That's the essence of the story all the corporate media is running with about this speech by the President to the children.  The only people who would make this objection are complete morons and, frankly, asshole right wing, racists. 

Given this pretty easily demonstrable fact, why is our corporate media behaving in such an outrageously irresponsible manner?

Could it be related to the same sort of irresponsibility that misinformed the American people about Al Gore "inventing" the internet?

Could it be the same sort of completely inexcusable false "nuetrality" of the corporate media?

Could it be that the corporate media that dominates the information about current events and the news is not at all engaged in journalism but is instead fully invested in pedaling whatever gossip and sensational bullshit that comes along solely to attract more viewers/listeners/readers in the hopes of profiting by it and the public interest be damned?

Yeah, I think that's pretty much it.

Some means really needs to be found to bring some sort of punitive action against these irresponsible corporations for so badly misleading and misinforming the public and for creating the illusion of legitimate grievances brought by complete idiots and extremists with a partisan and racist agenda where none exist.  I suppose the fact that they are contributing to the downfall of our once great and glorious republic means nothing to those whores called reporters and editors. 

I am astounded at the news that keeps leaking out in dribs and drabs that the new tack the Obama administration is going to take after the disastrous 7 month search for the mythical bipartisan Shangri-La is to double down on begging the Republicans to support something, anything on healthcare.  Making it all the more appalling, these little leaks and reports indicate they are apparently willing to give away what is left of the healthcare reform store by pinning their hopes on being able to beg the support of one milque toast Republican Senator from Maine.  If it weren't so serious I would think this is a pathetic joke.

After getting their asses handed to them on this issue for months precisely because of the never-ending snipe hunt for a bipartisan healthcare reform bill and then throughout August being publicly bullied, taunted, bitch slapped and manipulated while staring like a deer into the headlights it seems the oh so smart corporate Democrats running the show in DC have learned absolutely nothing.  How can this be?  What can those people be thinking if the answer they've come up with is essentially more of the same?  How can they conclude that what we need is more capitulation, further retreat and finally sacrificing real healthcare reform for an insurance company subsidy program that will fatten those malevolent interests even more than they are, that costs far too much, and returns far too little to the common people?  Do they know how weak they are making themselves look in the eyes of the American people as they insist on playing the submissive role to the Republicans' and how it demonstrates anything but leadership as they keep the sworn enemies of any healthcare reform in the driver's seat even though the legislative and executive branches are controlled by Democrats?

It is embarrassing and shocking really to come to grips with just how isolated and out of touch the DC Democrats are on this issue (excepting of course the relative handful of committed progressives who have been vocal in their opposition to further capitulation).  From day one the corporate DC Dems have played the obsequious handmaidens of the parasitical special interests on healthcare and to their allies, the congressional Republicans, who openly declare not only that they are against reform but that the President is a foreigner hell bent on imposing Soviet style totalitarianism on America combined with Nazi style euthanasia policies and taking the guns from crazy white people everywhere.  They handed control of the message to the Republicans from day one too, making the fundamental question one of cost instead of whether or not healthcare will no longer be a privilege in America but a right that every citizen is entitled to in this country just as citizens are in all the other industrialized countries on earth.

When will it occur to them, and what will it take at long last, for the DC Dems to understand that they cannot represent the corporate interests and the interests of the common people of this nation on healthcare not to mention most other important issues facing the nation?  When, at long last will they understand that the situation has become so acute and out of balance that the Washington game of buying off corporate support with massive giveaways to special interests and throwing a bone or two to the people is no longer acceptable?  When will they realize that healthcare for all is not an academic mind tease or a parlor game but a life and death issue for 18,000 Americans annually and that it is the difference between keeping their lives together and bankruptcy for a million families every year now?  Establishing a viable healthcare system worth having and that serves every citizen is a moral question, not a question of cost.  How the lack of healthcare, skyrocketing costs for premiums and deductibles, the lack of good insurance and the denial of benefits are harming human beings are the fundamental issues at stake when you get right down to it, not the cost of covering everyone for the benefit of the for profit insurance industry.  And when oh when will the ever so smart minds of the DC Dems realize that the costliest possible approach is the one they seem to want to foist upon us which is one that does not cover everyone, keeps our grotesque and broken system in tact while enriching the insurance companies yet only tinkering at the margins of reform?  Providing massive subsidies for people to pay for rotten insurance policies is not a solution to anything and it isn't acceptable.  If that's what we get in the end it's hard to imagine what it is we've won other than a pig in a poke for the common American citizen and his or her family.

The bottom line is that sometimes you simply have to fight for what you really believe in and let the chips fall where they may.  Yes, you risk losing but winning isn't the only thing that matters.  It matters what you win too.  If you fight for what is right, but lose, at least you have done so with some honor and the whole world knows what side you are on.  To whimper and whine and capitulate to the greediest and most parasitical special interests only to "win" a bill that is no longer worth having can be worse than losing.

