Last summer around this time, Barack Obama was entering the busiest phase of his presidential campaign, and now he’s back on the road giving speeches. Here, he talks to a seemingly polite crowd about his health care reform plan at a town-hall-style gathering in Grand Junction, Colo. Updated
President Obama is gambling on America’s readiness to embrace a larger, more comprehensive form of government, but will it take? “Recovering Republican” Arianna Huffington argues that the system Obama favors is currently working best for oligarchs, not those losing their homes or worried about their health care, while Tony Blankley thinks Big Pharma is pitching camp in the White House.
What happened in the few months between the time when Glenn Beck denounced the dismal state of American health care and when he celebrated it as a systemic triumph just a smidge later? And can we replicate this one-man odyssey with a simple tweak of our own remote controls?
Amy Goodman, Chris Hedges and Robert Scheer discuss the present and future of media with the global economic crisis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the health care debate raging on.
The Nation’s Ari Melber has some ideas about how the president can turn around his slipping poll numbers. First and foremost: Take charge and fight for the public option.
Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films have a simple but compelling health care argument: Compare the obscene earnings of one insurance CEO to the comparatively bargain claims his company has refused to honor. UnitedHealth Group CEO Stephen Hemsley, this clip argues, is personally profiting from the misery of children.
Amy Goodman and Robert Scheer discuss the present and future of media with the global economic crisis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the health care debate raging on.
There’s a whole lot of Baracknophobia going on when it comes to some folks’ worries about health care reform, but how much of it is based on valid concern and how much is, well, stoked by certain media figures hoping to create a flurry of good ol’ American pseudo-events? In other words, turn off the Glenn Beck, people.
What exactly do those dastardly Democrats mean when they talk about “community standards” vis-à-vis health care reform? Only one thing, of course—death panels! But hold on, Mr. Gingrich and Mme. Palin, where are either of those terms written anywhere in the reform proposals?
Media Matters caught CNN’s Erica Hill asking, “What are the real proposals here for public insurance? And why is it so unpopular?” Not sure where she gets her info, since polls here, here, here, here, here and here say a majority of Americans like the idea.
In this installment of Brave New Films’ “Senator Sanders Unfiltered,” the independent federal legislator from Vermont points out what’s becoming hard to dispute or ignore, however much other members of Congress might do both: Wall Street, along with the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, practically runs Washington.
Will Yemen become a haven for militants? Is President Obama ignoring the warning signs of unrest in this Middle Eastern hot spot? Link TV’s Jamal Dajani looks into the complex problems brewing in Yemen in this week’s “Mosaic Intelligence Report.”
Diplomacy by former President Bill Clinton that brought home two journalists from North Korea offers a moment to reflect on the anniversary of the Hiroshima nuclear attack. Sonia Sotomayor’s been confirmed, but not until after there was a dramatic display of partisan ideology. Plus, is the disruption of health care town halls real or orchestrated?
Michael Snider, a small business owner from Nebraska, stars in a pro-public option ad currently running in opposition to the stand of “conservaDem” Sen. Ben Nelson on health care reform. Snider tells Rachel Maddow that Nelson called him about the ad, but didn’t change his mind.
Should this ever actually happen, The Onion gets credit for its prescient mock-up of a hostile takeover of the American government by a militant, yet strangely familiar, enemy organization bent on ... completely obliterating the ever-increasing U.S. debt.
Does President Obama have it in for senior citizens and Sean Hannity? What’s to become of “high-fructose families” under our socialist president’s alarming new health care system? Stephen Colbert explores all this and more while keeping his enraged forehead remarkably still.
Given that the Wisconsin Constitution explicitly bars same-sex couples from marrying, the state’s newly instituted domestic partnership registry may seem cold comfort, but it does offer some rights, like hospital visitation and property-related benefits. Some couples are ready to sign up although bigger battles remain to be won.
Every day the president reads 10 letters from the public that are handpicked by his staff. Lately, he says, a lot of them are about health care. Here’s a White House-produced look at the process.
The “Real Time” host battles the birthers, “the far-right goofballs who claim Obama wasn’t really born in Hawaii and therefore the job of president goes to the runner-up, Miss California Carrie Prejean.” [Video fixed]
Fateh, the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, will soon convene in an atmosphere charged with corruption, fraught with rifts and tales of betrayal and espionage fit for a John le Carré novel, as this installment of Link TV’s “Mosaic Intelligence Report” illustrates.
Is the unflagging popularity of reality television a sign of the entertainment industry’s relentless reliance on producing fodder for the lowest common denominator—or a symptom, as Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges argues in this clip from “GRITtv With Laura Flanders,” of a society in serious moral decline?
This week’s show covers flagrant shenanigans in the financial world—could it be that Tony Blankley makes a move toward the left? Meanwhile, lefty Robert Scheer is the surprising deficit hawk in the mix, and Arianna Huffington and Matt Miller clash over whether the absence of a strong public provision in Congress’ emerging health plan represents a betrayal of the American people. Also: beer!
Apparently Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner wants more for his home than he paid for it—in this market. The “Daily Show’s” John Oliver asks, “How can the American people trust the policies of a man who can’t sell his house? ... Is it not like hiring a personal trainer who is morbidly obese?”
Sitting in for Keith Olbermann, an unusually stiff Howard Dean picks the brain of a former health insurance foot soldier about the government’s reform plans.
Afghanistan’s Sham Army
