Rachel Maddow on The Huffington Post

A Tale Of Two MSNBCs

2009-12-03T07:26:20Z

Increasingly, it's seeming as if there are two cable news networks inside 30 Rockefeller Plaza: a thriving, opinion-oriented evening channel that's solidly in the #2 spot and a struggling straight-news dayside network that regularly places fifth in the demographic.

In November 2009, MSNBC's evening lineup topped CNN's in the Adults 25-54 demographic, the audience segment that advertisers buy, coming in a solid second place behind the dominant Fox News.

At 6PM, MSNBC's "The Ed Show" averaged 155,000 A25-54 viewers, an 8% advantage over CNN's "The Situation Room," which averaged 143,000 A25-54 viewers.

At 7PM, MSNBC's repeat of "Hardball with Chris Matthews" averaged 184,000 A25-54 viewers, an 11% advantage over CNN, which averaged 166,000 A25-54 viewers in the timeslot ("Lou Dobbs Tonight" aired through November 12, after which "CNN Tonight" filled the timeslot).

At 8PM, MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" averaged 298,000 A25-54 viewers, a 66% advantage over CNN's "Campbell Brown," which averaged 179,000 A25-54 viewers.

At 9PM, MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show" averaged 251,000 A25-54 viewers, a 9% advantage over CNN's "Larry King Live," which averaged 231,000 A25-54 viewers.

At 10PM, MSNBC's repeat episode of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" averaged 224,000 A25-54 viewers, a 7% advantage over CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360," which averaged 209,000 A25-54 viewers.

During the day, however — when MSNBC is airing its straight news programming — it's an entirely different story.

The network's two new dayside programs, "Morning Meeting with Dylan Ratigan" and "Dr. Nancy" have struggled in the ratings.

"Morning Meeting" averaged 75,000 A25-54 viewers in the 9AM hour, and just 65,000 A25-54 viewers in the 10AM hour, coming in fifth place behind Fox News, CNN, HLN, and CNBC (in that order). "Dr. Nancy" averaged just 55,000 A25-54 viewers at 12PM, again fifth place behind Fox News, CNN, HLN, and CNBC (in that order).

At 11 AM, "MSNBC Live" averaged 55,000 demo viewers; for comparison, Fox News' "Happening Now," which airs from 11AM-1PM, averaged 262,000 demo viewers, and CNN averaged 129,000 demo viewers at 11AM.

It's not much better in the afternoon, when MSNBC averaged 63,000 A25-54 viewers for "Andrea Mitchell Reports" at 1PM and 64,000 A25-54 viewers at 2PM. Compare that to Fox News' 255,000 A25-54 viewers for "The Live Desk," which airs from 1-3PM, and CNN's 127,000 A25-54 viewers at 1PM and 122,000 A25-54 viewers at 2PM.

At 3PM, MSNBC averaged 79,000 A25-54 viewers compared to 257,000 for Fox News' "Studio B with Shepard Smith" 130,000 for CNN's hour anchored by Rick Sanchez.

It's not until 4PM that MSNBC comes out of fifth place in the A25-54 demo, tying HLN for 3rd with 97,000 A25-54 viewers (compared to Fox News' 301,000 A25-54 viewers for "Your World with Neil Cavuto" and CNN's 140,000 A25-54 viewers).

At 5PM — a sort of transition hour between newsy dayside and opinion-oriented evening — MSNBC's "Hardball" averages 133,000 A25-54 viewers, while Fox News' "Glenn Beck" averages 678,000 A25-54 viewers and CNN's "Situation Room" averages 154,000 A25-55 viewers.

Of course, it must be noted, both MSNBC and CNN were down significantly in both total day and primetime compared to election-heavy November 2008. MSNBC was down 60% in the demographic in primetime and 56% in the demographic in total day ratings, and November's 127,000 A25-54 total day rating was its lowest of 2009. CNN, too, had its lowest A25-54 total day delivery of 2009 in November, averaging just 136,000 A25-54 viewers, down 63% from November 2008. CNN was down 71% in the demo in primetime, averaging 191,000 A25-54 viewers.

Rachel Maddow Goes On Martha Stewart: "It's Hard To Talk Afghanistan While You're Making A Croqueembouche" (VIDEO)

2009-12-02T10:19:39Z

On Tuesday, Rachel Maddow went on Martha Stewart's show. The matter before them: croqueembouche, a pyramid of pastry puffs dipped in scalding hot caramel (see Martha's recipe here).

"It's hard to talk Afghanistan while you're making a croqueembouche," Stewart said thoughtfully. Nevertheless the two women attempt it, as Rachel Maddow handles scalding caramel and talks troops levels and the President's plan for Afghanistan.

WATCH IT

The last time Maddow was on Stewart's show, Maddow shared her election night cocktail recipe.

William Bradley: Heads Should Roll Over Obama State Dinner Security Breach

2009-11-27T10:25:22Z

It turns out to be shockingly easy to assassinate President Barack Obama.

In a fabulous show of security, it emerged late Wednesday that a pair of reality show contestants succeeded in crashing the Obamas' first state dinner. One posted photos of the couple with Vice President Joe Biden and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who she referred to as "Ron," on her Facebook page.

Amusing though it may seem, this situation is very serious, and totally unacceptable. Heads should roll over this.

President Barack Obama hosted Prime Minister Singh of the Republic of India at a State Dinner on November 24, 2009.

It's great that his Secret Service detail liked Obama enough to give him the watch they wear for his 46th birthday two years ago, a watch he wears constantly -- it's a terrific watch, I have one -- but this is ridiculous.

Especially since Obama, the first black president, assailed by right-wing extremists as illegitimate, gets far more death threats than any previous president.

The guy, who easily penetrated White House security, looks like a total dweeb. Not that appearances mean much. But the reality is that the woman, who also easily penetrated White House security, could have been a serious threat, too.

Let me tell you a little story.

As a political writer, I have frequently penetrated various security schemes to get to a principal. I'm recalling now a cover story I did for the LA Weekly a decade ago on Michael Milken, the infamous global financier. His handlers, Democrats all, imagined I was out to demolish him. Not exactly so. I viewed him as a flawed genius. But they granted no access. So I took to finding out where he would be, showing up there, and chatting with him.

A spokeswoman for Bravo says the couple who crashed a White House state dinner were trying to get on a reality TV show.

In the end, I easily penetrated his big dinner at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, despite not having an invitation. What I did have was one of my Armani suits and an authoritative yet polite attitude. Even though Milken's security was seemingly everywhere.

It was child's play, actually, and, notwithstanding his vaunted, and very high-priced, Hollywood security detail, I ended up talking with Milken for 20 minutes as his handlers looked on in dismay.

A skilled person can nose around any situation. It's the role of security to minimize the ability to do that.

It's never occurred to me to penetrate a state dinner at the White House, where I've been several times with appropriate clearance during the Bill Clinton days. I've been to a great many snazzy events, and my observation is that they generally do not live up to their billing, though of course it's always nice to be there. Except when it's a bore.

But if I lived on the East Coast rather than the West Coast, and cared about not being invited to the first state dinner of the Obama era, I see now that I've been missing out.

Evidently all you need is a very nice suit, a pretty blonde, and a bit of attitude. None of which are all that hard to pull off.

So, how could this go very badly for America?

Let's count the ways.

Death threats are mounting against Obama and liberal Democrats. Watch Fox News commentator Glenn Beck "role play" an assassination of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

One could deploy a biological weapon such as anthrax or a radiological weapon. Yet, the reality is that one would not have to be able to do any of that to assassinate President Obama. A fairly pudgy far right blogger, or a benighted admirer of Al Qaeda, would still be able to pull that off.

All that is needed is to get within a few feet of the president.

And it does not require a gun.

Frankly, even the yutz who accompanied the blonde in crashing Obama's first state dinner could have wreaked havoc. We see pix of the couple with Biden and Emanuel. Their deaths would have been disrupting enough.

