I'm sure it's fairly obvious that the point I'm trying to make is very different from the one you're trying to make.

You've cited 3 specific (if debatable) examples from a universe of combined network and cable coverage to generalize a point that I really don't even dispute: There IS such a thing as bias. (There are also many additional commentators and many additional stories in this universe that you did NOT name, but that isn't the real point, either. We could continue to play media watchdog by citing the compromised, selective findings of the various partisan watchdog outlets of all sides, but that would take a long time and lead to no sure conclusion).

My point (take it or leave it) is that Fox is a singularly dedicated, calculated propaganda outlet, and that these others you mention are not: They may make slanted points if the commentators are politically inclined that way, but they don't repetitively make the same EXACT points, in the same EXACT language, over various broadcast formats day after day, and they don't by and large make points they don't FEEL like making.

My challenge to any neutral observer would be simply this: Scan ALL the networks and cable channels at random throughout the day for a week, without cherrypicking particular programs or commentators, but making no special effort to AVOID them, either. Anyone has a right after this experiment to come to any conclusion they please, but I would personally be suprised if one did not decide that Fox is in a class by itself in the consistency, scripting, predictability, and vehemence of its ideological promotion.

I think the positions you contort yourself into
to DENY a moral claim for HCR tend in my mind to reinforce exactly the OPPOSITE position. Without overly explicating Jesus, Buddha, or Mohammed, is there ANY ethical or moral system that doesn't include "caring for the sick" as one of its core values? Isn't that simply a LIFE value, reflected not only in all major global health care centers, but equally powerfully in huts in Africa or Indian teepees in the Old West, or in wolf packs in Alaska?

As I've said previously, morality is certainly not the ONLY claim for HCR, but it remains at heart one of the two STRONGEST claims. If we ignore that claim altogether in favor of ONLY basic nuts-and-bolts accounting, we leave at least half our argument on the sidelines - probably the half that has a chance to prevail among the multitudes among us who don't yet reduce EVERY public debate to basic financial self-interest.

With respect to perhaps the LAST great public morality debate, could someone tell me whether or not racial integration was COST EFFECTIVE? No, I don't know either, and don't recall the question ever coming up at the time.

IMO, opposition to HCR has two fixed weaknesses: (1)It is morally wrong, and (2)Society cannot sustain that position - something MUST be done.

Those are the two fundamental points that advocates of reform must continue to make, remorselessly and over and over. Most opposition arguments (with their statistics, sophistry, ranting, and all the rest) are at heart simply pushing wood around the board to buy time, and to confuse - they cannot answer their fixed weaknesses, simply because they are fundamentally irrefutable.

To bring this back to Mr. Olbermann, I think his comment did a great deal to bring this argument back to fundamentals. Fundamentals are in our favor, and we'll sooner or later win for that reason.

That reason would appear to have less to do with the notion that they are all "socialists", and rather MORE to do with the fact that they are genuinely interested in trying to manage the intricate Health Care needs of their populations in a manner that is compassionate, straightforward, realistic, and rational at the same time.

I have said in here before that one of these days, that's where WE will be - not because we are revoluntionaries or radicals, but because that is where good Yankee common sense will eventually take us. I see the public option as an overall good first step on the long road to good sense, but I ALSO agree with those who say it is not enough by itself to assure real reform. 'Real reform' is going to eventually be a single-payer type system, or some as yet unknown, uniquely American variation thereof.

In the meanwhile, tinkering and patching at the margins should not do much harm, and MIGHT even do a little good. Either way, it's something we just have to get out of our system. Until it is proven by practical experience that tinkering won't work, it seems to be the best we can do at the current level of political energy.

I agree with you that a simple poll majority is not enough to say one way or the other if a policy should be pursued. It's a rough measure of public sentiment, which can MATTER in a democracy without neccesarily being by itself conclusive.

I also agree with your point that HCR of ANY sort is a very slippery thing to poll. As I try to study the polls in my sort of loose, generalized way, I'm darned if I can 'fix' the public attitude anywhere at all - it seems to want everything and nothing at the same time, which means people with a slant anywhere along the spectrum can cherrypick a poll to support them.

Nevertheless, I find the sentiment for the PO somewhat compelling and pretty consistent. My own subjective sense (nothing more) is that people see it as a reasonable compromise between "Govt. takeover" and essentially doing as little as possible of practical value (in the hopes of shutting-up this 'reform' silliness, and getting back ASAP to business as usual, with no 'harm' done).

It could be that it's just because I see it that way, but I don't really think so - I'm not one who is usually found that far out on my own solitary limb.

I don't think I missed your point, I was essentially just answering your title question.

