her employer, a North Carolina textile plant, and unionized the factory floor. Her story became famous nationwide in 1975 after New York Times reporter Hank Leiferman wrote Crystal Lee: A Woman of Inheritance.

MONDAY MORNING REALITY SANDWICH FROM AP:

WASHINGTON – One year after Wall Street teetered on the brink of collapse, seven out of 10 Americans lack confidence the federal government has taken safeguards to prevent another financial industry meltdown, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.

Even more — 80 percent — rate the condition of the economy as poor and a majority worry about their own ability to make ends meet.”

PS: Executive Salaries Went Up 10% During the past year. (See Daily Financial Crisis Update Below)

Well the President has finally woken up to the grim reality of the Health Care reform effort which he could lose, in part, as Frank Rich points out in the Sunday NY Times (See Below) because he “squandered the summer.” It looks like the public option is on its way to become political history as the right and the health care industry working through so called “Blue Dog” democrats torpedo the possibility of a government plan. (Couldn’t they just have extended Medicare for all? How silly of me!)

OOPS–On Sunday Night, President Obama said he expects A bill to pass. A Bill!

After 9-11 revived patriotic fervor, after the President vowed in the lingo of the Busheviks to get Osama (even after his military found Afghanistan to be Al Qaeda free), we then saw a mobilization of the right on 9-12, the day consecrated by Glenn Beck and his ilk as a new holy occasion. Needless to say, few, if any, of those marching through DC screaming the childhood manta ‘Liar Liar, Pants on Fire’ will be out Tueday to mark the anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers Subcrime bank and the “free” non-socialist market system. President Obama, having just pissed off the Chinese by imposing protectionist tariffs on tires made there and sold her, will also speak on his financial reform proposals. See Second Section of Blog For More.

AP: MINNEAPOLIS – President Barack Obama assailed critics of his health care initiative Saturday, seeking to grab the megaphone from his opponents and boost momentum in his drive to get Congress to approve his chief domestic priority.
“I will not accept the status quo as a solution. Not this time. Not now,” the president told more than 10,000 people during a rally that had every feel of a campaign event.

He said he wouldn’t waste time with people who have decided “that it’s better politics to kill this plan than improve it.” He said he wouldn’t stand by while special interests “use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are.” And, he warned “If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out.

FRANK RICH: OBAMA’S SQUANDERED SUMMER

“No less unsettling is the first-anniversary snapshot of 9/15: a rebound for Wall Street but not for the 26-million-plus Americans who are unemployed, no longer looking for jobs, or forced to settle for part-time work. Some 40 million Americans are living in poverty. While these economic body counts keep rising, tough regulatory reform for reckless financial institutions, too-big-to-fail and otherwise, seems more remote by the day. Last Sunday, Jenny Anderson of The Times exposed an example of Wall Street’s unashamed recidivism that takes gallows humor to a new high — or would were it in The Onion, not The Times. Some of the same banks that gambled their (and our) way to ruin by concocting exotic mortgage-backed securities now hope to bundle individual Americans’ life insurance policies into a new high-risk financial product built on this sure-fire algorithm: “The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return.”

When we look back on these months, we may come to realize that there were in fact “death panels” threatening Americans all along — but they were on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and on Wall Street, not in the fine print of a health care bill..”

DEAN BAKER: WHY THE GOP OPPOSES PUBLIC OPTION

CONSERVATIVE ANALYSIS OF OBAMA’S SPEECH

A few of Rich Lowry’s Valid Points

1) Create a false center. In his speech to a joint session of Congress, Obama positioned himself between the Left’s calling for a single-payer system and the Right’s agitating to end employer-based health insurance. Presto - he’s the very definition of a centrist. Anyone advocating almost any position can benefit from the same insta-centrism.

2) Scorn ideology. Obama warned against “the usual Washington ideological battles.” Message: He has no philosophical commitments himself. He’s pushing a Great Society redux only as a matter of practicality. Superficial pragmatism is the ideologue’s best friend.