Now, the White House says that there was no danger for the president because everyone went through a magnetometer.

That's actually rather amusing.

You don't need a gun to kill the president. You don't even need a fork or a knife -- and those were available on every table at that state dinner -- to pull off an assassination. All you need is a few feet of access and a pair of strong and knowledgeable hands.

Now, I don't want to unnecessarily alarm people. But this president has done any number of things to seriously piss off a great many folks.

From the international far left, in the form of Islamic jihadists who have designs on Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, to the domestic far right, which feverishly imagines that Obama isn't really an American at all, but is instead a fraud who owes his election to the manipulation of ACORN and answers to radical Islam. It's all nonsense, but it's dangerous nonsense.

The couple who crashed a White House dinner shouldn't need legal help, an attorney who knows them said Thursday, as the Secret Service remained quiet publicly about the incredible security breach.

I worry about Obama. The far right in this country -- which increasingly dominates the Republican Party (over 40% believe that Obama isn't really an American, and that the relatively powerless ACORN, somehow, bizarrely, stole the election for him) -- is bent on painting him as a "Manchurian Candidate" other.

The jihadist far left -- or is it really far right? -- is coming to realize that Obama is their worst nightmare. He is America's first black president, with an unusual name and an obvious affinity for the "other." Since he is the "other."

As Rachel Maddow pointed out a few months ago, when she merely replayed an assassination fantasy of an increasingly famous broadcaster, the notion of violence and even assassination is being played up in our political "discourse."

Both extremes -- the Glenn Becks and the Osama bin Ladens -- want this president gone. Both extremes are, whether they acknowledge it or not, setting the stage to rationalize an assassination.

If I were in the White House, given the overall situation and the extraordinary security lapses of this first state dinner, I would be sending some folks to guard snow plows in Antarctica this weekend. The snow plows that aren't being used in vain to try to stop ice shelves from breaking off into the ocean, that is. The stakes are simply too high to be nice about this.

You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.

Rachel Maddow, Spencer Ackerman Provide Rare Moment Of Clarity In The Afghanistan Escalation Debate (VIDEO)

2009-11-19T17:43:32Z

The more I hear about the troop level increases that are ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to win in Afghanistan, the more and more I feel detached from any sense of what this troop escalation is supposed to achieve in practical terms. That doesn't necessarily mean it can't achieve something, it just means that I don't know what 40,000 additional troops will be tasked with, or stationed, or deployed to support. And why 40,000? Where did that number even come from? I suspect that future generations will refer to "40,000 troops" as a "Kagan unit," the same way the "next three to six vitally important months" are a "Friedman unit."

But the escalation conversation in the media hasn't only failed to account for what 40,000 additional Afghanistan bound troops are meant to achieve, it's also run far ahead of whether or not such an escalation is even humanly possible. At the Washington Independent, Spencer Ackerman dug down into whether our current state of military readiness can even achieve the goal of the plus-40,000 crowd. What he found was this: "If President Obama orders an additional 30,000 to 40,000 troops to Afghanistan, he will be deploying practically every available U.S. Army brigade to war, leaving few units in reserve in case of an unforeseen emergency and further stressing a force that has seen repeated combat deployments since 2002."

You don't hear anyone talking about that, do you? But if the rumors are true, Obama is supposedly poised to green-light an additional deployment of 34,000 troops, which "would raise U.S. troop levels in the eight-year war to an all-time high of 102,000." But can it be done?

The shortage of available combat brigades means that an escalation of between 30,000 and 40,000 troops is "not realistic," said Lawrence Korb, a former senior Pentagon official in the Reagan administration who now studies defense issues for the liberal Center for American Progress. To send practically all available soldiers into one of the two wars would leave the U.S. with "no reserve in case you had a problem in Korea."

Obama would have something of a cushion, but not much, in the early months of 2010. An additional five brigades will finish their 12 months of so-called "dwell time" at home between deployments by April 2010, providing an additional 22,600 troops, but by that time, about 10,200 troops will be scheduled to leave Afghanistan, leaving available a net gain of 12,400. More brigades become available in the summer and fall, although others currently in Afghanistan will be ending their scheduled deployments then as well. Under current Pentagon policy, dwell time for the National Guard varies, but can be no shorter than two years, and so it is possible but not certain that two National Guard brigades composed of 6,800 National Guard soldiers might be available for deployment by March 2010 as well, beyond the 24,000 theoretically available now. Pentagon leaders had hoped to extend dwell time this year, but that was before McChrystal's request for additional troops.

Ackerman took up this issue with Rachel Maddow on last night's Rachel Maddow Show:

WATCH:

A critical point: Afghanistan's "surge" won't be like the one in Iraq. As Ackerman points out: "Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan's escalation is being talked about in terms of not being a one-time surge, where when the initial brigades used for escalation go home, the whole thing goes back to where it was before, but a sustained escalation whereby new brigades have to come in and relieve the ones that go home initially."

All of this begs the question: Why has the "40,000 troops" idea taken root, when practical realities throw so many obstacles in the way of this escalation? Well, at the risk of using the tired "What we talk about when we talk about [X]" snowclone, what we talk about when we talk about "40,000 troops" is not the practical needs of the Afghanistan mission, but rather, the "magic number" that President Obama has to clear to avoid constant political excoriation. No one seems to realize that this, essentially, abets political blackmail on the backs of soldiers.

This is how the media is wired to talk about war: "troops" are nothing more than ephemeral concepts, measuring sticks against which we measure who's winning and who's losing politically. Right about now, you might find yourself wanting to blast the media for treating our troops as pure abstractions, but can you blame them? They're just following the example of the president who took them to war in the first place.

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Rachel Maddow, Frank Schaeffer Discuss The Latest In Thinly-Veiled Evangelical Christian Obama Death Threats

2009-11-18T14:03:00Z

Apparently, the latest thing in "Debasing The Institutions You Pretend To Hold Dear In Order To Suggest That President Barack Obama Should Be Murdered Without Actually Coming Right Out And Saying So" goes by a shorter name: Psalm 109:8.

And Psalm 109:8 is just straight up memetastic, appearing on bumper stickers and T-shirts, all of which carry the benign sounding message, "Pray For Obama." But, as Gawker's John Cook points out, this is just one more in a "long line of cheekily coded Obama death threats." The verse in question reads: "May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership." That leads fairly naturally into the Psalm 109:9, "May his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow." You know, in case you miss the point.

Rachel Maddow took up this issue last night, inviting Patience With God author and Huffington Post blogger Frank Schaeffer to explain whether or not the citation of this Biblical text "means something less threatening to people hearing this in a Biblical context."

SCHAEFFER: No. Actually, it means something more threatening. I think that the situation that I find genuinely frightening right now is that you have a ramping up of Biblical language, language from the anti-abortion movement for instance, death panels and this sort of thing, and what it's coalescing into is branding Obama as Hitler, as they have already called him. And something foreign to our shores, we're reminded of that, he's born in Kenya. As brown, as black, above all, as not us. He is Sarah Palin's "not a real American." But now, it turns out, he joins the ranks of the unjust kings of ancient Israel, unjust rulers to which all these Biblical allusions are directed who should be slaughtered, if not by God, then by just men. So there's a parallel here with Timothy McVeigh's t-shirt on the day of the Oklahoma City bombing. He said the tree of liberty had to be watered by the blood of tyrants. That quote, we saw at a meeting where Obama was present carried on a placard by someone with a loaded weapon.

What we're looking at right now is two things going on. We see the evangelical groups I talked about in my new book, Patience With God, enthralled by an apocalyptic vision that I go into in some detail there. They represent the millions of people who have turned the Left Behind series into best sellers. Most of them are not crazy, they're just deluded. But there is a crazy fringe to whom all these little messages that have been pouring out of Fox News, now on a bumper sticker, talking about doing away with Obama, asking God to kill him. Really, this is trolling for assassins. This is serious business.

