Keith Olbermann Takes On United Health Group

Last night, MSNBC's Countdown focused its lens on Stephen Hemsley and United Health Group, someone we've covered extensively at Sick For Profit. Keith Olbermann covered all of the greatest hits of one of the nation's largest insurers, who have encouraged their employees to attend protests against health care reform and distributed talking points opposing the public health insurance option. But he also took a look at the company's efforts to gouge their customers:

One of the nation’s largest health insurers has agreed to pay $50 million in a settlement announced today after being accused of overcharging millions of Americans for health care.

The New York attorney general’s office launched an investigation after receiving hundreds of complaints about Oxford Insurance and its parent company, UnitedHealth Group, which claims to rely on “independent research from across the health care industry” to determine reimbursement rates. In actuality though, it relies on Ingenix, a research firm owned by UnitedHealth Group.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo says Ingenix has been manipulating the numbers so insurance companies pay less. In a just-released report, he contends that Americans have been “under-reimbursed to the tune of at least hundreds of millions of dollars.” Although UnitedHealth Group and Oxford Insurance were the only entities investigated, other major insurers use Ingenix, including Aetna, CIGNA and WellPoint/Empire BlueCross BlueShield.

Olbermann noted that United Health Group owns the Lewin Group, the supposedly non-partisan research outfit often cited by conservatives in the health care debate. He discussed CEO Stephen Hemsley's backdated stock options, showering illegal gifts on himself and his executive cronies. And he mentioned that, despite all this, despite United Health Group's long record fighting against the little guy, their efforts to oppose reform to this day, they still have a seat at the table, even in the White House:

Olbermann: President Obama is now asking United Health Group for advice on how to reform health care. He met with Hemsley twice this May. On June 1st lead Senators on health care asked Senator Kent Conrad to come up with an alternative to the public option. Three days later Senator Conrad met with Hemsley and top United Health Group lobbyist Simon Stevens.

"Conrad has since (that meeting) led an effort to create nonprofit medical cooperatives...with less heft than a proposed national plan, the state medical cooperatives would pose a far weaker competitive threat to private insurers." Conrad said the idea of co-ops came out of conversations in my office. Senator Conrad's office told Countdown "You're barking up the wrong tree. Co-ops were not discussed. The Senator met with them for 15 minutes to discuss care coordination and how that could lead to both cost savings and better health care outcomes."

Investment News reports the public option would benefit insurerers if it handled the core of the cost of care coodination. "Only the largest insurers, such as Aetna Inc., Wellpoint Inc. and United Health Group could do that".

It's a great piece, laying bare how a large insurance company makes their money off denying care, uses their power and influence to ensure that any reforms wind up in their favor, and take humongous profits in the process. He even used some of our Sick for Profit footage in his piece.

Take a look.

Countdown To Telling The Truth

You've probably been following the very strange deal between Fox and GE to silence a feud between Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann that threatened to sully the two corporate parents.

At an off-the-record summit meeting for chief executives sponsored by Microsoft in mid-May, the PBS interviewer Charlie Rose asked Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of G.E., and his counterpart at the News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, about the feud.

Both moguls expressed regret over the venomous culture between the networks and the increasingly personal nature of the barbs. Days later, even though the feud had increased the audience of both programs, their lieutenants arranged a cease-fire, according to four people who work at the companies and have direct knowledge of the deal.

In early June, the combat stopped, and MSNBC and Fox, for the most part, found other targets for their verbal missiles (Hello, CNN).

Glenn Greenwald has been following this issue with the depth it deserves, noting it as part of the larger danger about corporate control of the media, and how certain subjects get denied coverage because it would bother those corporate benefactors. It's a serious issue.

Therefore, I was a bit dismayed by Olbermann's non-denial denial about any "deal":

On his show last night, Keith Olbermann essentially issued a non-denial denial about the GE-MSNBC-Fox story, saying that he himself was "party to no deal" - exactly what he said in the original New York Times article. There's no reason to doubt Olbermann - however, as journalism prof Dan Kennedy suggests (h/t Glenn Greenwald & Jay Rosen), Olbermann's own personal lack of involvement in a "deal" is far less important than the simple fact that GE started trying to give blatant news-content orders to MSNBC's newsroom - orders that may have been followed in places well beyond Olbermann's control.
Certainly, the fact that Olbermann resisted those orders is good news - but again, as I said in my original post, this story wasn't an indictment of Olbermann - it was an indictment of the entire corporate-news structure of the networks in question.

Indeed, in Olbermann's non-denial denial last night, he didn't refute the quotes from General Electric management, he didn't refute that MSNBC execs told its producers that they "wanted the channel's other programs [to] restrain from criticizing Fox directly," and he didn't refute this report from TV Newser saying that the parent companies for Fox and MSNBC have been in negotiations for months.

It was a weird segment last night, with Olbermann hitting O'Reilly on a ticky-tack maneuver, noting the coincidental timing of the George Tiller death as the reason he temporarily "retired" his O'Reilly character, and hitting Brian Stelter, the writer, without disagreeing with a word written in the piece.

It is very good that Olbermann has apparently stopped using Richard Wolff. But his dodgy statements last night about the provenance of any "deal" between GE and Fox leave me fairly cold. He claims that he was party to no deal and yet praises Greenwald's coverage of the story, which asserts that there, in fact, was a deal.

Olbermann has now made two contradictory statements about his role in the affair:

He confirms what Glenn Greenwald wrote, which is that he stopped covering O'Reilly because he was told to do so by his bosses at GE

He says that his decision to stop covering O'Reilly was purely a response to O'Reilly's role in the Tiller incident, and that any assertion to the contrary is a blackmail attempt by Roger Ailes

It is clear that there was a deal between GE and News Corp, because both are confirming it. So Olbermann is, at best, guilty of obfuscation by claiming that he was not "party" to any deal.

