GoldbergBlog

Special Comment: “Help.”

This is one of Olbermann’s best.  Give it a look:

This Is Our President

Earlier this week, President Obama finally laid out clearly and concisely what he wanted in a health care bill (and only 14 months after he should have!).  What he didn’t want: a public option.  No government-run health care even though 23 Senators recently signaled that they would support it if the bill were going to go through reconciliation and would only need 50 votes instead of 60.  Also, polling shows that a majority of Americans wants a public option.  But Obama didn’t include it in his wish list.  Why?

As Press Secretary Robert Gibbs revealed today, “We have seen obviously that though there are some that are supportive of this, there isn’t enough political support in a majority to get this through.”  They don’t have the votes.  Because the President thinks that the measure wouldn’t pass, he doesn’t support it.  It isn’t because he thinks the public option is bad or that it needs better definition.  It’s because he thinks he might lose.  He is a coward.

So this is our President: a man who will fight for the people as long as he thinks he can score a political victory.  He won’t fight for us, he won’t fight for change, he won’t even fight for what’s popular.  He’ll fight for what he thinks Congress can accomplish.  He’ll fight for nothing.

Presidents Day

Aaron Sorkin’s tales of politics may be the stuff of fairy tales, but it helps bring out of the cynicism by reminding us what we should want in a leader.  No real President will ever meet an Andrew Shepherd or a Josiah Bartlett, but they should inspire us rather than disappoint us.  President Obama has not been the president we hoped he would be.  He has offered no substantive change in our politics, only in our president.  I shudder to think what a John McCain presidency would look like, but Obama has been a letdown in a big way.  We need to remind him what we voted for.  It’s not enough to just bitch about it.  You have to write a letter, donate to a cause you believe in, educate yourself about the discussion rather than just echo talking points.  We should always hope for Shepherds and Bartletts, but we can already make ourselves better citizens.

“Regressive Democrats”

Special Comment: The United Corporations of America

See, this is the Olbermann I like.  A strong, well-made argument that hammers home a single point.  And his point is chilling.  It is the nightmare scenario concerning the Supreme Court’s ruling that corporations and unions can spend as much money as they want.  Olbermann doesn’t even mention that Max Baucus, who was bought by health care insurance companies, almost put a screeching halt to health care reform this fall with his worthless bill, penned by health care lobbyists.  Now imagine every senator like that.  Pretty terrifying, right? It is not, however, pre-ordained. Here’s Olbermann’s Special Comment and my response is after the jump.

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Jon Stewart Rips Keith Olbermann Apart

I’m a fan of Keith Olbermann’s Special Comments.  That’s why I always post them.  But starting at the beginning of this year, he started doing “Comments”, and it’s been bad for the show.  It makes him look crotchety and as hyperbolic as his rivals.  He may be more eloquent and intelligent than his right-wing counterparts, but he’s gone too far.  Ironically, when he first started doing Speical Comments, he was encouraged by MSNBC brass to do them every night, but Olbermann protested saying it would dilute the message.  He was right.

So John Stewart has come to the rescue to mock the crap out of Olbermann with a hilarious and brutal segment from last night’s Daily Show.  Stuart, using Olbermann’s rhetorical devices, impersonated the style of the segment, but also encouraged Olbermann that he was better than this inflammatory name-calling he’s fallen into as of late.  Olbermann may be right about all the things he said about Massachusettes Senator-elect Scott Brown, but he’s losing the impact his Special Comments provided.

Sadly, when asked about the sketch, Olbermann blithely responded, “It was a little bit of a ripoff of the Affleck thing, but overall, I’d give it a B-,” showing that he was able to take the joke, but may have missed the point.

Here’s the sketch.  As with most things, Daily Show, I thought it was fucking hilarious:

Special Comment: Do No Harm

I will almost always post Keith Olbermann’s Special Comments but on this one I could not agree with him more.  And not only will I stand by his position to never buy federally mandated insurance from this corrupt, ugly cartel of sub-humans we call the health insurance industry, I was already there.  Citizens are mandated to own car insurance.  Fine.  I’m not crazy about it because that insurance industry is almost as corrupt, but owning a car is a privilege, not a right.  I will not pay for my right to live.  You want to fine me?  Fine.  I won’t pay it.  There are many stupid laws out there but there are few this disgustingly and blatantly evil.  To pass this version of the bill is to sell out this country.  It is the clearest test of who this President is and if he signs this bill into law, then I will not only refuse him my vote in 2012, but I will actively campaign against him.  It comes to this.  We’re at the climax at the third act.  Either the President strong arms the wayward, corrupt senators like Lieberman, Baucus, Nelson, et al. into supporting real health care reform that helps people and not the insurance cartel, or Congress stops this bill from reaching the President’s desk. Otherwise, this President will have caused a wound to this country as bad as–and perhaps worse than–anything Bush ever did in his eight years.

The President wants this bill passed by Christmas no matter how twisted or revolting it may be.  Christmas is seven days away.  One week.  Congress has one week to stop this bill from meeting the arbitrary deadline and after that there’s no benefit in rushing. It’s not worth it to show you can get things done if what you’re doing is harm.  This nation will not tire of this fight because they are literally fighting for their lives.  No matter what, the bill won’t be perfect but it must support key provisions, provisions this President never bothered to clearly lay out in detail.  He gave broad goals with no parameter on reaching them.  Technically, this version of the bill will cover 30 million Americans just like prostitution isn’t technically illegal as long as you leave the money on the nightstand.