It's un-American. It's unpatriotic. And it goes to show that the religious right, the Republican far right have coalesced into a group who truly want American revolution. If it turns out to be blood in the streets and death, so be it. It's not funny stuff anymore. They cannot be dismissed as just crazies on the fringe. It only takes one. You know, look at the Boston Globe article from a few weeks ago that says the threat level faced by the Secret Service has gone up 400%, higher than any other time in 52 years, for any president, Democrat or Republican. These are no jokes.

Schaeffer added, "Look, this is the American version of the Taliban... this is the Old Testament Biblical equivalent of calling for holy war."

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Timothy Karr: Washington's Hidden Astroturf Economy

2009-11-18T09:32:10Z

Astroturf. You may have heard the word or even seen the fake grassroots in action.

Astroturf groups are front operations that take corporate money to promote an industry's policy agenda, covering their tracks behind phony grassroots Web façades.

It's a formula for success that works in favor of deep-pocketed corporations. So much so that astroturf has spread over Washington like kudzu, stifling genuine public debate under a tangle of industry spin.

Astroturf is Washington's new invective. It's hurled left and right to dismiss groups that are engaged on both sides of President Obama's reform efforts.

"I'm pretty sure the grass is Astroturf-ier over on the NetRoots [side]," wrote Phil Kerpen, policy director of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative forum funded at least in part by big corporate benefactors. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow shot back, calling Kerpen's boss an astroturf "parasite" who "gets fat" taking corporate money to spread fear about reform.

But how can you tell astroturf from... well, the real grassroots?

It should be as simple as following the money. That trail usually leads directly to ExxonMobil (in the case of "Energy Citizens"), Peabody Energy (the "Clean Coal" campaign), the health insurance industry ("Patients United Now"), phone and cable companies ("Information Technology and Innovation Foundation"), and to any number of corporate special interests that are well practiced in Washington's art of deception.

The D.C. Dodge

But following the money is exactly what these groups don't want you to do. Even when pressed, astroturf spokespeople duck and dodge, often claiming that revealing the identities of their donors would hamper a noble cause -- such as transparency.

Seems outrageous, right? Not to the many Washington insiders who regularly reap the rewards of the astroturf economy. Just look at the money flooding in to oppose Net Neutrality, an issue that has transformed the arcane debate over telecommunications policy into a full-fledged mudfest.

In the first three quarters of 2009, AT&T Inc., Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc., Verizon, and their trade groups spent nearly $75 million, according to the Senate Office of Public Records. They have used this to hire more than 500 lobbyists to discredit public interest calls for an open Internet.

Over the last four-year political cycle, they maxed out their legal allowance, contributing $33 million to federal campaigns to win the hearts and minds of elected leaders. And that's just the money we know about.

Because they're bankrolling astroturf behind a fig leaf of "public relations," large corporations aren't legally required to disclose the lion's share of their funding of these fake grassroots groups.

"The estimates range from double to two to three times the $3.2 billion that was spent [in 2008] on direct lobbying in Washington," says Craig Holman, the legislative representative for watchdog group Public Citizen. "Astroturf work is expensive."

Protecting the Status Quo

These massive undisclosed sums include costs for high-end public relations firms, legal fees, push polling, direct mail efforts, and dubious think tank research.

On Internet policy, astroturf groups have pocketed millions from industry to fulfill Job No. 1: Lock in incumbent phone and cable companies' control over high-speed Internet connections in America. At present, these companies provide 97 percent of fixed connections into American homes, a status quo they are willing to spend untold sums to maintain.

This means hiring astroturf spokespeople to oppose any Internet consumer protections or policy reforms that would open the market to more competitors and consumer choice. In the hands of a skilled astroturf spokesperson, such reforms are radical, untested, and cumbersome regulations designed to smother the cyberspace economy, which has thrived in a magical realm free of government oversight.

Never mind that Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules -- from the Carterfone decision to the Part 15 unlicensed ruling and "white spaces" decision -- were responsible for everything from the introduction of the first Internet modems to the proliferation of WiFi, and for prying open spectrum for the next generation of smart phones.

This evidence doesn't stop Mike McCurry from telling the world that "the Internet has worked absent regulation," a song the White-House-press-secretary-turned-hired-gun has been singing to the tune of a quarter-million-dollar paycheck from phone and cable companies.

This is how astroturfers hijack the debate. And if they're not debunked, it's how control over Internet access -- and potentially over content -- will be handed over wholesale to the few ISPs that dominate the marketplace.

That's the destructive irony of the astroturf economy. Millions of dollars are funneled into efforts to spread populist-sounding rhetoric that actually undermines the public, and protects the swindle that has turned Washington into a big company town.

-- Karr's article was originally published at Internet Evolution.

Nicolle Wallace: Palin Just Made Things Up, 'Bizarre Fixation' On Campaign (VIDEO)

2009-11-18T09:10:25Z

Former McCain campaign staffer Nicolle Wallace tore into Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue" Tuesday night, saying the book was "based on fabrications" and exhibited a "bizarre fixation" on past events.

In her book, Sarah Palin wrote that Wallace pushed her to sit down with Katie Couric to boost the anchor's "self esteem."

Wallace gave a statement to "The Rachel Maddow Show" calling the anecdote total fiction. "The notion that there was a conversation that I tried to cajole her into an interview with Katie Couric is fiction," Wallace said. "I am not someone who throws around the word self-esteem. It is a fictional description."

As for the book in general, Wallace said, "I think she has a legitimate complaint that things could have been better conceived. A book about that would have been painful, but not unfair. What she gets wrong is this personalization that Steve Schmidt and I were lone villains ... She hated me from the beginning. I try not to take it personally. The fact is, she wrote a book based on fabrications ... This book is a bizarre fixation on things that everyone else has moved on from."

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For more falsehoods from "Going Rogue," see our slideshow.

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"Going Rogue" Goes Rogue: Sarah Palin's Book Shoots Rachel Maddow, FBI Agents In "Late Night" Sketch (VIDEO)

2009-11-18T07:54:04Z

Sarah Palin's book "Going Rogue" was everywhere--every media outlet in the States has done at least a dozen pieces about it. Well now it's nowhere to be found: "Going Rogue" has gone rogue. It picked up a gun, snuck off the set of "Late Night," evaded FBI capture, shot Rachel Maddow and went to meet up with its lover.

This was all part of a sketch last night on Jimmy Fallon's show that was equal parts crazypants and hilarious. They used every fugitive-on-the-run cliche to give the book a life of its own. The only part we found unrealistic was that "Going Rogue" shacked up with "New Moon." We're pretty sure a fantasy book about vampires is too godless for that to be accurate. More likely it would have hopped in bed with Norman Podhoretz's "Why We Were in Vietnam" or Irving Kristol's "Two Cheers for Capitalism."

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Rachel Maddow, Lynn Sweet Discuss Hysteria Over Gitmo Detainees (VIDEO)

2009-11-17T11:04:44Z

On last night's edition of the Rachel Maddow Show, Maddow was joined by Chicago Sun-Times correspondent Lynn Sweet to discuss the way the Gitmo detainees have got yesterday's "Bring It On" crowd suddenly terrified to death at the prospects that they might be imprisoned and tried the way thousands of dangerous individuals are imprisoned and tried every year.

Congressman Mark Kirk, frantically making hay, has bought the domain name noterroristsinillinois.com as a senatorial campaign tactic, the thinking being that the other magical Gitmo-based supervillains must be kept elsewhere to keep their superpowers at bay. At a press conference, Kirk darkly warned of a "flow" of terrorists streaming through O'Hare airport in order to size up the Sears Tower as a potential target. "They looked at" the Sears Tower "before," Kirk says, apparently unaware that the "before" meant a time when we weren't considering imprisoning these defendants in Illinois. As we noted on these pages yesterday, a number of conservative organizations hit back against this "scaremongering."