I'm mildly a fan of Olbermann, and his willingness to tell the truth about health care and the money drowning the process is significant and vital. But his cloying behavior in this episode thus far has damaged his reputation to an extent.

The New Landscape

In 1994 when Betsy McCaughey wrote her piece in The New Republic full of lies abut the Clinton health care reform bill, the DC establishment accepted it uncritically because, well, she was in The New Republic, and nobody liked these Clinton outsiders anyway, and there was virtually no countervailing opinion independent of the White House that offered any refutation of her claims. The Village was the one and true arbiter of her story, and their acceptance of it colored the entire health care debate from that point forward.

Fast forward to 2009, and another fallacious McCaughey claim based on a clear misreading of legislative language makes the rounds of conservative media. Her claim that health information technology and comparative effectiveness research would cause rationing and give big gubmint a veto over your medical care is ridiculous. Only this time, a mainstream reporter actually chronicled how that conservative media puke funnel reinforces itself and creates opinion where there are only lies. And then a cable news show thoroughly debunks the lie in a long segment. And a series of blog posts reveal that McCaughey is on the board of directors of a medical device company and therefore has a conflict of interest over stopping comparative effectiveness studies, or that she received stock options from that company days before writing her flase op-ed in Bloomberg, or that the think tank she works at is funded by drug companies. As Ezra Klein says, this is a very new age:

Will Olbermann's segment on McCaughey end her relevance? Probably not. But it -- along with the blog posts, and inevitable columns -- will be part of what any CNN producer sees if he wants to run a segment on McCaughey the next morning. It will be part of what an NPR editor reads when she's researching a show. None of this progressive infrastructure existed in 1994. She published her smear job in an influential journal of putatively liberal opinion that was being edited by a self-professed conservative and it quickly become the conventional wisdom. This time, such arguments will not go unchallenged. That doesn't mean they will disappear. McCaughey's arguments are already taking root in the fertile swamp of talk radio. But it will be much harder for such bits of disingenuous nonsense to cement themselves in the center. And by the same token, it will be much easier for liberals to make, and disseminate, their own arguments.

I don't know if that's entirely true - there's nothing the Village likes more than to be willingly blind, and they'll probably opt for a "teach the controversy" approach - but that's better than the 1994 landscape.

Sometimes I definitely feel like I'm spitting into the wind out in the lonely blogosphere, and yet letting smears go unchallenged and letting progressive ideas get sandbagged is no longer an option. There is a progressive infrastructure now that can at least get a piece of the spotlight through relentless effort. It ought to actually be funded (greetings, liberal angels!), but even today it does have an impact.

Rigged

I hear a lot of people fretting about the latest USA Today/Gallup, and in particular they're saying that Obama is losing the messaging war and watching the election slip away. I think that Josh Marshall may be right that their messaging appears largely reactive (he's also right that messaging and the air war is far more visible than the ground game, where I think the Obama campaign has a serious advantage). But to the extent that he is right, he must also take into account how that narrative has been set by corporate-owned media.

Indeed Obama has run ads with their core messaging strategy of lashing McCain to Bush. They've released at least a half-dozen of them over the past two weeks. There was certainly an option for responsible media to notice this aggressive advertising strategy. They haven't. Instead, McCain "celebrity" ads and sneering attacks are given the top-line treatment. The Obama campaign ran with the "how many houses does McCain have" gaffe for a few days. They could and should keep doing so, but media allowed it to be overshadowed. In fact, they just banished a nominal liberal away from their political coverage after howls of attacks from Republicans, which still have the desired effect.

MSNBC tried a bold experiment this year by putting two politically incendiary hosts, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, in the anchor chair to lead the cable news channel’s coverage of the election.

That experiment appears to be over.

After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.

The change — which comes in the home stretch of the long election cycle — is a direct result of tensions associated with the channel’s perceived shift to the political left.

“The most disappointing shift is to see the partisan attitude move from prime time into what’s supposed to be straight news programming,” said Davidson Goldin, formerly the editorial director of MSNBC and a co-founder of the reputation management firm DolceGoldin.

As Glenn Greenwald notes, giant conglomerates which own major defense contractors are simply never going to be in the business of promoting liberalism. Olbermann is anti-Bush and mildly interested in protecting civil liberties but he's hardly echoing liberal positions on issues. Rachel Maddow's premiere tonight will be very interesting to watch, but that's of course one show.

What comes through here is a need to placate the right. And that absolutely seeps into coverage of the day-to-day of this Presidential campaign. McCain's people have worked the refs and the refs have responded. They conflate documented lies from Republicans with one statement that says McCain voted 95% of the time with Bush (true in 2007, and it was 100% in 2008 so they're being generous) when the lifetime score is 90%. This gives the impression that "everybody fibs" in political campaigns, which allows the GOP to continue lying because they're never called on it.

Back in 2000, the exit polls showed that among the 24 percent of the electorate who said it was very important to them to select an “honest and trustworthy” president, 80 percent voted for George W Bush. This, I assume, had something to do with the fact that the press repeatedly weaved through its coverage of Gore a narrative about Gore’s alleged difficulty telling the truth, even though most of the data points where Gore lied or “exaggerated” were actually made up by the press. McCain, by contrast, has not only been caught in several bald-faced lies, but in a few instances — this business with Palin and the bridge most notably — keeps on doing it in very high-profile contexts even though they’ve gotten called on it repeatedly. So where’s the narrative about how McCain’s key strategy introducing Sarah Palin to the public and turning his campaign around is based on putting lies at the heart of the presentation?