We’ve come to it at last. You must kill this bill Mr. President in order to save our lives.

Joe Lieberman Shows Democrats as the Losers They Are

Nobody likes Joe Lieberman.  He’s a puny, unimpressive twerp whose purpose is to make Democrats do whatever Republicans want.  But it’s hard to blame him when Democrats bend over time and time again to acquiesce  to his demands even though those demands run completely counter to the Democratic platform.  Lieberman, after speaking at the Republican National Convention in support of John McCain, still gets to caucus with the Democrats and hold all of his committee chairmenships.

And the White House, so desperate to wrap up a turd of a health care reform bill and shove it under the tree in time for Christmas, doesn’t care.  And when the 2010 midterm elections roll around at the Democrats lose control of both the House and the Senate due to their own ineptitude, Joe Lieberman will still be smiling pretty because the Republicans will give him a big slap on the back and say, “Good work, Joe.  Always knew you were one of us.”

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Obama’s Health Reform Approach: Declare Victory and Get Out

“He didn’t get into the details,” said Bingaman. “His message was: This is a very important thing to do for the country. A lot of people will benefit if we enact health care reform. It’s been a longtime in coming and we need to get it done.”

Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), a member of the Finance Committee’s conveyed this message to reporters after Obama held a speech (after which he did not allow questions) to the senate Democratic caucus.  The Huffington Post also said that Joe Lieberman came out of the meeting elated that the President hadn’t said anything about the highly vaunted public option.  Of course, even if he had, at this point the public option barely exists.  It was a compromise on a never-offered single-payer system, then it was ripped down to an opt-out system by states, wouldn’t come into effect until 2013-2014, and now they’re talking about a “trigger” or maybe a “hammer” or a variety of other gun parts, which will all be pointless since they’ll never load the damn bullets anyway.

Has our President forgotten what reform even means?  Yes, I agree it’s important to enact health care reform.  But that means you must actually reform health care.  He’s been waging this battle for most of the year and at the end it will be a meaningless achievement beyond Obama saying they got it done even if the “it” is nebulous and benefits hardly anyone (except the private health insurers who get to carry on business-as-usual for at least the next decade after having taught our government that it would do wise not to tangle with the big boys).

If any senator could have asked only one question, here’s what it should have been: “Mr. President, what qualifies as a victory in health care reform?”  Because without any specifics and just framing it in a historical context of which every senator, no matter how callow and craven they may be, understands, Obama should’ve just had Larry the Cable Guy go instead and just shout his signature catch phrase.

At some point this President is going to have to understand that true governance is not like a sports movie where a big, motivational speech rallies the team and wins the game.  Leadership is not a pep talk and just passing a bill isn’t health care reform.

Change We’re Dejectedly Forced to Accept

Obama has announced his grand plan for Afghanistan and I refuse to believe this was the least bad option.  Maybe someone with a degree in International Diplomacy and Military Operations can convince me why Obama’s “Nine Points” is the best choice our President could have made.  Convince me why sending 30,000 more troops (all fine, upstanding heterosexuals) over the next six months with a drawdown three years from now is beneficial for the American people.  Of course it’s beneficial to Obama; he gets to take troops out of Afghanistan when he’s running for re-election even though he put those new troops there in the first place, therefore bringing us back to the place he started when he was first elected and doubtful he’ll have made any more progress.  Of course, there is no firm timeline for withdraw and the pace of the pullback will depend on conditions on the ground.  Translation: three years is an arbitrary deadline which we can change whenever we want.

Some U.S. troops would provide a supporting role similar to what the U.S. did in Germany, Japan, and Bosnia.  What does a “supporting role” in Afghanistan mean?  Who knows.

But the “main mission” of the new troops will be to “reverse Taliban gains and secure population centers” in the southern and eastern parts of the country,” and thus the mission is already a failure.  How can you support population centers and not leave the country?  Sure, we’re going to train Afghan troops (because it’s not like we didn’t do that for the last eight years) and ask the Karzai government is they could pretty please with sugar on top to stop being so corrupt and serve the interests of the people.  What makes Obama think that 30,000 more troops can permanently solve this problem?  It’s the Iraq problem all over again.  We can’t leave or the country will collapse.  Meanwhile, our country is having its own kind of collapse but instead putting money into helping the U.S., the Obama administration thinks that money would be better spent on a country that we can’t force to change.

Sure, we’ll make small gains, but nothing that will last.  How much money will we spend, how much further in debt will we sink, and most importantly, how many American lives will we lose in the next three years.  What do we get in exchange?  A turbulent three years in a country which is known as the place where empires go to die.  We won’t defeat the Taliban.  Cockroaches always come back.  We won’t be defeating Al-Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden because they’re in Pakistan and I doubt we’ll hear that country mentioned once in tonight’s speech.

As Keith Olbermann repeatedly said in his Special Comment last night, “We cannot afford this.”  I don’t even know why we’re trying to buy it in the first place.