3) Talk about your openness to ideas from opponents. The more you do this, the less you have to adopt any of their ideas. “I will continue to seek common ground,” Obama said. “I will be there to listen. My door is always open.” While he does all this common-ground seeking, he will be whipping up the Democratic votes to pass a massive, liberal reordering of the health-care system. But he’ll be listening!

DAVID SIROTA ON THE SELL-OUT OF PUBLIC OPTION

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the first time yesterday suggested she may be backing off her support of the public option - the government-run health plan that the private insurance industry is desperately trying to kill. According to CNN, Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid “said they would support any provision that increases competition and accessibility for health insurance - whether or not it is the public option favored by most Democrats.”

This announcement came just hours before Steve Elmendorf, a registered UnitedHealth lobbyist and the head of UnitedHealth’s lobbying firm Elmendorf Strategies, blasted this email invitation throughout Washington, D.C. I just happened to get my hands on a copy of the invitation from a source - check it out:

From: Steve Elmendorf [mailto:steve@elmendorfstrategies.com]
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2009 8:31 AM
Subject: event with Speaker Pelosi at my home
You are cordially invited to a reception with

Speaker of the House
Nancy Pelosi

Thursday, September 24, 2009
6:30pm ~ 8:00pm

At the home of
Steve Elmendorf
2301 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Apt. 7B
Washington, D.C.

$5,000 PAC
$2,400 Individual

To RSVP or for additional information please contact
Carmela Clendening at (202) 485-3508 or clendening@dccc.org

Steve Elmendorf

ELMENDORF STRATEGIES
GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS SOLUTIONS
900 7th Street NW Suite 750 Washington DC 20001
(202) 737-1655

Again, Elmendorf is a registered lobbyist for UnitedHealth, and his firm’s website brags about its work for UnitedHealth on its website.

The sequencing here is important: Pelosi makes her announcement and then just hours later, the fundraising invitation goes out. Coincidental? I’m guessing no - these things rarely ever are.

I wrote a book a few years ago called Hostile Takeover whose premise was that corruption and legalized bribery has become so widespread that nobody in Washington even tries to hide it. This is about as good an example of that truism as I’ve ever seen.”

NPR: ITS WAR, A ONE PARTY STRATEGY

President Obama’s speech to Congress and the nation this week recalled the heights his rhetorical power reached in last year’s campaign. It also made clear he has abandoned any hope of a health care bill that’s bipartisan enough to get 70 votes or more in the Senate.

What emerges from this year’s historic debate will now be a distinctly Democratic bill opposed by virtually every Republican in both the House and the Senate. It will pass or fail depending entirely on Democratic leaders’ ability to rally their own troops in support. In the Senate, that support will probably need to be unanimous.

The president reinforced his one-party strategy on the day after his speech, when he brought to the White House a critical group of senators who represent the middle ground on the issue in their chamber. Every one was a Democrat.

But even in the speech itself, the strategy was obvious. The president did make a few concessions to Republican thinking on health care, including a show of respect for the idea that excessive malpractice awards jack up the cost of care. He also signaled that he would jettison the government-run insurance alternative (”the public option”) if necessary to get a bill to his desk. But apart from that, it was all full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes.

In fact, the president deliberately stepped on certain GOP toes that are particularly sore these days. Denying that his health plan would add to the deficit, he accused the Republicans of hypocrisy. He pointed to the Iran-Afghanistan wars begun by President George W. Bush, which were treated as “off budget” and will add roughly $1 trillion to the deficit over a decade.

What’s more, he also referred to a similar addition to the deficit caused by tax cuts “for the wealthy” enacted under President Bush in 2001 and 2003.

GLENN BECK’s 9-12 MVT HITS THE STEETS

Notice how the right co-opts the left style of activism while the left remains invisible? DS

WASHINGTON – Tens of thousands of people marched to the U.S. Capitol on Saturday, carrying signs with slogans such as “Obamacare makes me sick” as they protested the president’s health care plan and what they say is out-of-control spending.