Is it all just politics? Well, Chicago Sun-Times correspondent Lynn Sweet bottom-lined this by saying that this is all about "two words: February 2nd." That's the date of the Illinois primary, the zero hour for making the most of this sort of demagoguery. Sweet wasn't of the opinion that the White House has been upfront enough about what sort of Illinois prison facility will be processing these GITMO detainees, so she dispensed some of her own accord.

SWEET: The Bureau of Prisons has mandatory visitations. This is not going to be a Bureau of Prisons facility, it's going to be run by the Defense Department. They'll have the rules -- the White House told me -- no visitors.

Maddow went on to note that there are currently 35 individuals doing time in Illinois based on terrorism charges. Sweet confirmed that up to now, this had never been a political issue. But as Sweet points out, Illinois offers a "perfect storm" of politics: terrorism, Obama's old Senate seat, a GOP candidate looking to catch fire and a locale that calls other shiny stories -- like Rod Blagojevich -- to mind.

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MSNBC "Pressuring President Obama From The Left": NYT

2009-11-16T09:33:08Z

This is how it looks to have a television network pressuring President Obama from the left.

While much attention has been paid to the feud between the Fox News Channel and the White House, the Obama administration is now facing criticism of a different sort from Ms. Maddow, Keith Olbermann and other progressive hosts on MSNBC, who are using their nightly news-and-views-casts to measure what she calls "the distance between Obama's rhetoric and his actions."

RJ Eskow: No, Rachel, No! This "Health Reform" Could Lose the Middle Class for Dems

2009-11-13T13:07:03Z

I read with interest Mike Elk's assertion that "liberal elitism will make Sarah Palin President," as well as Oliver Willis' response that "some people are, sadly, stupid." But if Democrats and progressives are really concerned about middle-class votes - and they should be - it's statements like this one by Rachel Maddow that should concern them:

And this weekend, the House grabbed the brass ring that president after president and Congress after Congress have wanted to grab and failed: health reform at last -- the kind of once in more than a lifetime historic achievement that could brand the Democratic Party and inspire voter loyalty for a generation.

Now, as a conflict-of-interest disclosure, I love Rachel Maddow's show. And she gets better every week. But when I heard her say these words on Monday's show, I felt like an actor in one of those slow-motion disaster scenes, watching a friend make a tragic mistake and wanting to shout "No-o-o-o-o- ...." (Remember, it's in slow motion.)

I think that's what Rachel was doing, too, when she went on to rightly slam the Stupak Amendment. (For an idea of how that amendment might look to a visitor from another planet, go here.) But, Stupak Amendment aside, it's this sort of rhetoric that troubles me the most right now. This is not the time for people, especially progressives, to congratulate themselves over this deeply flawed bill. There's still time to fix its most egregious flaws, which are by no means limited to the highly objectionable (and politically foolish) Stupak Amendment. I hope Rachel will reconsider.

Any possible amalgam of the House and Senate bills, as they now stand, will look very much like the plan once called Romneycare in Massachusetts. It will be highly (if not entirely) dependent on private health insurance, will lack meaningful price controls, and will be forced of necessity to leave a great many people uninsured even after passage. It will do great things for the lower-income uninsured - which is to be celebrated - but it will do so by placing disproportionate financial burdens on the middle class.

When politicians and health policy experts were celebrating the Massachusetts bill, only a few of us sent out warnings. But the scenario has played out pretty much the way our minority reports predicted. Politically, the Massachusetts bill - which addresses a much smaller problem than the one we face nationally - is mildly popular overall (51% favorability), but markedly unpopular with those it has affected personally.

And who would that be? The middle class, mainly.(1) That scenario's likely to play out again on a national scale. Those who currently have health insurance will face a future of rising premiums, starting next year, which these reforms would do little or nothing to address. Most of them will not have a public option choice, and even those that do will find it lacks cost-containment "teeth." And, while there's some merit to Goldman Sachs' doomsaying, the insurance companies will have a guaranteed revenue stream that can be enhanced with further premium increases. (The Goldman forecasts address the trend-based scenarios which drive stock prices - e.g.,will margins tend to improve or narrow - rather than absolute revenue numbers, which will remain healthy.)

This hardly sounds like "a lifetime historic achievement that could brand the Democratic Party and inspire voter loyalty for a generation." It sounds more like a bill that will help some people, leave others where they are, and place new burdens on still others. It also sounds like a bill that can be used to make political capital for the GOP, which can paint Dems as "the party that doesn't understand the middle class." A little of that, plus some populist right-wing rhetoric about Wall Street's coziness with Washington, and you could have a winning formula for Republicans.

Why say this now? Because there is still a chance to make this bill significantly better. Democrats can strengthen the public option, reconsider price controls, and make sure not to pass that "Cadillac" tax. (David Leonhardt's defense of it in the New York Times is based in part on a decades-old RAND study that has now been seriously challenged methodologically - I hope to discuss that at more length soon).

Nobody's going to bother addressing some of this bill's more troublesome provisions if smart, engaged progressives like my hero Rachel engage in premature congratulation, rather than providing Democrats the tough criticism needed if we are to get a better result than the one we're likely to face today.

____________

UPDATE: I haven't been able to read all of the comments, and you're entitled to your opinions (if expressed according to site rules, of course.) But, please, guys - the hatin' on Rachel is upsetting to me. I think she's terrific.

Can't we disagree on one point without whipping out the switchblades on one another?

____________

(1)This point applies specifically to families who will be mandated to purchase coverage, but will be eligible for little or no assistance paying their insurance premiums (which, as a reminder, neither the House or Senate bills would do much to contain). This will most strongly affect those who make roughly $66,000/year income and upward for a family of four, and who do not receive insurance through their employer.

RJ Eskow blogs when he can at:

A Night Light
The Sentinel Effect: Healthcare Blog

Website: Eskow and Associates

Scozzafava Maddow Interview: Purging Party Of Independent Thinkers Leads To Minority Status

2009-11-12T10:16:58Z

Last night, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow interviewed Dede Scozzafava, the GOP congressional candidate (New York-23) who was ousted from the race by conservatives for not being ideologically pure enough. Conservatives celebrated the ouster of Scozzafava as a step towards the goal of ridding the GOP of so-called RINOs (Republicans In Name Only), but Scozzafava warned that this type of purging would ultimately lead to a minority party:

I don't think it's good for the health of our party. Any party that just tries to purge members that might have any sort of independent thinking I think will eventually will run itself into very much of a minority status. I think any sort of party has to be willing to solve the problems. And in order to solve problems you have to look at thing sometimes differently, and you do have to drive towards some sort of consensus building. Otherwise you have ideology that's really not based on any sort of substance that can move an agenda forward that can really help people in this country.

Scozzafava ended up endorsing the Democratic candidate over the conservative party candidate because she "needed to endorse the candidate that I thought would best look out to represent the constituents that I currently represent in the state assembly. There are real differences in the two campaigns. Not only in the tones of the two campaigns but also philosophically."

Scozzafava says she has no plans to leave the Republican party.

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Rachel Maddow Takes On Pete Hoekstra's 'Epic Grandstanding'

2009-11-11T10:35:24Z

On last night's edition of the Rachel Maddow Show, the host dug into the curious case of Representative Pete Hoekstra, who's been courting cameras lately in the wake of the Fort Hood massacre, telling tales out of school. Chief among them are his account of the email habits of alleged Fort Hood murderer Nidal Hasan to a Yemen-based "radical cleric." Maddow asks the obvious question:

MADDOW: Why is it Pete Hoekstra who's taking it upon himself to tell the press that this radical cleric is having his email read by U.S. intelligence agencies? The FBI had not said publicly that this cleric had been emailing Hasan. The CIA, the NSA, the White House... nobody else had reported this cleric was e-mailing Hasan. This is just Pete Hoekstra letting us know -- and letting the radical cleric that is under surveillance know -- that he's under surveillance.