I think some version of universal health care is the RIGHT thing to do - whether or not one wants to interperet that as a 'right' in the legal sense is up to them. I don't care, as long as they accept my first proposition (which amounts to the same thing).

Interestingly enough, Donal's point reinforces my OTHER core argument: We're in the somewhat unusal position that the RIGHT thing to do is also the SMART thing to do, as I see the matter.

I'm open to anyone's best efforts to better persuade by more sophisticated arguments, humanizing the 'victims, better framing, etc., and I wish them all the best. For myself, I can only make the case that suits ME best, and let the chips fall.

If anything can be construed as a right, then access to reasonable health care is a right. Avoiding parsing the Constitution, or the UN, or the specific citations of particular religions, or just debate sophistry of any degree of cleverness, I can maintain with little fear of contradiction that the concept of CARING FOR THE ILL is at the heart of virtually every functioning moral system.

The second point I would make is that while the world's history has shown that 'good' has had its ups-and-downs, it has consistently triumphed in the longer run over its opposite. There is an inherent and even a mysterious strength in the MORAL position that has allowed it to prevail over the immoral one (so far, at least) over and over again.

Don't ever despair about being on the RIGHT (ie, the 'weak', or 'naive') side - we take our lumps short-term, but we win them all eventually.

(I know I'm sort of evading your question by this answer, but it's the best I can do).

I'm unlikely to be found holding ANY sign at ANY public rally. I might possibly attend, if the issue was one I felt strongly enough about, but I would not insult my own intelligence or anyone else's by assuming I could fit a pertinent contribution to the discussion onto a cardboard sign. That's classic Cartoon Culture thinking, and it just isn't my style.

I ran into some of this during the Dem. primary: On more than just a few occasions,as a Clinton supporter, I found myself lumped-in with racists and bumpkins who were judged incapable of grasping Obama's unique appeal. I wasn't alone - whole STATES were tarred by the same crude brush.

We really need to be CAREFUL about this tendency. OF COURSE there are racists opposed to the President for that reason alone, but it's a serious mistake to assume that racism inevitably constitutes the CORE of all opposition. Politics is about many things, but we can all be thankful that it remains (so far?) mostly about POLICY.

If we ignore the honest reservations that many honest and well-meaning people have about the President's policy prescriptions, we're going to misunderstand the nature of the struggle we're in. That cannot be a good thing in the long run.

I've said all I'm going to say about the specifics of the 'School Speech', and really all that NEEDS to be said or CAN be said, as far as I'm concerned.

Here's what I WILL say:

If you think a nuclear-armed submarine is about the same thing as a fish because they both swim around in the water, there's not much I can say to you. You're clearly wrong in every sense that matters, but you've stubbornly decided to stay where you're at, and you're clearly impervious to rational discussion.

It may not even really MATTER in the long run that you falsely consider a fish and a submarine to be the same thing. It's conceivable one could pass a lifetime without actually putting that theory to a practical test.

On the other hand, one of these days it MIGHT: If you find yourself sitting on the ocean in your fishing boat, and something under you (a fish, or a submarine) decides to launch a missle, you may find out the hard way that they really ARE very different things. If you get a second or two to think about it, you might wish you had made the proper comparison to begin with.

That's my last on this.

I read that link (L35's also). Pardon me, but I don't get the equivalence. Do you? Or L35? Really?

What happened in 1991 was more than SHOULD have happened, to be as fair as I can be. But to compare the garden-variety political shadowboxing that apparently occurred after that event with the idiotic (yes, once more for emphasis) low-brow, know-nothing, street crusade that has accompanied THIS one (even BEFORE anything happened), is to take all leave of proportion.

E2 may not remember the 1991 event as well as others might claim to (I actually don't, and I was 'around' in 91, and I wasn't a GHWB fan, either), but I think she has nonetheless come a lot closer to capturing its essence.

I normally try very hard to see all sides and give them all the honest benefit of the doubt, but this is simply a bridge too far: This is superstitious idiocy, plain and simple. It can't possibly be reconciled with any coherent theory of representative democracy.

If this is the best that side can do, the REST of us have no alternative but to go forward without them. We have a future to make happen, and legitimatizing tribal savagery by discussing it as though it were a serious political response to a serious political issue, is not contributing to that effort.

In my mind, that is precisely the RIGHT answer for our health care problems, one that I have advocated for quite a while.

I'm fairly sure that several of the well-known single-payer systems around the world already work this way (I've heard as much from an English contributer in here), but I would certainly defer to more informed opinions on that.

I think the best thing I can suggest for your Aunt is to try to think in 'cognitive behavior' terms: In EVERY aspect of everyday living, there is an unavoidable element of risk. Life itself is something of an inherently dangerous miracle. Neither I, nor her, nor anyone else can know with absolute certainty ahead of time whether or not our diagnosis of ANY problem is absolutely correct, or whether or not our solution will work exactly as expected on the first try.

