Michael Moore and Wolf Blitzer

If you haven't seen Michael Moore making the TV circuit to promote his new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, the clips below showcase his best performance. He makes Wolf Blitzer looks like an amateur, with repetitive, sound-bite inspired questions:





My favorite moment came when Wolf asked Michael how he would respond to allegations that he is being hypocritical in his movie because he himself has benefited and become wealthy from our capitalistic system. To which Michael Moore responded:

"I wonder if there was a Wolf Blitzer 200 years ago who asked Thomas Jefferson, or John Adams, or George Washington: "Hey you guys are wealthy land owners, you've benefited from the Kings system, what are you complaining about? whats this revolt all about?"

Brilliant.

PS: If you missed Wolf's appearance on celebrity Jeopardy, you missed the man who represents one of the supposed leaders in cable news making a fool of himself and getting blown out by comedian Andy Richter. His grand total: -$4600.

Al Franken Is My Hero

This is the progressive attitude we need to see more of in Congress. Thank you Al Franken!

Corporate Personhood & Citizen's United v FEC

These two segments from the 9/15 episode of The Colbert Report may be the best explanations why the Citizen's United v Federal Elections Committee case currently before the Supreme Court is so important. Imagine what our democracy would look like if corporations could give unlimited campaign contributions... Would it even be a democracy?

To learn more about the ridiculousness that is corporate personhood, check out the book Unequal Protection

The one issue that Stephen failed to mention is that most corporations have non-citizen and even foreign governments as shareholders. Who could possibly think that allowing foreign governments access to our democratic process is what the Framers of the Constitution had in mind?

by Thom Hartmann

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - Let Freedom Ka-Ching
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Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Protests

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission - Jeffrey Toobin
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Protests

Here is part of the transcript from the opening arguments:

"JUSTICE GINSBURG: Mr. Olson, are you taking the position that there is no difference in the First Amendment rights of an individual? A corporation, after all, is not endowed by its creator with inalienable rights. So is there any distinction that Congress could draw between corporations and natural human beings for purposes of campaign finance?

MR. OLSON: What the Court has said in the First Amendment context, New York Times v. Sullivan, Rose Jean v. Associated Press, and over and over again, is that corporations are persons entitled to protection under the First Amendment.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Would that include -

MR. OLSON: Now, Justice -

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Would that include today's mega-corporations, where many of the investors may be foreign individuals or entities?

MR. OLSON: The Court in the past has made no distinction based upon the nature of the entity that might own a share of a corporation.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Own many shares?

MR. OLSON: Pardon?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Nowadays there are foreign interests, even foreign governments, that own not one share but a goodly number of shares.

MR. OLSON: I submit that the Court's decisions in connection with the First Amendment and corporations have in the past made no such distinction. However -

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Could they in your view, in the view that you are putting forth, that there is no distinction between an individual and a corporation for First Amendment purposes, then any mega-corporation, even -- even if most of the investors are from abroad, Congress could not limit their spending?

MR. OLSON: I'm not -- I'm not saying that, Justice Ginsburg. I'm saying that the First Amendment applies. Then the next step is to determine whether Congress and the government has established a compelling governmental interest and a narrowly tailored remedy to that interest. If the Congress -- and there is no record of that in this case of which I am aware. Certainly the government has not advanced it in its briefs: That there is some compelling governmental interest because of foreign investment in corporations. If there was, then the Court would look at, determine how serious is that interest, how destructive has it been to the process and whether the -- maybe the limitation would have something to do with the ownership of shares of a corporation or some -

JUSTICE SCALIA: Do you think Congress could prevent foreign individuals from funding speech in United States elections?

MR. OLSON: The -- the -

JUSTICE SCALIA: Private individuals, foreigners who -- who want to -

MR. OLSON: That's, of course, a different question. I haven't studied it, Justice Scalia.

JUSTICE SCALIA: Well, it's not different. I asked it because I thought it was related to the question you were answering.

MR. OLSON: The fundamental point here is -and let me start with this, and I think we should -- we should start with this, and the government hardly mentions this.