The Rachel Maddow Show attempted to find out why this was happening, and got the run-around from Hoekstra's office, and bad guesswork from the Republican side of the House Intelligence Committee. What they did find out is that Hoekstra "complained all weekend" that he was not being briefed on Fort Hood to his liking, then missed the briefing that was held because he left town of his own accord.

So, what's up with Hoekstra? The Nation's Christopher Hayes bottom-lined it thusly: "His reputation is of an epic grand-stander."

HAYES: There's been a lot of reporting on this over the years. Various intelligence issues that have come before the committee. This is a guy who, in 2006, called a press conference to great fanfare to announce the weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. This is the same person who has accused the CIA of lying to him many times and turned around when Nancy Pelosi said the CIA hadn't told the truth about torture and interrogation techniques, said it was obviously absurd the CIA lied would ever lie to Congress. And now, he's turning around and saying the executive was withholding information. So, this is what he does, from his perch on the Intelligence Committee.

If you recall, Hoekstra is also the the guy who breached the security of a Congressional delegation's trip to Iraq by broadcasting its whereabouts and itinerary on Twitter. At the time, Congressional Quarterly remarked, "Nobody expected, though, that a lawmaker with such an extensive national security background would be the first to break the silence. And in such a big way." People should recalibrate their expectations!

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Rachel Maddow Urges Democrats To Be 'Aggressive' In Fighting Unemployment

2009-11-09T10:16:42Z

On yesterday's Meet The Press, Rachel Maddow made an interesting point about the way the Democrats ought to govern that I think is worth another mention.

At issue was the high unemployment rate, and whether the current stimulus plan will solve the unemployment problem as it unfolds, or whether additional moves -- sure to be met with conventional political opposition -- are required. David Gregory, sizing up the current state of play, asked Maddow, "What went wrong?" To which she replied:

MADDOW: Obviously, job numbers are the holy grail for the next election, as the governors who were just on previously [Haley Barbour and Tim Kaine] were articulating. I think...whatever Democrats do, they are going to be accused of overspending. No matter what they do. If they don't spend another dime. Between now and 2010 they are going to be accused of it. And so, if they're getting shy about the second stimulus, it's not going to make conservatives back off and say, "Oh, the Democrats are the party of fiscal moderation." They're going to get slammed as overspenders anyway, and their choice is whether they are going to do it with intractable double-digit unemployment, and the appearance that they are not doing enough to stop it, or whether they are going to be aggressive, and they need to not be shy about a second stimulus.

I think that's a "real talk" take, frankly. During yesterday's liveblog, I bottom-lined this by saying, "If you are going to get damned no matter what you do, don't get damned having done nothing. Go big!" Obviously, the political risk, here, is that if further attempts to stimulate the economy fail, there's a political price to pay for it. But if Democrats have deeply-held convictions on how to act to bolster the economy and stem the downward trend in unemployment, they ought to act on them and put some real leadership behind the effort.

If you fail and are swept from office, so be it. But if their best plan at this point is to act in the hope that maybe if you're cautious and well-behaved the GOP will stop saying mean things about you, then you're going to get booted from office anyway. Because, as far as I can tell, the health of an economy isn't tied to playing an inter-party food fight to a stalemate. Fortune -- and independent voters -- favor the bold.

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Nebraska Voters Favor Public Option, Want Ben Nelson To Back It

2009-11-02T19:37:27Z

If Ben Nelson decides to filibuster a Democratic health care bill that includes a public insurance option, he should expect to lose support among Nebraska Democrats. According to a new poll, 46 percent of the Nebraska Democrats interviewed would be less likely to support Nelson in a primary. Only seven percent would be more likely to cast a vote for the Nebraska Democratic Senator.

By a 53 to 31 majority, all Nebraska voters think that Nelson's judgment on the issue could be clouded by the $2 million in campaign contributions he received from health care and insurance interests.

The poll was conducted by Research 2000 for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America, which have been dogging Nelson in Nebraska, from Oct. 29th through Oct. 30th. It sampled 503 likely voters by telephone. The margin of error is 4.5 percent; for Democrat-only questions, it was five percent.

The survey, which was first reported Monday night by Rachel Maddow, also found that Nebraska voters want the public option 46 to 44 percent.

Nebraskans, who live with a heavy insurance industry concentration in their state, have little faith in the sector to put people's health first. The poll found that 69 percent think that insurance companies put their own profits above the health of patients. Just 19 percent say that insurers put patient health first.

Read the survey here.

A spokesman for Nelson declined to comment.

Matt Osborne: Campbell Brown Smears MSNBC

2009-10-30T06:32:45Z

When CNN's Campbell Brown played the MSNBC card against Valerie Jarrett, she was engaging in the fallacy of false equivalence. Faux Noise is all slant, all the time, while MSNBC is absolutely not a liberal mirror-image. The slant is not equal, nor do the two channels offset like penalties in a football game. Brown's comparison is a smear.

Yesterday morning on Fox and Friends, there were twenty-two mentions of ACORN, even though there hasn't been any actual news about ACORN in weeks. There were only two dismissive mentions of good economic news. That's their standard template for mornings.

Meanwhile on MSNBC, former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough enjoys the spotlight with Mika Brzezinski, who...well, let's just say that apple fell far from the tree. Alongside Bob Cesca's term "barbecue media," we now have "cupcake media."

And that's just the morning show.

For the rest of the day, regular commentators on MSNBC may include Pat Buchanan, who declared "culture war" in America and says Hitler was misunderstood; Mark Halperin, who said "white men need not apply" for Supreme Court vacancies; Maria Bartiromo, who brings the stupid on health care; Todd Harris, a Republican strategist; Michael Medved, who says your children are being indoctrinated by the Obama administration; Mort Zuckerman, apologist for right-wing West Bank settlers; Michelle Bernard, death panels-for-breast cancer propagandist; and Clifford May, neocon warmonger.

Repeating: these are the guests on MSNBC. There are no equivalent left-wing personalities on Faux Noise. The essential difference is that MSNBC courts controversy with right-wing pundits, while Faux Noise manufactures nontroversy with right-wing pundits. Here's just one example of very, very many:

But let us examine the evening lineup. From his doom bunker, Glenn Beck plays to his adoring audience with racist redbaiting, lunatic chalkboard diagrams, and boiled plastic frogs; Sean Hannity smears without correction; and Bill O'Reilly uses a propaganda technique every four seconds to convince us there's a war on faith in America.

I have yet to see Ed Schultz, Keith Olbermann, or Rachel Maddow manufacture alarmist nontroversies. Yes, Olbermann had a lot to say about Bush's abuses of power -- but those were real, whereas Faux Noise may scream about abuses of power but they invariably turn out to be projections of fertile imaginations.

Indeed, here is another telling difference between Faux Noise and MSNBC: The latter has been falsely accused of "doctoring" video, while Faux Noise doctors video all the time to invent conspiracies out of thin air. And while a gulf yawns between the editorial MSNBC and the daytime-news MSNBC, there is no such gap at Faux Noise, where Chris Wallace regularly echoes Glenn Beck.

Nor does MSNBC promote astroturf movements. Faux Noise has given tea parties prominent coverage; hosts have invariably praised them, and spread across the country to cover the events. Neal Cavuto was captured on camera inflating crowd figures and a Faux Noise assistant was caught coaching the crowd. When Faux Noise lied about other networks' coverage, Brown's colleague Rick Sanchez famously called them out on it. To date, Sanchez has not had to correct MSNBC for reporting lies as if they were facts.