In fact, it's reasonable to believe it WON'T work precisely as expected, and that we will have to pledge ourselves ahead of time to a process of ongoing eveluation and continual course correction. To be willing to take that step requires a fundamental faith in ourselves and in our institutions - a faith that accepts that the WORST possible outcome rarely happens, that good will and hard work give us a decent chance at a good outcome, and that we will prove ourselves capable of persevering thru all obstacles to something better (I don't think there's ANY attitude more 'American' than that).

The best we can do as ordinary mortals is to try our best in good faith, and HOPE for the best. I know that's not directly answering the 'public option' question (others can do that better than I can), but I think that will help your Aunt to construct a way to think about it.

I would emphatically second this suggestion.

E2 is a good, sincere communicator. She has a methodical and comprehensive approach to this story, and certainly comes across well personally in her telling of it.

What she has started with here (and what has been added in the thread) provide the broad outlines of a compelling argument.

Just one sincere bit of advice: The real 'story' here is buried under an overburden of extraneous and sometimes even distracting information. To be truly effective, it needs to be shortened and more focused on a relatively few fundamental key points (as you suggested).

Referring to Mr. Lakoff, I'm generally familiar with his ideas, and I did read a rather lengthy article he wrote (linked in here recently) on this very issue. I tend to agree on Conservative framing expertise, but I'm frankly less sure about how to combat it.

2 points I recall (among a great many others - I'm cherrypicking a little in both the interest of time, and focusing on those items that most resonated with me): (1)The 'moral' case - Americans take care of each other. (2)The 'strategic' case - The country cannot be what it SHOULD be, if this problem doesn't get solved.

These are summary paraphrases, but I think they capture my personal sense of the heart of the matter. These are the root arguments that ordinary, middle-of-the-road people (neither wonks nor radical reformers) could be persuaded to accept.

Exactly HOW one cuts thru the clutter to make that case is not entirely clear to me, but my own opinion remains that that is the case we need to make - in short sentences, and in place of many of the increasingly obtuse, overly technical arguments that are being advanced.

Excellent and too-seldom-made points in my opinion. We have to convince those who are presently enjoying themselves floating down the river, that there really ARE several versions of a waterfall up ahead of them - some personal and unique, some systemic. It's very hard to get people to grasp that this is a DYNAMIC situation, as opposed to a static one, and that the sooner we take account of the coming threat, the easier it's going to be.

Amen

(1)The MORAL argument (ie, "Real" Americans take care of each other).
(2)The SYSTEMIC argument - health care is central to the proper functioning of just about every OTHER important element of American life. As Mr. Lakoff said, if health care was a better functioning contributor to the whole, GM wouldn't have nearly the problems it does. It's a serious mistake to treat it as just another independent line in the budget, exactly like treating a heart problem without considering the heart's role in the health of the rest of the body. This is a slightly HARDER case to make then the moral argument, but (again) it seems to me the key is to use "NATIONAL SECURITY" as shorthand for that idea.

When you start talking about these 2 things, you ease away from what Lakoff calls "Policy Speak", and you start to get a hearing from ordinary people who may not be either health care experts or liberal reformers, but who certainly want to do what's 'right', and certainly want the country to be safe and strong.

As to how it's paid-for, I'm not sure that would change significantly from the way it is now: Either employers or private entities would pay what they could, or public funds funds would otherwise be provided (as now).

People now eligible for Medicare would get the same $$ they now get, but they would simply have the option to apply them toward a different insurance if they wanted to. Understand, I don't personally see where it would be an important matter to senior citizens, but if it is (as Mr. Armey seems to think), then by all means give them their choice as well.

(1)The main reason that I personally support single-payer health insurance is that I deeply believe it is both a public RIGHT and a public OBLIGATION (along the lines of your item#6). I HOPE and have reason to believe it would accomplish important practical improvements as well, but my personal view of the matter does not depend on these outcomes, one way or the other.

In that sense, my view is simply a matter of RIGHT and WRONG. I suspect there are a lot of other basically middle-of-the-road, commonsense people out there who might be available to that same appeal, but who are less susceptible to all these wonky bean-counting, social-engineering arguments we are prone to use.

(2)I don't recall who it was off-hand, but someone in here was making an excellent comparison recently to the Federal Interstate Highway program: How different it would have turned out if it had been simply piecemealed out state-by-state (ie, I-75 roaring thru Ohio to the Kentucky line, and then just ENDING because Kentucky hadn't decided to support it, or couldn't afford to build their part, etc).

There are excellent broad infrastructure and even National Security arguments that smarter people than me should be making in clear straightforward language.