JUSTICE STEVENS: Before you do, Mr. Olson

MR. OLSON: The language of the First Amendment, "Congress shall make" -

JUSTICE STEVENS: Mr. Olson -- Mr. Olson, would you answer Justice Ginsburg's question yes or no? Can the -- leaving aside foreign investors, can the -can -- does the First Amendment permit any distinction between corporate speakers and individual speakers?

MR. OLSON: I am not -- I'm not aware of a case that just -

UnitedHealth Group

I posted the Chris Hayes clip too soon. The very next segment on Countdown exposed United Health Group as the criminals they are. There's no way to summarize the investigative journalism, you have to watch the entire thing... If you have United Health Group, I have a feeling that you'll want to change asap...

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Charity Care

Chris Hayes from The Nation Magazine was on Countdown with Keith Olbermann tonight and I thought he had a brilliant analysis of the Republican strategy for health care. If you don't want to watch the entire clip, just check out 2:10 - 4:15:

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"Civilization on this planet had charity based health care for a long time... and, sure, fine ... if you're in the 9th century, and you can drag yourself, ill, to the local church and get some charity care that's fine, but that's not the way that a country in the 21st century takes care of this fundamental public issue. We come together ... through self-governance to address these things. This is not something that's to be tossed off as a realm of charity."

Well said!

I love how Senator Coburn doesn't realize that the concept of neighbors helping neighbors is just another way to describe a democratic government...

What was Yahoo! Thinking?

I was checking the news on Yahoo! today and came across an article entitled Millions Face Shrinking Social Security Payments in which I found something incredibly dishonest. Along with the article, directly below the headline, was a picture of President Obama, leading the reader to make a visual link between the president and the headline implying that it is because of him that social security payments will be going down.

The caption on the picture, written in light grey in tiny letters, is as follows:

"President Obama talks about the Afghan elections Friday, Aug. 21st, 2009, outside the White..."

So the picture isn't even associated with the article! How can they be so intellectually dishonest? Why does the media want seniors to be so afraid of the President?

Here is a screenshot of the article:

To make the issue even worse, the article states that the amount of the checks will NOT be decreasing (which would be illegal) but would be remaining the same, with no cost of living adjustment. The reason that the checks will be "shrinking" is because of increased premiums for medicare.

So, embedded in the article is another reason why we need to reform the health care system, but Yahoo! chose to portray the article as President Obama personally taking money away from senior citizens. Add that to the death panel lies and a pattern of scaring seniors starts to emerge...

What could their motives possibly be?

A Little Perspective on Cost

As health care reform continues to bring out the worst in us, I thought I'd try to put the projected costs of Obama's plan into a little perspective.

According to a report from The Congressional Research Service, after the passage of the supplemental funding bill of 2008 on June 30, 2008, Congress had spent a total of $864 billion since 9/11/01 to fight the War on Terror (74% on Iraq alone and less than 1% on medical care for veteran). Once you include estimates for 2009 and 2010, the total spent rises to over $1 trillion in the last 9 years.

Or, to put it into more understandable terms:

As of February 2009, DOD’s average monthly obligations for contracts and pay were about $10.9 billion, including $8.4 billion for Iraq, and $2.6 billion for Afghanistan, a monthly average some $3 billion below last year.

If we accept that 9/11 was the root cause of this spending, then it is also fair to state that it was the murder of 2,974 people that gave Bush the "political capital" to initiate the massive government spending program known as the Global War on Terror. If you compare that to the 22,000 people that died last year due to lack of health insurance, over 7x the number of people that died on 9/11, the cognitive dissonance begins to set in.

With most estimates of the cost of Obama's health care plan ranging from $300 billion - $1 trillion over the next 10 years, how can ANYONE go on television and claim that the country can't afford to do it. Where were those same people claiming that we couldn't afford the Global War on Terror? My recollection may be a bit fuzzy, but I don't think ANYONE was claiming that we couldn't afford it. How are health care executives that make tens and hundreds of millions of dollars off of denying these now deceased people access to medical care any different than Al-Qaeda?

So, spending over a trillion dollars (over $10 billion a month) after the death of around 3000 people is a no brainer, but spending an equivalent amount to stop an ANNUAL death total of around 20,000 is considered political suicide? What happened to our government...