The extent to which Obama's campaign can change the messaging narrative is extremely limited and was always going to be extremely limited. The media is simply locked in to their preconceived notions of how Democrats and Republicans are viewed by them. They are uninterested in policy except where candidates, particularly the Democratic candidate, differ from ideological orthodoxy, but of course they never determine what that orthodoxy is, so all you end up hearing is a Democrat telling America what Republican plans they would adopt. They whine that the policy proposals are not fresh, but they are completely uninterested in hearing about them at all. They poll-watch and judge horse races and look at who's hitting who with what ad and who's fighting. And they already have written those scripts in triplicate.

If anyone has a clue how to beat this back, I'm all ears. I would say that ensuring that online media flourishes is paramount, and hoepfully less people will get their news from these "official" sources in the years to come.

...so HowardKurtz comes out and says that McCain's latest ad, claiming that Sarah Palin stopped the bridge to nowhere, is a lie. OK, but isn't it part of a pattern of lies? This is what the press did to Al Gore in 2000, and it's more warranted here. That would match the Obama campaign's comment:

"Despite being discredited over and over again by numerous news organizations, the McCain campaign continues to repeat the lie that Sarah Palin stopped the Bridge to Nowhere. John McCain has voted with George Bush 90% of the time and he and Sarah Palin will continue Bush's economic policies, his health care policy, his education policy, his energy policy, and his foreign policy. McCain and Palin will say or do anything to make people believe that they will change something besides the person sitting in the Oval Office. That's the kind of politics people are tired of, and it's anything but change."

Wouldn't Want A Leftward Drift!

It's totally absurd that the media critics far and wide have come out of the woodwork to cluck their tongues and shake their heads at MSNBC's decision to give Rachel Maddow a prime-time show, on the ground that it could reflect a dangerous leftward drift (because liberals don't watch news shows). This is the same so-called liberal media that has seen cable shows from Tucker Carlson (conservative), Joe Scarborough (conservative ex-Congressman), Glenn Beck (batshit crazy wingnut), Michael Savage (scumbag wingnut), Alan Keyes (crazy scumbag wingnut conservative), Sean Hannity (see above), Bill O'Reilly (ditto), etc., etc. Now one liberal finally gets a show and this could cause a dangerous imbalance in the force. (I consider Olbermann more of a Bush-hater than an actual liberal). Glenn Greenwald demolishes this argument quickly and quietly.

For years, cable news -- well beyond just Fox -- has been suffuse with the hardest-right ideologues. Virtually every Karl Rove disciple not formally with the McCain campaign is now employed in some capacity in the media. Dan Bartlett just joined CBS News as a "political analyst", and just today, Time announced that it has hired Mike Murphy, GOP strategist and former chief McCain adviser, as a new columnist and new poster at Swampland, and he promptly wrote a column filled with trite Rovian platitudes about how Obama is "irresistible to the wine-and-cheese lovers" but can't connect with the salt-of-the-earth working-class People because Obama "reminds them of the Ivy League whiz kids they've dealt with at work during the latest downsizing." [...]

Maddow is unquestionably one of the smartest and most incisive commentators anywhere on television -- perhaps the smartest. One would think that the presence of smart commentary in the wasteland known as "cable news" would be cause for celebration among those super-Serious intellects at TNR. Zimmerman even brings herself to recognize that Maddow's "no mere histrionic provocateur" and "has proved herself to be a savvy commentator with quick, smart takes on the news of the day." But no matter. She's a liberal -- and, therefore, to the Tucker-Carlson-loving Sacha Zimmermans of the world, her mere presence is likely to infect and degrade our political discourse with shrill, overheated, fringe, sickly partisan rhetoric -- "refusing to acknowledge anything but spite, paranoia, and conspiracy theory when it comes to the other side."

The reaction to Maddow's show highlights just how suffocatingly narrow, and right-wing, the spectrum of mainstream political discourse in America is. Hiring Michael Savage, Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson to host their own shows didn't jeopardize NBC's news brand, just as giving Glenn Beck -- Glenn Beck -- his own show didn't jeopardize CNN's. Most mainstream political and media figures even continue to insist that Fox is a legitimate news organization because Brit Hume confines his overt right-wing talking points to the Sunday show. But the presence of a liberal on MSNBC instantaneously destroys traditional principles of Journalism.

This is going to be appointment television for liberals, and the ratings are almost sure to go up in the time slot. But the fear and loathing over Maddow's ascension has little to do with ratings. It's about genuinely progressive ideas and perspectives "infecting the discourse," as it were. Now, the chattering class does a pretty good job of neatly avoiding whatever Olbermann puts on his show and ensuring none of it shapes the narrative. With Maddow there as well that will get slightly more difficult, but only slightly so. This will be a 2-hour island on a sea of conventional wisdom and rigid narrative.

I will note that the Finemans and Alters of the world who come on with Olbermann do end up reflecting the viewpoint of the host. A lot of them are just eager to please, anyway. So more liberals they might have to curry favor with in order to stay on the air might be a good thing. Whether it gets reflected in the broader narrative, I'm not sure.

Why Does This POW Denigrate McCain's POW Service?

Fellow Naval Academy classmate and POW of John McCain Phillip Butler is shrill.

John was a wild man. He was funny, with a quick wit and he was intelligent. But he was intent on breaking every USNA regulation in our 4 inch thick USNA Regulations book. And I believe he must have come as close to his goal as any midshipman who ever attended the Academy. John had me "coming around" to his room frequently during my plebe year. And on one occasion he took me with him to escape "over the wall" in the dead of night. He had a taxi cab waiting for us that took us to a bar some 7 miles away. John had a few beers, but forbid me to drink (watching out for me I guess) and made me drink cokes. I could tell many other midshipman stories about John that year and he unbelievably managed to graduate though he spent the majority of his first class year on restriction for the stuff he did get caught doing. In fact he barely managed to graduate, standing 5th from the bottom of his 800 man graduating class. I and many others have speculated that the main reason he did graduate was because his father was an Admiral, and also his grandfather, both U.S. Naval Academy graduates [...]