Faux Noise is, and has always been, a GOP propaganda organization. Party research and talking points appear on air every day -- right down to the typos. On-air personalities routinely use the first-person plural when referring to Republican claims, proudly call themselves "the opposition," and declare "victory" in legislative battles.

Last, but certainly not least, no MSNBC personality has demonized an individual and inspired viewers to kill them. The same cannot be said for Faux Noise.

I should like Mrs. Brown to explain, in detail, exactly how the two channels display anything like the same amount of bias, even opposing bias. I would also ask that she examine the cult-like characteristics of Faux Noise viewers, remember a little history, and tell us how this ends well.

Brown should do that because she's an actual, honest-to-God journalist. Otherwise, we'll be forced to conclude she was inspired by CNN's plummeting ratings to smear a rival network. Any honest examination of Faux Noise can have only one conclusion: it is not a news organization, and what they do is not journalism.

Osborne Ink is a Website of Media Deconstruction

"News that's fairly liberal, but never unbalanced"

Shan Wells: Cartoon: Nattering Naybobs and Noxious Nutballs

2009-10-29T13:11:16Z

With a few notable exception, broadcast news is a very scary place these days. What Edward R. Murrow would think of the current zeitgeist is unknowable, but we might hazard a guess.

Sorry, Ed.

Rachel Maddow Explores Palin's Secret Small Business "Pie Spy" (VIDEO)

2009-10-29T11:08:35Z

Sarah Palin's financial records were released on Tuesday, and they have many curious as to the small business she formed in her final months in office called "Pie Spy." Pie Spy is described as a business involving "Services for the Elderly and Persons with Disabilities" in documents filed with the Alaska Department of Commerce, but other than that we know nothing about it.

Kent Jones on The Rachel Maddow Show decided to help fill the void with some rampant speculation.

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Jeff Biggers: Kentucky Straight: Students Call Out Trustees Big Coal Pander in Growing UKY Wildcat Scandal

2009-10-29T00:15:33Z

Call it October Madness. Or, Night Comes to the Kentucky Wildcats' Big Dance.

In a throwback to 19th century backroom deal making, University of Kentucky President Lee T. Todd Jr. and several members of the UKY Board of Trustees refused to consider any formal student statements this week during their meeting to barter away the name of a Wildcat basketball dorm for Big Coal donations, and then fled to a back room as students made their testimonies.

But the game ain't over yet.

The scandalous Trustees may have voted 16-3 to approve rebuilding and renaming the beloved Joe B. Hall Wildcat Lodge as the Wildcat Coal Lodge, but the public relations nightmare has just begun.

Rachel Maddow pilloried the scam on her program this week, with a knock-out interview with the brilliant Nation sports reporter Dave Zirin:

According to university reports, the nebulous Wildcat Coal Lodge still has to pass through the Council on Postsecondary Education and the legislature's Capital Projects and Bond Oversight Committee.

In truth, the $7 million of dirty coal money promised for the Wildcat coffers is a pittance compared to the coal industry welfare subsidies that the state of Kentucky hands out every year. According to a recent MACED report, Kentucky taxpayers annually donate $115 million to the coal industry in infrastructure and research costs--this doesn't even include the billions of dollars in massive external costs to the health care industry and the environment.

In the meantime, student, faculty and alumni outrage at the administrative bungling of this growing scandal continues, while the potential university violations, and the egregious backgrounds of the Big Coal pushers continue to pile up.

Rallied by Alliance Coal baron Joe Craft, the so-called "Difference Makers" behind this bizarre push to drag the legendary Wildcat basketball team into the muck as a mascot of Big Coal include some of the most outspoken supporters of mountaintop removal mining, the controversial process that has devastated the economies and well-being of historic eastern Kentucky communities and wiped out hundreds of miles of streams and hundreds of lush mountains in the state.

Difference Makers include Charles Baird, Chairman of Coal Operators and Associates, an outfit that has repeatedly supported mountaintop removal, and erroneously claimed in a memo to the EPA that mountaintop removal provided "immeasurable economic and social benefits to one of
the poorest regions of the United States" and resulted in no significant water pollution.

In truth, eastern Kentucky's coal counties have lost over 60 percent of their coal mining jobs in the last generation due to mountaintop removal operations and mechanization, while poverty and unemployment have soared.

Hundreds of miles of streams have been jammed with mining waste; in 2000, over 300 million gallons of toxic coal sludge leaked into Martin County, an accident 30 times larger than the Exxon Valdez disaster, devastating aquatic life and watersheds for miles.

Another Difference Maker is Joy Mining, whose sister company, P&H Mining Equipment, makes the massive draglines used in strip mining and mountaintop removal operations.

According to some observers, the trustees dirty coal scheme of creating a Wildcat Coal Lodge, in a designated LEED-certified building, is also in clear violation of the UKY policy on naming university property:

"Naming new University structures, properties, or portions thereof, e.g., playing fields, rooms, and plazas, (hereafter "property") and changing the names of existing property, whether on the main campus or elsewhere, is of interest to the entire University community. An appropriate name accounts for present and possible future uses of the property, and reflects functions performed and interests served by the property."

"When some other name seems more appropriate than a functionally descriptive one, the nominations should demonstrate that the remarkable associations of that name, either with the history of the University or the nation or with the advancement of knowledge and learning, and guarantee that it will remain memorable long beyond the lifetime of those who propose the name. Nominations whose claims are parochial, of recent date and untested by the passage of time, or based on personal enthusiasm should be avoided."

"It is appropriate to express the esteem and appreciation the University holds for one who has brought honor to the institution by personal accomplishments, or who has given significantly of personal time and money, by giving the person's name to a University property. Wherever possible, however, the person's name should be given to a property related to some activity appropriate to that person's field of interest or endeavor."

As outraged students, faculty and alumni shift to a full court press against the administration's misguided pander to dirty coal, here are some statements from university advocates ignored by the trustees:

"Hopefully, by the end of this academic year I'll have three degrees from the University of Kentucky, including the highest in my field. My whole family's from Eastern Kentucky and they've always been proud that I'm part of the UK tradition. It's disappointing to see that tradition sold off like this to the most insidious polluters and wreckers of community in our state. I lived for several years in Cynthiana, KY, and saw Joe B. Hall at gas stations and community events. It was good to know that local people could do something great - something heroic. That's why his name was honored. Coal is choking our state to death and, rather than listen to the student body, the staff, and the faculty, the Board of Trustees has chosen to degrade a wonderful tradition and to trammel the dreams of Kentuckians."
-Brandon Absher, current UK student and Kentucky Mountain Justice organizer

"Eastern Kentucky youth have to work extremely hard to get themselves out of the coal fields and make opportunities for themselves, often ending up at state universities like EKU, as I did, and UK. It is demoralizing for these youth to watch coal that has impoverished and sickened their families for generations be burned on their campus and touted on "academic" structures."
- Tanya Turner of Pineville, KY, Eastern Kentucky University alum, Kentucky Mountain Justice organizer, and descendant of Kentucky coal miners.

"President Lee Todd has given some hope in the last few years by creating the President's Sustainability Advisory Committee and Student Sustainability Council in order to transition UK to a more sustainable future, but with every decision he makes like this one, it becomes all the more evident that he has no regard for this campus initiative. How are our professor's suppose to present information in an unbiased way, when UK has made its position clear."
-Julia Lou Lepping, Native Kentuckian, UK Alum and active organizer with Kentucky Mountain Justice.

