Keith Olbermann to reform health care single-handed – with our help in five states

This was ferocious. The Teabaggers will shrivel. Glenn Beck won’t stand up to this. Olbermann at his most intense for an entire hour of Special Comment on health care reform Wednesday night. The plan that emerged at the end was audacious: Massive free clinics in five states to show six Blue Dog US senators the lives at stake in their pitiful pandering to the insurance industry.

Take 11 minutes, at least, and watch Part 5 of the Olbermann performance where he sums up his argument and describes the plan for free clinics in Arkansas, Montana, Nebraska, Louisiana and Nevada.

 The idea is to shame Senators Blanche Lincoln D-AR,  Mark Pryor D-AR, Max Baucus, D-MT, Mary Landrieu D-LA, and Harry Reid D-NV. Yes, the Blue Dogs! Not a snaky Republican among the targets.

After you’ve written a check to the National Association of Free Clinics http://freeclinics.us/ feel free to go back and watch the rest of Olbermann’s hour of superb oratory. How he marshaled his facts. How the emotion showed as he told of his father’s agony of illness and of his childhood friend’s need to sell his farm and everything else to pay for his daughter’s long hospitalization.

A few quotes:

·         “I will not settle for a compromise bill.”

·          “It is time to be bold.”

·          “How can we not be united against death?”

·         “We must recognize the enemy here … the moneyed interests who have bled their customers white.”

·         “I’ll donate. How much will you donate?”

Rachel Maddow identifies bosses of the mobs

The other day my opposition research tuned the car radio to the Limbaugh show. He blared on and on about how the raucus invasions of town halls were all the product of the grass roots. Ha! There even was a guy who called in and said he was a grassroots organizer of one event. Ha! Last night opposition research subjected me to a long diatribe from Sean Hannity on the radio and he yelled the same thing while promising to turn up the volume at his series of patriotic concerts taking place around the country. Ha!

Thanks, Rachel Maddow, for doing much more opposition research and identifying the Republican functionaries and donors who are behind it all. This is a longish report but full of telling detail and sharp analysis right to the end. Enjoy:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#32307452

We can't criticize the Republicans too much for being in opposition to what the Democrats propose. We're doing the same thing from the good guys' side, and the White House is calling the shots. But we're not disrupting meetings or running members of Congress out of the hall. And we're not disguising who we are behind a screen of patriotic-sounding names. But then we're not the Swift-boaters of dubious fame.

Dow down 600 ...

I was watching MSNBC while the House started its vote, and there were the totals on the screen showing the Nays solidly ahead of the Yeas , and they’re not finished voting. Their correspondent said something like, “I’m sure that they’re watching CNBC or some other financial service in the conference rooms while this is going on.”

So I switched over to CNBC and heard their commentators exclaiming at how the “market” was voting against this “bailout plan.” Yikes, Dow down 600! This was at about 1:45pm EDT.

One of the CNBC voices tried to calm his colleagues, but they kept running on about how the disaster was unfolding.

Well, the vote is continuing, and they can change their votes. And it’s too early to kiss the Republic farewell.

If it continues like this, I guess the future won’t be socialism.

Ask Sarah Palin about this

This has been shown on MSNBC, and should be seen by everyone thinking of voting Republican.

Insane in the highest reaches of the republic

I was watching MSNBC after 9 p.m. and thought I’d never seen such strange stuff happening, especially when the fate of the republic purportedly was in the balance – its economy, anyway. It was wrapped up by (new) anchor Rachel Maddow talking with the NBC congressional correspondent, Mike Viqueira, who started his report by exclaiming, “What an insane day!”

As a retired AP foreign correspondent, I’ve been in some dramatic news situations myself, though not recently, so maybe standards have changed since I lived through Anwar Sadat’s sudden decision to visit Jerusalem in 1977, or the weird experience of sitting in the Hilton Hotel in Tel Aviv in 1991 and watching on CNN as Saddam Hussein fired Scud missiles at Tel Aviv and their fiery tracks were shown live heading for me. Or seeing Soviet citizens selling the belts off their jeans around the formerly invulnerable Berlin Wall on the eve of German unification in 1990.

There is insane stuff in the world of public events, and we have to keep our calm in the face of it.

(Now MSNBC is showing Sarah Palin’s pathetic attempt to make living in Alaska into foreign policy experience. Heck, I have a lot more of that.)

Anyway, then I turned over to the online NY Times and found the following two paragraphs on top of their 10 p.m. current sitrep:

WASHINGTON — The day began with an agreement that Washington hoped would end the financial crisis that has gripped the nation. It dissolved into a verbal brawl in the Cabinet Room of the White House, urgent warnings from the president and pleas from a Treasury secretary who knelt before the House speaker and appealed for her support.

“If money isn’t loosened up, this sucker could go down,” President Bush declared Thursday as he watched the $700 billion bailout package fall apart before his eyes, according to one person in the room.

So, hizzoner the President is worried that “this sucker could go down.” And the secretary of the treasury “knelt before the House speaker and appealed for her support.”

I see what Mike Viqueira is talking about. Insane.

Anyway, as to the debate scheduled for Friday night. In the larger scheme of things, the debate is a peanut in comparison to the financial fate of the republic. But I do think that John McCain has no chance of making a contribution to fixing the financial crisis, so it may be good to lure him away from Washington and skewer him thoroughly in a debate.