John was awarded a Silver Star and Purple Heart for heroism and wounds in combat. This heroism has been played up in the press and in his various political campaigns. But it should be known that there were approximately 600 military POW's in Vietnam. Among all of us, decorations awarded have recently been totaled to the following: Medals of Honor - 8, Service Crosses - 42, Silver Stars - 590, Bronze Stars - 958 and Purple Hearts - 1,249. John certainly performed courageously and well. But it must be remembered that he was one hero among many - not uniquely so as his campaigns would have people believe.

I furthermore believe that having been a POW is no special qualification for being President of the United States. The two jobs are not the same, and POW experience is not, in my opinion, something I would look for in a presidential candidate.

Most of us who survived that experience are now in our late 60's and 70's. Sadly, we have died and are dying off at a greater rate than our non-POW contemporaries. We experienced injuries and malnutrition that are coming home to roost. So I believe John's age (73) and survival expectation are not good for being elected to serve as our President for 4 or more years.

I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button.

It is also disappointing to see him take on and support Bush's war in Iraq, even stating we might be there for another 100 years. For me John represents the entrenched and bankrupt policies of Washington-as-usual. The past 7 years have proven to be disastrous for our country. And I believe John's views on war, foreign policy, economics, environment, health care, education, national infrastructure and other important areas are much the same as those of the Bush administration.

Wow. It's stunning to see someone who knows McCain lay this all out so specifically. And he hits everything - the age, the temper, the flyboy antics, the policies right in line with Bush. It's all there.

Dr. Phillip Butler has been writing op-eds for Military.com and elsewhere for quite a while. This is not some new arrival to the scene.

Barack Obama today went to the VFW and did the "shame on you" bit, condeming McCain for questioning his patriotism and calling for a real debate, while "honor(ing) Senator McCain's service."

There's a difference between huffing and puffing and targeting shameless Republicans for shame, and telling the truth. Phillip Butler told the truth. And he should have some fun with his newfound not-stardom, with all the not-appearing on news programs and not-being cited in the print media. Because what he said, you can't say on television.


...Butler could have added that McCain's party and his own policies show disrespect for the military and the soldiers.

Mold infests the barracks that were set up here a year ago for wounded soldiers after poor conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center triggered a systemwide overhaul, soldiers say.

Twenty soldiers, who spoke to USA TODAY early last week, said their complaints about mold and other problems went unheeded for months. They also said they had been ordered not speak about the conditions at Fort Sill.

Officers at the Army base last week ordered that ventilation ducts in two barracks be replaced and soldiers be surveyed, anonymously if they wished, about any concerns. Maj. Gen. Peter Vangjel, the commanding officer, said it was "inappropriate" for soldiers to be ordered not to talk about the mold.

Next Steps On FISA - July 8 and Beyond

As we all know, we're in kind of a holding pattern while we wait another week until the Senate is likely to lay down and give Bush more than he expected on warrantless wiretapping and immunity for lawbreaking. I know many of us are calling representatives and talking to them when they come in our communities and even organizing inside Barack Obama's social networking site (9,300-plus strong now). But the reality is that we're likely to come up short. The Beltway elites are determined to bury their sins and make sure nobody finds out about the extent of this illegal and unconstitutional spy program.

So what do we do? There's a lot of outrage and energy around this issue, certainly it needs to be channeled. I think there are a number of things we can do.

• If we keep organizing around the July 8 vote, the best opportunity for us is to encourage passage of the Bingaman amendment, which would put a stay on any immunity until 90 days after the completion of a Justice Department Inspector General report about the President's warrantless wiretapping program. This would be beneficial for a number of reasons. It's "sensible" enough - why give immunity before we know what we're immunizing? - to attract bipartisan support. The IG report would certainly take long past President Bush's exit from the White House, which is extremely beneficial. And the 90 days gives an opportunity to deep-six the immunity after the worst abuses are brought to light. Most important, this would be a change in the bill from the House, which would send it into a conference committee and require another round of votes after reconciliation, AND the President wouldn't be likely to sign anything with the Bingaman amendment in it because he wants his immunity and he wants it now. So for so many reasons, strategically speaking that amendment is the right one to push with your lawmakers.

• Keith Olbermann is right - the right will continue to make up some excuse to attack Obama for this vote on some grounds, so he owes it to his supporters to do the right thing and, if telecom immunity remains in the bill, vote against it. The fantasy of criminal prosecution for the telecoms, well, I'll get to that in a minute. But for those organizing around Obama from now to July 8, it should be around making sure he's at that vote and voting for the Dodd-Feingold amendment, for the Bingaman amendment, and against the bill if they fail.

• What happens AFTER July 8 strikes me as more relevant now - it's highly unlikely that we stop this freight train. Are there any next steps? First of all, we must continue to pressure the next President to investigate the program. The IG report will be made, and there must be a concerted effort to make that public. The bill's expanded wiretapping powers are arguably more pernicious than immunity, and so bringing them into full view could spark an outrage that would roll the whole system back, similar to the Church Committee's findings in the 1970s.

...the bottom line for the ACLU is that no president should have the power to monitor the phones and emails of Americans without a warrant, and telecommunications companies should not be let off the hook. No president should have the power to pardon companies that broke the law.

The ACLU calls on the next president to conduct an immediate investigation of warrantless wiretapping and calls on him to release documents relating to the legality of the NSA’s monitoring of American’s calls and email without warrants.