"Naming a new LEED-certified campus building the "Wildcat Coal Lounge" is a bad move for this university. It is an egregious case of industrial product placement in a public institution. It is an insult to Kentucky basketball fans who remember Joe B. Hall as a great coach worthy of remembering. It is a step backward for a University whose goal is to move forward to Top 20 status. Finally this decision ignores the industry's history of exploitation that has enriched coal corporations and corrupt politicians and impoverished Appalachia's communities and devastated its ecosystems. This decision is unacceptable, but sadly it is just business as usual in Kentucky. We must raise our voices in opposition."
-Martin Mudd, UK physics graduate student and Kentucky Mountain Justice organizer

Bob Cesca: We Can't Reform Health Care without Reforming Food

2009-10-28T17:45:12Z

If and when health care reform finally passes, we will have successfully ameliorated only half of the crisis. The treatment half. The next step has to be focused upon doing something about the poisoned filth we've collectively nicknamed "food." Without any real changes in how our food is produced, the health care system will continue to bloat and fall apart. Not unlike the insides of an average American body.

Corporate agribusiness has invested nearly $1.2 billion (and growing) on lobbyists -- more money than even the defense lobby. Naturally, much of this lobbying has been aimed at deregulating how food is processed and manufactured, as well as how corporate agribusinesses raise and process livestock. It's an industry that's entangled in everything from Big Tobacco to human trafficking and illegal immigration.

Most recently, and speaking of poisoned filth, you may have watched as Rick Berman was eviscerated by Rachel Maddow on MSNBC a few weeks ago. In case you missed it, Berman's Center for Consumer Freedom is financed by corporate agribusiness, among others, and tasked with deceiving the public about everything from high fructose corn syrup to transfat, mercury levels in fish, obesity issues, food labels, and tobacco laws. CCF is all about confusing the public by muddying scientific fact and skewing the debate onto ridiculous tangents to the point where it's difficult to tell the difference between what's healthy and what's crap. It's Glenn Beck's rodeo clown strategy applied to food.

The consequence for you and me, of course, is that the food is becoming increasingly toxic, both in terms of what goes into our bodies, and in terms of how deregulation and deception is hurting the economy. What good is health care reform if we're still being fed poison? What good is an economic recovery if big business is still gaming the system?

Here's a perfect example of what they're getting away with. In Ohio next week, voters will be deciding on a ballot measure known as Issue 2.

As I'm sure you're aware -- and I'll spare you the gruesome videos -- corporate farms maximize profit by packing as many animals into ridiculously tight spaces. Imagine being forced to live out your life in the equivalent of a high school gym locker. While confined and unable to move, the animals are injected with a variety of hormones, antibiotics and other medications. Medications designed for animals, not humans. They're force-fed grains laced with pesticides and other chemicals. And when they're not eating chemically-tainted grain, they're often fed the remains of other animals -- old or sick animals that aren't shoved through the system and turned into food for humans (we often share food with, you know, our food). The list of atrocities is lengthy, but the end result is that a variety of unhealthy, possibly deadly toxins and diseases wind up, unannounced, on our mouths.

The Humane Society:

...the American Journal of Epidemiology reported that people who eat eggs from hens confined in cages are 250% more likely to contract Salmonella. The extreme confinement of animals is also a major factor in the emergence of diseases like H5N1 and H1N1 (bird and swine flu).

And that's with the Department of Agriculture, along with public participation in oversight, keeping an eye on things.

Issue 2, however, would for all intents and purposes replace federal regulation with something called the Livestock Care Standards Board. The thirteen member board would be appointed by the governor and would include members who have skin in the game. The stated goal of the board would be to regulate how animals are kept. So it sounds like it's a good thing. They're going to protect Babe and his cute barnyard friends!

But that's not how it'll work.

Naturally, the board will be susceptible to intense lobbying and coercion from the usual corporate villains. Imagine Rick Berman types unleashing their evil fury of confused logic and lie-mongering on a small 13 member state board, as opposed to the massive and monolithic federal government. The end result will be conditions that are far, far worse than they are today -- producing food that's even more dangerous, and all of it overriding the authority of the federal government.

While sounding wholesome on the surface, Issue 2, to paraphrase Grover Norquist, is designed to shrink regulatory oversight so it's small enough to be drowned in a bathtub. Corporate agribusiness will be able to run the show and maximize industry profits by continuing the very practices that Issue 2 claims to repair. And it'll all be codified into the Ohio Constitution. Ultimately, any attempts to reverse course will have to clear much larger hurdles.

And here's the really scary news.

"We've tried to model this in a way that other states can look at it," said Jack Fisher, executive vice president of the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation. "This involves farmers, ranchers, everyone in the food chain."

Oh good. So instead of spending large sums of cash lobbying Congress and the federal government, Big Food and corporate agribusinesses will be able to focus their efforts on small states and their quaint little livestock boards -- crushing them and reprocessing the remains into liquid form and dumping them into the factory feeding troughs. Not literally, of course. I hope.

So while this may seem like a small issue about animal welfare in one state, it's actually step one in a process that will make an already deadly national crisis even worse.

Much like we've witnessed with the health insurance cartel and Wall Street, without a strong regulatory body keeping an eye on even the smallest details, we all end up screwed in the process. Opponents will suggest that regulation only makes everything more expensive. But I would rather pay a little more for a pound of beef than to suffer through Stephanie Smith's ordeal with E. Coli:

Then her diarrhea turned bloody. Her kidneys shut down. Seizures knocked her unconscious. The convulsions grew so relentless that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks. When she emerged, she could no longer walk. The affliction had ravaged her nervous system and left her paralyzed.

Corporate profits and cheap food to put on your families -- or bloody diarrhea, a nine week coma and paralysis. Hmm. That's a tough call. Let's have a small, vulnerable livestock panel decide!

Sorry, no.

If Issue 2 is written into the Ohio Constitution next week, it'll be that much more difficult for Americans to remain healthy, with or without reforming the health care system. Help us out, Ohio, and vote against this thing.

Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog! Go!

Jeffrey Feldman: The Health Care Ghetto

2009-10-28T10:55:12Z

Even worse than Joe Lieberman's threat to veto the health care bill, the Connecticut senator's ego may well have distracted Americans from the real issue in the debate over the public option: Will Americans actually be able to choose it or will it just be a health care ghetto for those of us who have been tossed out like unprofitable trash by the insurance industry?

Speaking on The Rachel Maddow Show less than twenty-four hours before Lieberman announced that he would join a Republican filibuster against a public option, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) said the following about Harry Reid's proposal :

The public option will be a great tool, if people can get it. It seems to me that Harry Reid deserves a lot of credit tonight. He`s made it clear there ought to be options. But I continue to be concerned that the way this proposal is written, more than 90 percent of Americans, seven years after the bill becomes law, won't be able to hold insurance companies accountable. They won`t be able to get the public option at the exchange, the marketplace, nor will they get additional private choices. You can`t get an accountable insurance industry with just a small fraction of the population. You`ve got to have the whole customer base of the industry on the line...If folks at the grassroots level, the folks who are carrying those signs about the public option now, say, "Look, it`s not good enough that only 10 percent of the population can hold insurance companies accountable, it`s not good enough at a crucial time in American history to have choice available only to a handful of people who are poor and sick and
unemployed," that`s almost like a health care ghetto." Let`s hold insurance companies accountable the right way by making them put their whole customer base on the line.(Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), The Rachel Maddow Show, Oct 26, 2009)

Wyden's point was clear and straight forward: the public option will fail to bring down the costs of health care if it is designed such that it cannot possibly compete with the massive customer base forced to stay with private insurance. "We`ve got to make sure that it`s possible for Americans," Wyden emphasized, "who feel their insurance company is abusing them, to have choices like members
of Congress."

Wyden offered praise to Harry Reid for bringing the public option to the floor, but a warning that the current state of the public option in the Senate bill does not match the rhetoric about "competition" and "choice" used by the Democratic Party to explain the public option to American voters. The solution? Americans need to demand that their senators add amendments to the current bill that make the public option available for everyone to choose.

Enter Joe Lieberman.

The minute Joe Lieberman threatened to veto a "government run" public option -- which is itself a complete fabrication as to what the public option would be -- Wyden's key point that Reid's version of the public option would create a health care ghetto was trampled over by a media hypnotized like a crazed throng of Conrad Birdie fans.

