Gabba Gabba Hey

So it looks like Palin quit in order to get in front of an indictment for some serious corruption.

This is incredibly good news. Because you know what she is going to do.

She is going to go around the country raising money for her legal fund, pitching her book. And what will her theme be?

That she is the target of a vast media and establishment conspiracy, because they want to silence the only authentic voice on the national political scene. It is already obvious the media is out to get her. But now the establishment Republicans are joining in. They talk a good game, but in the end they are up there in Washington, living lives regular folks will never know, and making fools of regular folks.

Unlike those Washington Republicans, she actually walks the walk. Her daughters DO practice abstinence. When one of them gets pregnant, she proudly becomes an unwed teenage mother. She doesn't pretend she thinks the Universe is 6,000 years old. She believes it. She speaks in tongues. She doesn't really bother keeping the heathen foreigners straight, because America is good enough for her, and should be good enough for any real American.

She's the real deal. She's one of us, one of the knuckle dragging Know-Nothings. And that is why the media and political elites are out to get her.

The Republican establishment has to be terrified. They've run this scam out ever since Nixon, that they are the party of Real Americans, proudly ignorant (dittoheads!) racist jingoists who have a tenuous grasp of reality. Sarah Palin can make the case that she, not Haley Barbour, not, errrr, player to be named later, is just a big phony.

Town Hall

Apparently Helen Thomas and Chip Reid had a cow in today's presser with Robert Gibbs. Washington Times reporter Christina Bellantoni tweeted:

Helen Thomas to Gibbs re: town hall format argument: "I'm amazed at you people who call for openness and transparency"

This is in reference to today's Presidential town hall on health care. Leave aside the pearl clutching demand that only the WHPC should be permitted to ask the President questions. Part of what is going on here is that the WHPC, and their colleagues, are using a narrative frame that is completely out of step with both public opinion and, as Obama said in his last press conference, simple logic.

The basic narrative frame the media has adopted is that any policy needs to preserve the existing collection of medical care financing organizations--insurance companies, HMOs--because, well, just because. Here's a collection of NY Times articles, of which this one is representative. (Krugman sneaks one in that search with a solid counter-argument.

There is this Olympia Snowe interview with the AP, where she says (no joke) that she is opposed to the public option because it would lower the cost of financing health care:

"If you establish a public option at the forefront that goes head-to-head and competes with the private health insurance market ... the public option will have significant price advantages," she said.

The media completely accepts that one of the policy objectives in health care reform is the preservation of insurance companies that have created a system where Americans get the worst health care in the OECD, both in terms of covereage and of effectiveness, at the highest cost in the OECD. So they (as in the ABC "town hall") continually focus their questions on the impact on the health finance business, rather than on the health care provided to American citizens.

In other words, they are asking the wrong questions, questions that reflect what the President has pointed out, is a completely illogical position:

"Just conceptually, the notion that all these insurance companies who say they're giving consumers the best possible deal, if they can't compete against a public plan as one option, with consumers making the decision what's the best deal, that defies logic," Obama said.

So if the President is going to actually discuss the real policy issues involved with health care reform, he has to take his questions from the public, and not the press.

Small Business

One of the things about being a small business person is that you really do want to offer health care to your employees. The public option would help small business development enormously.

Executive testmony

Wendell Potter, former health industry executive, explains how the industry cheats customers.

15 years ago, when reform was last on the table, 95% of the money collected in premiums went to pay for health care. Now it is less than 80%. The term for this value is the "medical-loss ratio." As Ezra says, this is a telling construction. It means they regard paying medical reimbursements is a cost.

George Lakoff made a similar point in an interview I had with him. In most businesses, the more your customers demand, the better off you are. This is true for people who make good things, like high butterfat ice cream, and people who provide services to correct bad things, like autobody shops. In the case of a health insurance company, the incentive is reversed. Providing services reduces your profits. And that is why we are where we are today.

Humor

Or, actually, reality.

Ezra's 101

On this one, Ezra Klein explains how a public plan works in a bloggershead discussion.

Lies Refuted

Here Howard Dean knocks down all the Frank Luntz talking points that Norah O'Donnell recites to him.

No Coverage

This is not a video, but a National Public Radio Fresh Air podcast. Karen Tumulty discusses her brother's case of losing his individual catastrophic insurance coverage when he became very ill.

KT (as she calls herself in Swampland comments) is reprising her TIME cover story on her brother's difficulties.

Public Option

This one, from HCAN, is a simple advocacy ad. But it summarizes the case very nicely.

Recission

I am going to start collecting videos documenting all that is wrong with the current health care system, and and/or advocating a public option.

This one features insurance company executives saying they indeed retroactively rescind converage when a customer turns out to have a serious and expensively treated medical problem. That is, they collect premiums from their customers until they get really sick, then they comb through their medical records to find a reason to remove their coverage.

Tapper

So Jake Tapper of ABC tweets the following:

does POTUS think it's safe to put detainees in US prisons?

 

Throwing hands in the air I tweet back:

@jaketapper You mean as opposed to safely jailing serial killers and domestic terrorists? What is wrong with you people?

I get a direct message saying that I am being "tiresome." Of course, he doesn't follow me, so I cannot DM back.

So I'll put the reply here.

Jake-- the point is that this is such an  incredibly stupid question that I find it disturbing that you and other members of the Beltway media take it in the least bit seriously.  The people who are raising the question are lying about their concern, and engaging in fearmongering.  They know perfectly well that the US military can transport individual prisoners to secure facilities,  where people can be kept locked up. The US is very good at imprisonment.

Rather than asking whether Obama thinks it is "safe" to put detainees from Guantanamo in supermax prison facilities, what you should be doing is asking elected Republican officials what the heck they are talking about. Every single Senator's state has a max security prison.  Ask them about the rate of jail breaks from those facilities.  Ask them if their prisons are so poorly administered that they cannot hold a prisoner.

Fecklessly following whatever idiotic talking point that comes out of Republican mouths is destroying your, and your colleagues, credibility, Jake.

I suppose it is tiresome to hear that.  But it's no less true.