It is long past time for the President to come out in his speech to Congress next week strongly in favor of real healthcare reform: not merely insurance reform.  It's time for the President to lead by fighting for what he said he believes in on healthcare reform and not to turn tail and run on the public option and instead hide behind weak euphemisms like "choice" and "competition" which means the score at the end of the game will be 100-0 in favor of the interests of the insurance companies vs the interests of the nation, our people and our businesses.  If the President fails to do this but instead tries to sell the nation on a watered down, pale imitation of reform that isn't really worth having then why should the common people waste their time supporting it?  If people are rational and act according to their interests there would be no reason for the people, in that case, to waste their time and energy.  I hope the reports are wrong and the President is going to really change his strategy.  I hope that instead of what is being reported, the President comes out of the gate next week no longer burdened by the bipartisan fantasy of what never was and never will be and instead comes out swinging as he should have been doing all along.  If he does that the people will support him.  Anything less and the people will turn away with a sour taste in their mouths because the DC Dems once again decided that being weak was smarter than being strong and fighting for the interests of the common people.

The past several days of stories, eulogies, anecdotes, moving images, and information about the great Senator Kennedy has certainly been an emotional torrent for me and my entire family as I know has been the case for many, many others around the world really.  Underlying the emotions has been a gnawing feeling of inadequacy in terms of being able to do anything for the Kennedy family that might convey the grief and sorrow we feel along with them for the loss of such an unusual and outstanding human being.  I live too far away to have gone to the street to honor him and the family as his motorcade passed so can only hope that the family understands that for every person who stood along the way to physically demonstrate their admiration, respect, and affection for Senator Kennedy and the Kennedy family there were thousands upon thousands, if not millions, more who felt the very same way.

As fitting and proper as all of it was, it somehow felt to me still inadequate but then I don't know that there's any way for the nation to ever fully honor Senator Kennedy for all he did, to even approach repaying the Kennedy family or to express our love and solidarity with them adequately.  How could we ever possibly return to them what they have given to us?  It is my deep hope that the love of so many provides some comfort to them and that they will always be able to find some solace knowing that so many feel as they do about the incredible Senator Ted Kennedy and all the other members of the Kennedy family.

I grew up in what can only be described as a Kennedy household.  I was a mere toddler in 1960 but my great-grandparents, grandparents and parents all proudly voted for John F. Kennedy for President.  Their homes all had Kennedy images in them.  When I was in kindergarten and the President was murdered my parents, but particularly my mother, just two years younger than Teddy, was inconsolable, sobbing in front of the tiny black and white tv for days until the funeral was over.  I stood by her side trying to comfort her to no avail.  I remember it all unfolding on tv with Walter Cronkite.  I wrote Teddy a letter around 1966 and got an autographed 8 x 10 photo of the dashing young Senator I cherish to this day.  The murders of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy again swept my home with unparalleled grief and sorrow for which there seemed no consolation to my mother especially.  The emotions were so strong, that if I hadn't known better I would have thought these men members of our immediate family.  My father cried too, but as an ex-marine mostly supressed his tears as was the rule of manhood at the time.

Through the years I got to meet Senator Kennedy a couple of times, briefly shake his hand and say hello.  I saw him in person on several other occassions.  I testified before one of his subcommittees while in college in Boston.  I had the honor of voting for him for President in the Massachusetts primary in 1980.  Senator Kennedy was always there, always fighting for what was right, always standing up for the values that had, from the beginning, bonded my family so close to his.  He was as much a fixture of the landscape as the Berkshires of Massachusetts.  Like others I have cried much and felt so much sadness the past few days and it is all bound up in this decades old relationship between the Senator's family and my own.  I feel a profound sadness that goes with this odd kinship I feel with them.  Like no others in our country the Kennedys, it seems to me, make us realize we are all in it together and have an obligation to care about and for each other.

Of all the incredibly moving and heartwarming stories and anecdotes that I heard this weekened, two had more force and touched me more deeply than anything else.  The first was, of course, the eulogy of Ted, Jr. and the story about his father taking him out sledding. No human being could fail to be touched by the deep and abiding love that abounded both in the tale and in the telling of it.  And the other was a brief anecdote mentioned by Keith Olbermann in the minutes before the hearse arrived at the church where the funeral was to be held.  This is a paraphrase of what he said but close enough, I thnk, to accurately convey the point.  I had never heard the story before.

Olbermann said that one day someone asked Senator Kennedy why it was he always took up the side of the poor and fought for them and why did he care?  The Senator, looking almost angry and offended, took a minute before he spoke and said simply in reply "Have you never read the Bible?"  For me, that response explained not only his championing of the poor, the dispossesed and the downtrodden, it explained everything about what motivated him in his public life and what is at the center of the great family he was a part of.  Godspeed Senator, and Godspeed to all your family too.