Honestly. Nora the piano playing cat could figure out what Lieberman is doing, ignore it, and focus back on the real issue at stake in the debate over the public option. What is Lieberman doing?

Lieberman is inserting himself into the debate not because he gives one iota about health care or the public option or what the voters of Connecticut want (68% want a public option), but in order to get for himself -- to get for Joe Lieberman.

Over the course of his career, Joe Lieberman has taken $2,395,369 in donations from the health sector and $1,033,402 in donations from the insurance industry (link). So, he is threatening to veto a public option in order to guarantee those taps stay open and the cash keeps flowing. Joe will filibustering health care reform so that Joe can keep getting for Joe. It is exactly what one should expect from a man who is the founding and only member of a party that bears his own name: self-aggrandizement.

If you are like me, however, and you care little about Joe Lieberman, but a great deal about making a public option available for all Americans to choose, then you should consider taking five minutes to watch this clip of Wyden explaining what we should be talking about instead of focusing our attention on a narcissistic Nutmegger:

(Thanks to Firedoglake for recording the clip and posting it to YouTube)

After you watch that video, send the link to your friends on Facebook and Twitter so they can watch it, too.

What is at stake in the next phase of the health care debate is not whether a self-centered senator is able to hold the Senate hostage so that he can get rewarded by his health insurance industry donors -- but whether or not the public option will be available to everyone ever abused by that industry or merely cordoned off as an undesirable, built-to-fail, health care ghetto.

Leave Lieberman to Lieberman. Let's talk about what matters for a change -- particularly when it matters so much to so many.

Rachel Maddow, Boing Boing Editor On McCain And Net Neutrality (VIDEO)

2009-10-26T11:33:55Z

Senator John McCain has apparently decided to take up the issue of "net neutrality," and, in a piece of legislation that's been bought and paid for by the telecom industry, the former presidential candidate has fashioned the "Internet Freedom Act." This legislation keeps alive the recent tradition of ironically named laws. What the "Internet Freedom Act" would do is to allow Internet service providers to privilege their own content over competitors by slowing or blocking access to other web content.

The whole issue of "net neutrality" can be hard to wrap one's head around. In the first place, the term is as vague as the issue is voguish, but more importantly, those best equipped to explain it tend to be the geeky-wonk types who speak a language that causes most peoples' eyes to glaze over. It was a shrewd move on Rachel Maddow's part to engage the services of Xeni Jardin, co-editor of Boing Boing and contributor to Wired magazine to put the issue into an understandable and interesting light.

JARDIN: The funny thing about net neutrality is that nobody cares how the internet works, we just want to know that it works. Kind of like picking up the phone to call your mom. The idea behind net neutrality is that we should all have equal access to whatever website, whatever funny video, whatever animated .GIF of a kitten dancing. It doesn't matter what the content is, no cable company, no telecoms should be able to slow that down because what you want access to is against their competitive interest. So, one example of that might be, Time Warner. Time Warner is a cable company that provides broadband internet services here in L.A. If I want to watch a Rachel Maddow clip, a Daily Show clip, and a clip from CNN, Time Warner shouldn't be able to slow the Maddow Show clip and the Daily Show clip and make the CNN clip go faster because they have a commercial interest in CNN. The idea is...that all packets are created equal.

It's too bad that Senator McCain doesn't have a famous blogger daughter that could explain just how dumb the Internet Freedom Act is to him.

[WATCH]

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Eric Alterman: Think Again: It's a Bird. It's a Plane. It's...Cable News

2009-10-22T12:53:47Z

Not long ago, cable news cameras turned their focus skyward to an almost celestial body hurling itself across the sky. Broadcasters watched breathlessly as it landed. They were agog at the image, godlike in its apparent significance. Was it a bird? Was it a plane? No, it was a hoax.

And yet for days after, networks remained obsessed with this decided nonevent. It turned out that it had all been an elaborate hoax, a photo opportunity. President George W. Bush declared "mission accomplished" in Iraq, dressed up like Tom Cruise in "Top Gun," and had journalist after journalist panting to his alleged manliness (and manhood). We kid you not. (Here's an extremely excited G. Gordon Liddy to Chris Matthews, perhaps forgetting about the invention of the protective cup.)

Meanwhile, even the less aroused journalists who might have exposed that charade for what it was at the time offered themselves up as members of an unquestioningly admiring audience.

Oh wait, you thought we meant "Balloon Boy." Okay, we'll play your game. All of a sudden, even the people who make their living on cable news have apparently figured out that the story pretty much sucks. Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham admits:

What this does is, I think, it kind of puts egg on all of our faces. We all become part of the media problem. I'll throw myself right into the mix. Because you really can't take your eyes off it, but meanwhile you know there are all these really important things happening, not only in our country but around the world.

For the cable news networks, "Balloon Boy" was a perfect story. It made for spellbinding viewing that was cheap to produce, and was more fun than they've had since O.J. Simpson's infamous "Flight of the White Bronco." The networks did not verify the validity of the story that a homemade hot air balloon was carrying a young boy through the clouds. Instead, they took the story they had been given and showed the riveting pictures of the balloon in flight. It was indicative of "the media problem." .....

You can read the rest of Eric Alterman and Mickey Ehrlich's analysis in their recent article, "Think Again: It's a Bird. It's a Plane. It's...Cable News"

Eric Alterman is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College. He is also a Nation columnist and a professor of journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. His seventh book, Why We're Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America's Most Important Ideals, was recently published in paperback. He occasionally blogs at http://www.thenation.com/blogs/altercation and is a regular contributor to The Daily Beast.

Crossposted with the Center for American Progress with Mickey Ehrlich, a freelance writer and an English teacher at Kingsborough Community College.
Read more: Michael Jackson, Afghanistan, Rachel Maddow, Mission Accomplished, Balloon Boy, Falcon Heene Balloon, Glenn Beck, Cable News, Falcon Heene, Media News

New Yorker Festival Attracts Throngs Of Fans Despite Publishing Woes

2009-10-21T15:17:42Z
NEW YORK — The journalism industry may be in precarious shape, but you wouldn't have known it at the annual New Yorker Festival, where star worship of the magazine's most famous writers seemed to be in full force.

"Did you see Calvin Trillin?" a middle-aged woman could be overheard saying excitedly to her companion at one event over the weekend. "He looked at me!"
Read more: Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker, John Turturro, Roger Angell New Yorker, Calvin Trillin, Stephen Colbert, New York, Ronger Angell, Msnbc, Calvin Trillin Food Tour, Manhattan, Stanley Tucci, Rachel Maddow, Elizabeth Edwards, The New Yorker Festival, Ariel Levy, Joan Cusak, New Yorker Festival Humor Revue, New York News

Radioactive Rabbit Poop Part Of Hanford Nuclear Reservation Cleanup (VIDEO)

2009-10-19T09:01:09Z
The Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state produced most of the plutonium our nation used from the the beginning of the atomic bomb through the 1980s. As one can imagine, this production also led to massive amounts of toxic waste. However, one of its sources is not part of the usual suspects.

The area is the focus of the largest environmental cleanup operation in the country right now, and that includes scrubbing all the rabbit feces because it is radioactive. The jackrabbits have taken quite a liking to the nuclear sludge, which contains a radioactive salt that they can't get enough of. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer,

Jackrabbits routinely burrowed into those sites. They found the salt, liked it, and licked it. Later, they pooped it, leaving slightly radioactive scat all over the ground.

Check out Rachel Maddow's segment below for more information on this operation, and the radioactive rabbits.

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Read more: Radioactive Rabbits, Washington Radioactive Rabbits, Video, Hanford Nuclear Reservation, Health, Rachel Maddow, Jackrabbits Radioactive Poop, Rachel Maddow Video, Rabbits Radioactive Poop, Green News