This issue has awakened a sleeping giant, a broad coalition of Americans worried about the creeping loss of their civil liberties for the last 50 years. Whether it's unwarranted spying or just catalog companies harvesting your emails and selling them off to advertisers, Americans desire their privacy and will fight efforts to take it away. The Strange Bedfellows coalition will live on beyond July 8 and will seek to hold those who limited freedom and curbed civil liberties accountable. But as a specific action, demanding a full, thorough, and public investigation is a good place to start.

• Litigation will not end if our efforts fail on July 8.

Lawyers for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union, two groups that have been leading the charge against dismissing the lawsuits, are working on possible legal challenges for the FISA bill that is expected to pass soon. That being said, no one is ready to throw in the towel on the continuing FISA fight happening in the Senate.

"Assuming that the immunity does pass, which right now we are not assuming, we are certainly preparing for litigation against the application of immunity in our case," Kevin Bankston, a senior attorney for EFF told RAW STORY [...]

While the precise sequence of events in unclear, Bankston said the challenges would take place in the Northern District of California Court, where the telecom lawsuits themselves are being litigated. He said he's pleased that at least the immunity question is not being decided by the secret FISA court, as was proposed in an earlier bill.

The ACLU is keeping its options open but has not decided how or if it will proceed with court challenges to an eventual FISA agreement, a spokesman says.

If the bill granting immunity is a violation of separation of powers, the courts could overturn it. Obviously we have a Supreme Court in hock to corporate interests so the odds would be long, but courts also don't really like their authority usurped so I'm not sure it's such a slam-dunk.

My larger point is that there's a lot of work to be done, both in the next week and beyond, to put us on a path where we have liberty and security, where privacy rights and civil liberties are sacrosanct, and where no man or corporation is above the law. We must continue the fight.

Glennzilla 1, KO 0

Digby notes this blog-war between Keith Olbermann and Glenn Greenwald over Obama and FISA. It's pretty instructive. Olbermann basically hangs his hat on one aside comment from John Dean because he's really really smart, and then constructs this entire behind-the-scenes universe where Obama isn't objecting to the FISA bill because it's sloppily written and he'll still be able to prosecute the telecoms for criminal violations, just not civil ones, and he's doing the right thing by hiding this from everybody in the hope that "Republicans don't see the loophole."

You know, the loophole that Olbermann's been touting on his show nightly for a week.

Greenwald kind of eviscerates him on the substantive facts (there is deliberate immunization on only the civil liability, and Bush could pardon anyone for criminal but not civil charges, and furthermore just making up a story about Obama that you want to be right isn't anything but a justification), and John Dean himself basically comes down on the side of Greenwald. But I would add the fact that Keith Olbermann is a newsman. A reporter. He doesn't actually have to guess what Obama's thinking about this - he could use the full weight of the resources granted to him by NBC News and ASK him. Or ask someone connected to the campaign. There's no need for him to spin a yarn about this absent the facts.

Further, there are plenty of smart people out there who can pinpoint why this FISA bill is crap outside of the immunity provisions - Julian Sanchez is one of the better ones. Dean HIMSELF said on Olbermann's show that it was a win for the telecoms.

DEAN: Well, I think, you've got to give one for the terrorists on our Fourth Amendment. They really did some damage today in this so-called compromise, contrary to what the speaker said that really does hurt the Constitution. So, it's very troubling and it's not a good day for civil liberties, particularly.

To hang your hat on one comment about one portion of this bill and then rationalize Obama's Perfect Secret Plan reminds me of how neocons would claim that Bush struck bin Laden with a Patriot missile, but he can't tell anybody because he wouldn't want to make him a martyr, and this was all reported in the Guardian but they changed the story on the website, yadda yadda yadda.

Sorry Keith, but you need to take the blinders off. If you wanted to argue, like this former attorney, that the Patriot Act is the real problem and if we're depending on FISA to save the Fourth Amendment that we've already lost it, fine. That's a colorable argument. But the fantasy of Valiant Obama finding all the bad guys and stopping them with his Super-Heat Vision is, you know, just that. A fantasy. And the sooner you recognize it the better.

Playing Hooky

Sorry, I jetted up to San Francisco for the day, kind of unexpectedly. So I was away from blog for a significant amount of time. My apologies. Here's what I'm reading:

• Obama got 80,000 people to a rally in Portland. Wow. I've never heard of such a number for a political rally. I think he'll win Oregon by plenty, lose Kentucky by plenty, and clinch a majority of pledged delegates (which he won't spin as a total victory), and if he keeps racking up superdelegates, he'll have the nomination in hand by June 4. As for the general, poblano has some good stuff.

• The trap was laid to assassinate Zimbabwean ruler Robert Mugabe's chief rival ahead of a Presidential runoff election, but Morgan Tsvangirai was tipped off and escaped. That's just one missed effort, though. You can be assured there will be more.

• McCain lobbyists are dropping like flies. Also check out McCainpedia from the DNC, some really good bits from McCain's past in the files there. And there's a new Real McCain video.

• What is it with conservatives thinking that Americans need the wake-up call of a terrorist attack to get them focused again? And not only random whack jobs on the Internets, but powerful conservatives like Don Rumsfeld? This is pretty much akin to wishing for the deaths of your fellow citizens.

• The Olbermann-O'Reilly feud escalates. I don't think there's a lot of overlap in their audiences, so I'm not sure it matters. Mutually assured non-destruction.

How Many More Patient Revolts?

