July 26, 2017

Seize the initiative!

Instead of watching with fingers crossed as the Republican drip-by-drip assault on ACA (the Affordable Care Act) threatens the healthcare of millions of Americans, progressives would be wise to go on the offensive. For months, they’ve been conceding that yes, there are problems with Obamacare, but they’ve provided little more than lip service to combat conservative efforts to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

As usual, we’ve allowed conservatives to control the narrative.

It’s time to seize the bullhorn.

Demand a bipartisan committee to identify weaknesses in the existing law – and be sure that among those weaknesses are those trumpeted conservatives, including the fact that some middle class Americans saw their premiums rise beyond their means when the legislation was enacted.

If conservatives in Congress attempt to block funding and/or appointment of such a body, look for corporate funding and draft Republicans and Democrats who are no longer in the political spotlight to come together for the good of the country.

(Former Senator Jack Danforth of Missouri and former presidential candidate Howard Dean come immediately to mind.)

Let these co-chairs enlist committee members with expertise, and begin the process of fortifying ACA by encouraging public meetings at the local level to identify problems that need fixing. Encourage grassroots discussions of the challenges and urge participants to propose solutions. Collect their feedback and examine the feasibility of the most popular and potentially rewarding suggestions.

Conduct cost analyses, identify funding, draft amendments that promise improvements in ACA, then give the amendments to sympathetic lawmakers to submit one at a time for consideration by the rest of Congress.

It might not eliminate every obstacle, but at very least it would provide time to deliberate and give taxpayers the sense that someone is making an effort on their behalf.

February 9, 2017

Where's the outrage?

I keep hearing about protesters giving members of Congress hell - Democrats as well as Republicans - but so far have not seen a report on any effort to shut down the offices of Sen. Turtle or the Speaker of the House.
Did I miss something?
I live on the West Coast, so it's not particularly convenient for me to contribute any sweat equity to such an effort, but what the hell is with those of you who live in Kentucky and Wisconsin and D.C.?
I'm not talking about showing up with a sign and hanging around for an hour or so, I'm talking about an onslaught that goes on for days, weeks, months.
Anybody got these bozos' phone numbers and email addresses?

November 23, 2016

NEWS ID LIKE TO SEE

Hillary Clinton would welcome special prosecutor

Hillary Clinton says she’s disappointed that President-elect Donald Trump has reneged on his campaign promise to appoint an independent special prosecutor to look into his claim that she should be locked up for unspecified crimes.
“Conservatives have already blown through more than 40 million taxpayer dollars trying unsuccessfully to prove my husband and I are guilty of criminal activity – any criminal activity,” Clinton said. “I see no reason the Trump administration shouldn’t blow another $40 million. I’ve committed no crimes.”
But if he appoints a special prosecutor to rake through Clinton’s past, she wants him to appoint a second one to scrutinize his own.
“Let’s see what sort of criminal activity a prosecutor can turn up when looking into his business practices,” Clinton says.
It’s unlikely Trump will grant either wish.
“I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t,” he said Tuesday. “She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways.”
Clinton isn’t impressed.
“He’s going to go easy on me because I’ve suffered greatly in many different ways?” she scoffs. “I’ve endured 30 years of baseless, sniveling lies from the far right. They convinced voters that I’m dishonest, that I’m untrustworthy. So be it. But I’m not going to take it anymore. And don’t expect me to be grateful for Donald Trump declaring that I’ve suffered enough.”
She says that if a special prosecutor concludes that she is guilty of malfeasance during her tenure as Secretary of State, she expects to be sharing her cell with those predecessors whose methods of operation she emulated.
She also predicts that any special prosecutor who accepts the challenge of coming up with something to pin on her will find it a thankless job and should expect to be accused of a white wash before the investigation even begins. Charges will have to be filed if the special prosecutor ever hopes to show his face again at conservative fund-raising events, she says.
She’s confident, however, that justice will prevail.
“I’m not guilty of anything,” she says, “but that’s not the way it will be reported in the media – the media will declare that there wasn’t enough evidence to convict me.”
She says that if she is acquitted of any charges arising from a special prosecutor’s investigation, she will demand that Trump cover her legal expenses – from his own pocket, not from the U.S. Treasury.
Clinton balked at the suggestion that her attitude will not help heal the deep divisions in American society.
“In other words, take it like a lady, huh?” she says.
“Look,” she adds, “the deep divisions in American society are not going to be healed by me or anyone else as long as media giants like Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh fill the airwaves with reports from the fact-free zone. Division is their bread and butter. Unless they constantly fan the hostility, they’re out of work.”

September 16, 2016

Bluto for president?

It’s time for those of us who rely on DU for a progressive perspective on the news to go beyond DU’s safe zone, to talk not just to one another, wasting energy reassuring one another of the righteousness of our cause.

It’s time to challenge the lunacy of those in our circle of friends and relatives who believe Donald J. Trump ought to be next president of the United States.

It’s time to fight fire with fire.

In short, it’s time to turn Trump’s most successful tactics against him.

Let’s begin with some old-fashioned name-calling.

Hillary and her campaign can’t stoop to Trump’s brand of playground tactics, but we can.

I recently posted the following on Facebook.

I invite any of you interested in joining me in this campaign to copy it, put it in your words, post it on Facebook, email it to everyone you know who calls Hillary Clinton everything except her given name and henceforth refer to the Republican candidate for the presidency as Bluto Trump or simply Bluto.

Here’s what I posted:

I finally put my finger on who it is Donald Trump reminds me of: Bluto. Not the lovable poly sci major played by John Belushi in the motion picture "Animal House," but the bully in the Popeye commix. If you can see the similarity, I invite you to suggest an adjective that describes a characteristic the two have in common. Just one per day, please, in case there are others who might like to weigh in on the subject.

P.S. Anybody know why Popeye, Olive Oyl, Bluto and Donald Trump are so misshapen?

August 26, 2016

You call that journalism?

For 35 years, I was a journalist and educator and I don’t think I ever practiced my craft or taught students to perform the way so-called journalists do it these days.
It has been at least four years since George Stephanopoulos let Rudy Giuliano get away with claiming on national TV that there were no terrorist attacks on U.S. soil during the George W. Bush administration. Former members of the W administration have repeated the same absurd claim in the intervening years. But it’s only recently that the media have ridiculed them for it … after the fact, of course.
Never have I seen a so-called journalist challenge such assertions when they’re being made – let alone heard an interviewer ask, “Are you out of your goddamned mind?”
As a result, viewers whose grasp of reality is as frail as Donald Trump’s walk away convinced that, “Yep, W kept us safe – it’s Barack Obama that’s responsible for the sad state of affairs we find ourselves in today.”
Let’s stop calling people who seem to care more about how they look on camera and how they’re perceived by readers than about informing the public journalists. Call them what they are, men and women who are paid large sums to carry around microphones and ask chicken-shit questions so conservatives won’t accuse them of being liberal and men and women who carry around notebooks who are afraid to dig for the truth because a source’s feelings might get hurt and the source may refuse to talk to them anymore.
Journalists who are afraid to burn their sources are nothing more than a conduit for what those sources want the public to believe.
I don’t mean to suggest that the pursuit of truth requires those seeking it to be rude or unnecessarily combative – it does mean, however, that they should know what their source is talking about and recognize when that source is prevaricating, obfuscating or simply being unclear.