The line of protesters spread across Pennsylvania Avenue for blocks, all the way to the capitol, according to the D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency. People were chanting “enough, enough” and “We the People.” Others yelled “You lie, you lie!” and “Pelosi has to go,” referring to California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.

Demonstrators waved U.S. flags and held signs reading “Go Green Recycle Congress” and “I’m Not Your ATM.” Men wore colonial costumes as they listened to speakers who warned of “judgment day” — Election Day 2010.

Q: How Many Of these Marchers Marched on the Social Security Administration and DEMANDED that they be removed from the Medicare Rolls. A: Huh????

WAS THERE A BOMB THREAT AT TEA PARTY CENTRAL? THEY SAY YES; DXM IS SUSPICIOUS

It is most likely that a FreedomWorks agent provocateur made the call as a publicity stunt contrived to elicit sympathy for their cause; to establish themselves as a lowly grass roots (underdog) movement rather than the multi-million dollar funded astroturf machine that they actually are. BTW, “bitch” is a gunsel term. In terms of demographic profiles, gunsels are more likely to be hired or kept by FreedomWorks perverts than appearing on the scene as legitimate opposition group members. But if it were so, taking demographic profiling into consideration, what kind of a “legitimate opposition group” would plant bombs or let “bitch” slip from their anti-winger lips?

None but “lone nut” gunman-types who believe in nothing. But even if that were so, it is unlikely that a “lone nut” gunman-type would single out FreedomWorks or their “Tea Party” event in the first place No, this was most likely a FreedomWorks set up. The story as told by ABC and George Stephanopoulos:

Bomb Threat Forces Evacuation of DC TEA Party Planners

REAL NEWS: YOUTH RESPONSE TO OUSTER OF VAN JONES

MONEY IN POLITICS: READ THIS

Carolyn Baker: IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED “MONEY DRIVEN MEDICINE” ON BILL MOYERS JOURNAL, PLEASE READ THE TRANSCRIPT


WAPO: WALL ST. GOES TO WASHINGTON

Losing Ground

Taliban Cover 97% of Afghanistan: Report By Virginia M. Moncrieff

New research indicates that 80% of Afghanistan now has a permanent Taliban presence and that 97% of the country has “substantial Taliban activity.”

Andrew Taylor
Senate Panel OKs $128 Billion For Afghanistan, Iraq Wars

With hardly any debate, a powerful Senate committee Thursday approved President Barack Obama’s $128 billion request for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the budget year beginning in October. ‘’

Independent: Megrahi’s lawyers to reveal ‘evidence of innocence’

Lawyers for the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi are to release within days vital evidence they claim will clear him of involvement in the atrocity.

The development came as Megrahi’s brother and doctors revealed the Libyan’s health had worsened, leaving him unable to speak from his hospital bed in Tripoli.

Megrahi, who is terminally ill with prostate cancer, deteriorated as frantic efforts by campaigners were stepped up to examine evidence to shed new light on the 1988 bombing before he dies. His brother, Abdenasser al-Megrahi, said: “His condition has deteriorated rapidly. He is unable to speak to anyone. His situation is worrying. His temperature is at 39.5C. ”

Megrahi’s Glasgow-based lawyer, Tony Kelly, who was in Tripoli last week, is to publish a detailed account of what had been planned to be used as part of the Libyan’s appeal. The appeal was abandoned days before his release from a Scottish jail on compassionate grounds last month.

It is believed there is no single document which would provide an alibi for Megrahi, but a mass of evidence that supports his case. Megrahi has insisted that he can prove he is innocent of the Pan Am bombing, and wants the evidence to be published. The Libyan government is also pressing for the documents to be made public.

The developments came as the Government was accused of “misleading” the family of Yvonne Fletcher – the policewoman killed by shots from the Libyan embassy in London during a protest in 1984 – over whether her killer could face justice in Britain.

The Foreign Office has secretly agreed that any trial for the shooting will take place in Tripoli, according to a report in The Sunday Times.