So Wal-Mart has been going after this lady Debbie Shank for years. She is a former employee who was seriously disabled in a car accident seven years ago. A trucking company was found by a court to be at fault in the accident, and Shank received a settlement of about $400,000, and afterwards Wal-Mart demanded all of that money - plus interest - for paying Debbie's medical fees through her health care plan through the years. In other words, they wanted to make a penniless, disabled woman more penniless. The Supreme Court refused to hear Shank's injunction against Wal-Mart and it looked like she'd have to fork over the settlement money.

But after much public outcry, Wal-Mart relented. Says Wal-Mart Watch:

“We are elated that after months of public pressure and national outrage, Wal-Mart says it is finally going to do the right thing for Debbie Shank and her family.

“During the past few weeks, Jim Shank has brought to life Debbie’s tragic circumstances and vividly shown that her case is a scorching symbol of Wal-Mart’s decision to insufficiently fund its health care plan for its 1.3 million U.S. workers.

“Debbie’s case exemplifies what Wal-Mart Watch and others see every day: the world’s largest employer choosing to put less into its benefits than it should. This leaves thousands of Wal-Mart associates with choices about preventative care and necessary care that are driven by what they can afford rather than by what is in their best interest. Debbie Shank’s story is not only a personal tragedy; it poses a cautionary tale for all Wal-Mart associates.

As much as anything this shows Keith Olbermann's power - he harped on this for about a week before Wal-Mart gave in. This shows how progressive media and the public can work in tandem to stop inequities in the system and rapacious behavior from multinational corporations. But you have to wonder how much longer we're going to have these reactive patient revolts rather than overhauling this broken health care system that rewards greed and creates these gaps in the first place. Employers and insurance companies shouldn't be ABLE to lord this kind of power over sick citizens. Health care is a fundamental human right. Period.

Chuck Todd Lies On National Television

So I'm watching Countdown, and Olbermann brings up the delegate math in the wake of Barack Obama's victory in Mississippi. He teases a discussion with Chuck Todd about "changes in the delegates in Texas, one week after the voting, and changes in the delegates in California, one MONTH later!"

So I think to myself, "Self, are you about to be mentioned on Countdown?" Because, as has been well-documented, it was changes originated on this website that led to the national media meekly changing their delegate totals to reflect reality.

So Chuck Todd comes on the show, and Olbermann asks him about California, and Todd hems and haws about there being "a lot of absentee and provisional ballots counted late" in the state, which is true, and about how some 3-1 delegate splits in various districts changed to 2-2, which is also true. Then he said, "and so when all the votes came in, it turns out Obama netted four delegates out of these districts in the last week." (rough transcript)

Yeah, that's actually kind of a lie. There has been no movement in the delegate count since CA-53 flipped to Obama on February 15. Most of the delegate changes happened very early. MSNBC just turned away from the counting, neglected to pay attention, and now makes the demonstrably false statement that Obama netted delegates "in the last week."

What actually happened was that my post about the real delegate counts got picked up by the Wall Street Journal and shamed the entire national media into getting it right. But I guess that wouldn't sound too good on Countdown.

It'll sound good in my email to Keith.

Obama Leads In Nairobi; How About Washington

Barack Obama has shown some abilities we didn't otherwise characterize in him before during this election cycle. He's shown that he has the capacity to fight back (we'll see how successful he is), the capacity to, scare Republicans shitless and the capacity to lead in a way many Presidents haven't on a global stage. At a time of continuing election violence in Kenya, Obama published an op-ed in a Kenyan newspaper, calling for calm.

While participating in our own presidential elections in America, I have closely followed the tragic events that unfolded after Kenya’s polls closed. My thoughts and prayers and those of my family have been with the more than 650 victims of the violence and their families, as well as the 250,000 Kenyans who have been displaced.

Clearly, Kenya has reached a defining moment. It is up to Kenyan leaders and the Kenyan population to turn away from the path of bloodshed, division, and repression, and to turn towards reconciliation, negotiation, and renewed commitment to democratic governance. There is no doubt that there were serious flaws in the process by which presidential votes were tabulated. There is also no doubt that actions taken by both sides in the aftermath of the election have deepened the stalemate.

But Kenya’s hard-won democracy and precious national unity can be salvaged. Now is the time for all parties to renounce violence. And now is the time for President Kibaki, Raila Odinga, and all of Kenya’s leaders, to calm tensions, to come together unconditionally, and to implement a political process that peacefully addresses the controversies that divide them and restores the Kenyan people’s confidence in their political system.

This will not get Obama one more vote in the United States, but it's the right thing for him to lend his credibility to trying to get some sense of order in Kenya.

However, there's a moment right now to lead right here at home. At this hour the Senate is debating a terrible update to the FISA law that would give amnesty to lawbreaking telecom companies. Chris Dodd has vowed a filibuster and needs the support of his colleagues. Barack Obama has South Carolina fairly salted away, and is looking to a big boost nationally to help him in the February 5 states. What better boost could he give to his campaign than to come to Washington and onto the Senate floor, to deliver a long speech on the virtues of civil liberties and the need to uphold the rule of law. The guy is a Constitutional scholar and a law professor, ferchrissake. He can get into this back and forth about candor and records and low-down politics, or he can show that he actually wants to lead. Furthermore, he can show a willingness to take the desires of the bottom-up progressive movement to heart.

I hear Sen. Edwards may be pushing in this direction tonight on Keith Olbermann's show. Obama should do the same, and with more than a press release. He needs to go to Washington and do his job. Clinton too.

Critical Mass On Bush's Demonstrable Lies

The acknowledgment that Mr. Bush was indeed briefed that Iran's nuclear program may have been suspended back in August, yet he continued the saber-rattling for months thereafter, is starting to provoke a blistering reaction in the media. And today we've learned that Fourthbranch had the intel for two weeks and, if you believe the White House, didn't mention it to his boss:

In the end, American intelligence officials rejected that theory, though they were challenged to defend that conclusion in a meeting two weeks ago in the White House situation room, in which the notes and deliberations were described to the most senior members of President Bush’s national security team, including Vice President Dick Cheney.