None of this even takes into account that the cost of health care causes an American to declare bankruptcy roughly every 30 seconds.

As a bit of a side note about George W Bush and "political capital," listen to this clip from 1999 where Bush claims that if he has the political capital, he WILL invade Iraq:

Should Progressives Form Their Own Party?

As Bill Maher so elloquently put it on one of his recent shows:

"Every time Obama tries to take on a progressive cause, there's a political party standing in his way: the Democrats...

We don't have a left and a right party in this country anymore, we have a center-right party and a crazy party. Over the last 30 odd years, Democrats have moved to the right and the right has moved into a mental hospital. So what we have is one perfectly good party for hedge fund managers, credit card companies, banks, defense contractors, big agriculture, and the pharmaceutical lobby; that's the Democrats. And they sit across the aisle from a small group of religious lunatics, flat-Earthers, and civil war reenactors who mostly commuincate by AM radio and call themselves the Republicans. And who actually worry that Obama is a Socialist, Socialst?! he's not even a liberal...

Shouldn't there be one party that unambigiously supports cutting the military budget, a party that is straight up in favor of gun control, gay marraige, higher taxes on the rich, universal health care, legalizing pot, and steep direct taxing of polluters? These aren't radical ideas, a majority of americans are either already for them or would be if they were properly argued and defended. What we need is an actual progressive party to represent the millions of Americans who aren't being served by the Democrats. Because bottom line: Democrats are the new Republicans."

Watch the entire segment below:

With that in mind, the Financial Times had an interesting article from Yukio Hatoyama, the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan and potentially the next Prime Minister. In it, he details his political philosophy of "fraternity:"

• "Although freedom and equality are important for human beings, if they are followed to fundamentalist extremes, they can both result in immeasurable horrors. Therefore, Coudenhove-Kalergi recognised the necessity of a concept that could achieve a balance and maintain respect for humanity. That is what he sought in the idea of fraternity."
• "Freedom is supposed to be the highest of all values but in the fundamentalist pursuit of capitalism, which can be described as ‘freedom formalised in economic terms’, has resulted in people being treated not as an end but as a means"
• "In our present times, fraternity can be described as a principle that aims to adjust to the excesses of the current globalised brand of capitalism and make adjustments to accommodate the local economic practices that have been fostered through our traditions."
• "I believe it is no exaggeration to say that the global economy has damaged traditional economic activities and market fundamentalism has destroyed local communities."
• "Under the principle of fraternity, we will not implement policies that leave economic activities in areas relating to human lives and safety, such as agriculture, the environment and medicine, at the mercy of the tides of globalism… Our responsibility as politicians is to refocus our attention on those non-economic values that have been thrown aside by the march of globalism."
• "The ties that bring people together have become weaker and the spirit of public service has also dimmed…we aim to build a society of coexistence in which people can rediscover the ties that bring them together, help each other, and find meaning and fulfilment in performing a useful social role.”
• "We reject the Ministry of Finance-led theory of fiscal reconstruction that relies on the imposition of uniform restrictions on, or the abolishment of, social welfare payments and which seeks to take shortcuts by raising consumption tax...(and) the bureaucrat-led system of centralised government and the indiscriminate spending facilitated by that system, from the social safety net collapse and greater inequality of wealth that results from an uncritical faith in globalism and finally, from the public loss of faith in politics following unhealthy collusion between government, civil service and industry."

Knowing that this man may become the leader of the worlds 2nd largest economy, I say Progressives co-opt his platform of Fraternity and form their own political party.

As a side note, Mr Hatoyama had this to say about the US economic system:

“The recent financial crisis has suggested to many people that the era of American unilateralism may come to an end. It has also made people harbour doubts about the permanence of the dollar as the key global currency. I also feel that as a result of the failure of the Iraq war and the financial crisis, the era of the US-led globalism is coming to an end and that we are moving away from a unipolar world led by the US towards an era of multipolarity.”

So Japan openly sees Iraq as a failure and the US as the root cause of the financial disaster. I wonder what the rest of the world thinks...