“It was a pretty vivid exchange,” said one participant in the conversation.

And I still think the press should be asking: if Dick had seen--and twisted the arms of--this intelligence two weeks ago, then why didn't he even tell Bush about it? Or did he?

Actually, surprisingly, they are asking that today. And they're wondering about the timeline, essentially what did the President know and when did he know it. In a seminal piece, Dan Froomkin details how you can pinpoint when Bush was told to change his rhetoric subtly enough to react to the new information.

But a close examination of his word choice over the past year suggests that he learned something around August that got him to stop making claims that were apparently no longer supported by American intelligence.

Instead of directly condemning Iranian leaders for pursuing nuclear weapons, he started more vaguely accusing them of seeking the knowledge necessary to make such a weapon.

Even as he did that, however, he and the vice president accelerated their rhetorical efforts to persuade the public that the nuclear threat posed by Iran was grave and urgent. Bush went so far in late August and October as to warn of the potential for a nuclear holocaust.

Indeed, a careful parsing of Bush's words indicates that, while not saying anything that could later prove to be demonstrably false, Bush left his listeners with what he likely knew was a fundamentally false impression. And he did so in the pursuit of a more muscular and possibly even military approach to a Middle Eastern country.

It's an oddly familiar pattern of deception.

You can dive into the piece for the details.

The White House is really in a bind now. Without the lesson of Iraq, and the hyping of intelligence, the cherry-picking of data, the entire m.o. laid out to the world, perhaps the nation's radar wouldn't be at attention. But nobody believes this President anymore. Nobody gives him the benefit of the doubt. And that's simply because he doesn't deserve it. He and his minions clearly knew about additional information on Iran's nuclear program at a time when they were amping up the rhetoric in order to put the country on a path to yet another war. It's a familiar and dastardly script.

P.S. See Keith Olbermann's special comment, it breaks this all down with laser-like perceptiveness.

Guess What?

You're not going to believe this, but President Bush and all his top advisors want to keep troops in Iraq longer. This is really a stunner because everyone was waiting with such apprehension to see what the President would do. Would he call for troops to stay until the end of time, or just the end of his term? It's been agony, all the wondering.

President Bush's senior advisers on Iraq have recommended he stand by his current war strategy, and he is unlikely to order more than a symbolic cut in troops before the end of the year, administration officials told The Associated Press Tuesday.

The recommendations from the military commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker come despite independent government findings Tuesday that Baghdad has not met most of the political, military and economic markers set by Congress.

And guess what, military officials aren't buying the GAO report because they don't like what it says the information is, like, so last month.

House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.) said Pentagon officials had told Republican leaders that the GAO had relied on outdated information. Because the agency was told simply to assess whether the benchmarks had been met, the GAO was set up to deliver a negative report, Blunt said. He added that lawmakers were far more interested in the assessment coming next week from Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker [...]

The GAO concluded that all forms of violence remain high in Iraq -- causing senior military officials to complain that the report did not consider statistics for August, when, they said, trends in sectarian violence and the performance of the Iraqi security forces improved.

"They use the end of July as the data and evidentiary cutoff and therefore are not taking into account any gains in any of the benchmarks that may have become more clear throughout August," one official said.

Apparently there was just a rush of political and economic and security progress in August, right around the time that 500 Yazidis were killed in a previously stable area of the country, I'd gather.

Did I mention that the military officials gave no facts to support their argument that they're right and the GAO is wrong?

We see exactly what's going on here. The surge was initially defined as to give breathing space for a political reconciliation. That didn't happen, nor did the surge even curb violence, so the Administration is moving the goalposts and declaring that the surge created "bottom-up reconciliation" which is nothing more than militias and former insurgents arming themselves for the civil struggle to come.

The White House insists that Mr. Bush’s fresh embrace of Sunni leaders simply augments his consistent support of Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

But some of Mr. Bush’s critics regard the change as something far more significant, saying they believe it amounts to a grudging acknowledgment by the White House of something these critics themselves have long asserted — that Iraq will never become the kind of cohesive, unified state that could be a democratic beacon for the Middle East.

“They have come around to the inevitable,” said Peter W. Galbraith, a former American diplomat whose 2006 book, “The End of Iraq,” argued that Mr. Bush was trying to rebuild a nation that never really existed, because Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds had never adopted a common Iraqi identity. “He has finally recognized that fact, and is now trying to work with it,” Mr. Galbraith said Tuesday.

I would argue that he's just looking for anything to prolong the war and save face, so he latched on to the Sunni tribes who will still allow themselves to be seen with him. Indeed, he said, when cameras weren't rolling so it's more credible, that his goal is to force the next President to "stay longer" in Iraq. Keith Olbermann lambasted him for this remark, with good reason.

And there it is, sir. We’ve caught you.

Your goal is not to bring some troops home — maybe — if we let you have your way now;

Your goal is not to set the stage for eventual withdrawal;

You are, to use your own disrespectful, tone-deaf word, playing at getting the next Republican nominee to agree to jump into this bottomless pit with you, and take us with him, as we stay in Iraq for another year, and another, and another, and anon.

Be sure to read that whole thing.

So where do we go from here? If the Democrats weren't so consistently weak it would be simple; you shut down funding for this disaster before it's too late. All you have to do is not fund the war, and take the Feingold-Reid option of a date certain after which no money will be spent (it's big news that Kos finally signed on to this, BTW). But whether or not Democrats have the stones to do that is unclear. What's more likely is that something comes out of this...

Rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats, meanwhile, are redoubling efforts to find bipartisan cooperation that could pressure the administration to begin bringing troops home. Six House Republicans and five Democrats released a letter yesterday to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio), asking them "to put an end to the political in-fighting over the war in Iraq and allow the House to unite behind a bipartisan strategy to stabilize the country and bring our troops home."

Breaking with the GOP leadership, the Republicans -- Michael N. Castle (Del.), Charlie Dent (Pa.), Phil English (Pa.), Scott Garrett (N.J.), Jim Gerlach (Pa.) and Tom Petri (Wis.) -- said they saw no reason to wait for testimony by Petraeus and Crocker.

"While we are hopeful that their report will show progress, we should not wait any longer to come together in support of a responsible post-surge strategy to safely bring our troops home to their families," the letter said.

...closer to the Lamar Alexander/Ken Salazar "Remember the Iraq Study Group" resolution, which is easily circumvented by the White House and makes everybody feel good for about 10 seconds before they realize it's completely toothless.

Very depressing.

Happy 2nd of July

We're all celebrating the wrong day. You know that, right? Maybe it's because I'm from Philadelphia, where this whole independence movement came from. Maybe it's because I've spent hours in Independence Hall, and at the City Tavern where the Founding Fathers set off to drink and celebrate after signage, and at the very house where Thomas Jefferson stayed that summer of 1776 and penned arguably the first blog post, with its confrontational and unseemly rhetoric that caused David Broder's ancestors to drop their teacups and retire to the fainting couch.

But I thought everybody knew that independence of this nation was agreed to by all parties on July 2nd.

Congress was called to order on July 1st at 9am and serious debate consumed most of that hot and humid Monday. Late in the day it was apparent that the delegates from Pennsylvania and South Carolina were not ready to pass the Lee resolution for Independence. Additionally the two delegates from Delaware were split so debate was postponed until the following day. On July 2, 1776 both Robert Morris and John Dickinson deliberately abstained by not attending the session and the remaining Pennsylvania delegation voted for independence. South Carolina leader's son, Arthur Middleton, chose to ignore his absent and ailing father's Tory wishes changing the colony's position to aye. Finally the great patriot Caesar Rodney with his face riddled with cancer rode all night through the rain and a lightening storm arriving in time to break the Delaware 1 to 1 deadlock by casting the third vote for independence. Thus all 12 colonies voted on July 2nd and adopted the resolution, introduced by Richard Henry Lee and John Adams, declaring independence from Great Britain:

"Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.''

On July 2, 1776 the United Colonies of America officially became the United States of America.

John Adams, in one of his series of letters to his wife Abigail, wrote that July 2nd would be the founding date for posterity. He got the type of celebration right, but not the assumption that Americans would remember history:

"The Second Day of July 1776 will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. . . . It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more."

Congress then made some minor edits to the document over the next couple of days, edits that angered Jefferson (one of them removing any reference to enslaving Africans, and another "conveying censures upon the people of England" for allowing this colonialism to continue), and the final changes were approved, and the declaration adopted, on July 4th. But the United States of America, this nation, was avowed and ordained on July 2nd, 1776.

And when you think about the two events that George W. Bush has managed to hold on those anniversaries, you get all the more disgusted with how far we have traveled from a collection of patriots who refused to be shackled by the tyranny of a king, to a President who accepts that regal mantle and governs not for a nation but for himself and his coterie.

Because on July 2, 2003, 227 years after the adoption of the Lee resolution for independence, the President of the United States committed the nation to an unrelenting parade of death that lasts to this day by stupidly issuing a dare and speaking for our troops in Iraq:

"There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on," Bush said. "We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."

How cowardly and odious a statement. At least the men asserting independence on July 2nd were prepared to fight for it. This draft-dodger who never saw combat saw fit to make boasts from the comfort of the White House, while 19 and 20 year-olds, who weren't given the proper life-saving equipment, who weren't given sufficient body armor, who didn't have enough of their compatriots watching their back, were tasked with carrying out such a threat. They didn't have any mission except trying to save their own life, they were turned into targets by a foolish President who should have never sent them to the deserts of Mesopotamia in the first place. George Bush incited a riot that led to the needless deaths of over 4,000 Americans (counting contractors, who are in Iraq in greater numbers that troops, so they deserve to be counted).

And then four years later, on the 231st anniversary of the founding of this nation, the President of the United States, in what Keith Olbermann rightly called a crystallizing moment, obtrsucted justice into an investigation of the compromising of an intelligence asset by commuting the sentence of a political crony to ensure his silence. He did so while ignoring all of his own laws for executive clemency, as he has ignored Congressional statutes and executive orders in the past. He made the decision that one set of laws exists for the overwhelming majority of our citizens, and quite another for those who have information on his consistent lawbreaking, or just happen to be a friend of the family.

These two actions are among the many delineated in the Declaration of Independence as root causes for revolution, certainly in the case of obstructing justice and refusing to assent to laws. These were exactly the type of depredations that caused, even demanded, a group of colonists to take on the strongest Army the world had ever seen to that point, and cast aside the bonds of tyranny to establish their own entity, in the name of the basic human rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And they said:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

The commemoration of this audacious event, twice in the past four years, has been to act in the very opposite manner, to mirror not so much the likes of Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson but King George hiimself. And the question is whether or not we will live up to our ideals and choose the proper role models in reaction to these events.

It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a King who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them—or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them—we would force our independence, and regain our sacred freedoms.

We of this time—and our leaders in Congress, of both parties—must now live up to those standards which echo through our history: Pressure, negotiate, impeach—get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.

For you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task. You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed. Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.

Resign.

And give us someone—anyone—about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say, “I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”

Happy 2nd of July.