The late Vic Chesnutt -- Flirted With You All My Life

On Christmas Day, Vic Chesnutt took his own life at the too-young age of 45 with an overdose of prescription pills. Vic carved out a small but not insignificant career as a folk musician, despite being a paraplegic, the result of a single car crash at 18. I thought of Vic as I looked at this week's roster of bobbleheads. Vic's music was darkly funny, and odd, and poetic, and it never let you forget that life for his was all about pain.

Mr. Chesnutt tackled death and mortality head-on in his lyrics, as in "It Is What It Is," from his new album "At the Cut":

"I don't worship anything, not gods that don't exist/I love my ancestors, but not ritually/I don't need stone altars to hedge my bet against the looming blackness/that is what it is."

In recent interviews he contemplated the challenges he faced as a wheelchair-bound paraplegic with inadequate health insurance and mounting medical bills.

"I'm not too eloquent talking about these things," Mr. Chesnutt told the Los Angeles Times this month. "I was making payments, but I can't anymore and I really have no idea what I'm going to do. It seems absurd they can charge this much. When I think about all this, it gets me so furious. I could die tomorrow because of other operations I need that I can't afford."

This needless death shouldn't have happened. And had our government representatives and leaders had the courage, foresight and fortitude to truly do what was right for all Americans--universal health care--it might not have happened. I wish that I could share the story with the bobbleheads and their enablers in the media to keep them from diverting the discussion to things that don't matter and for concerns that should come above the health of American citizens.

Robert Gibbs has the trifecta of ABC/CBS/NBC happening, presumably to talk about health care, but Janet Napolitano of Homeland Security is also a late booking to the shows. I'm guessing she'll be talking about the latest "terrorist" attempt. You can bet that the Republicans will be laying on thick the fear-mongering, with Mitch McConnell on This Week, Peter King on Face the Nation and Newt Gingrich on Meet the Press. Would that we could confront these guys with Vic Chesnutt's sad legacy and make them understand how their games affect people's very lives.

ABC's "This Week" - Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano; White House press secretary Robert Gibbs; Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Gibbs; Reps. James Clyburn, D-S.C., and Peter King, R-N.Y.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Gibbs; New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.; Gov. Deval Patrick, D-Mass.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano; Andrew Card, former Bush White House chief of staff; John Podesta, former Clinton White House chief of staff and head of the Center for American Progress; Govs. Mitch Daniels, R-Ind., and Ed Rendell, D-Pa.; George Evans, mayor of Selma, Ala.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Russian President Dmity Medvedev, Malcolm Gladwell.

CNN's "Amanpour" - Amira Hass, Ha'aretz "Occupied Lands" correspondent, and former diplomat Aaron David Miller,discuss peace prospects in the Middle East. Al Qaeda in Europe: Christiane looks beyond the Middle East, to al Qaeda's growing influence in Europe.

"Fox News Sunday" - Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich.; Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; Sens. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., Arlen Specter, D-Pa., Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and Jim DeMint, R-S.C.

So what's catching your eye this morning?

On Face the Nation yesterday, Sen. Joe Lieberman said that he not only wants to strip out the public option, but also the Medicare buy-in at fifty-five.

"You have to take out the Medicare buy-in. You have to forget about the public option. You probably have to take out the class act which was a whole new entitlement program that will in future years put us further into the deficit," Lieberman told CBS' Bob Schieffer Sunday.

"I want to tell you, we could pass a health care reform bill this week with more than 60 votes and it would be bipartisan if we just took a few things out of the bill as it is today," said Lieberman.

Lieberman wants to pass a Republican health care package, which is no plan at all. This bitter man is hijacking the entire health care reform effort for no other reasons than his petty, narcissistic agenda. He is a traitor to the liberal policies that once, as a vice-presidential nominee in 2000, he would have never signed onto.

Greg Sargent comes up with video proof which exposes Lieberman of being a bad-faith participant in health care negotiations. Holy Joe just three months ago was saying that he supports a Medicare buy-in plan. Oh, my!

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What would David Broder say about that?

In the vid, Lieberman appeared to go further than the current Senate deal, which would expand Medicare to those aged 55-64, saying he supported the idea of expanding it to people aged 50 and over. Lieberman referenced his proposal along these lines during the 2006 campaign, and added:

“My proposals were to basically expand the existing successful public health insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid…

“When it came to Medicare I was very focused on a group — post 50, maybe more like post 55. People who have retired early, or unfortunately have been laid off early, who lose their health insurance and they’re too young to qualify for Medicare.

“What I was proposing was that they have an option to buy into Medicare early and again on the premise that that would be less expensive than the enormous cost. If you’re 55 or 60 and you’re without health insurance and you go in to try to buy it, because you’re older … you’re rated as a risk so you pay a lot of money.”

It’s not entirely clear that Lieberman was offering a full-throated current endorsement of the proposal, but his tone is clearly positive and approving. It’s yet another sign, as if you needed one, that Lieberman’s current opposition to the Senate proposal doesn’t appear to have any roots in a genuine policy disagreement.

It appears that Holy Joe wants to destroy health-care reform because his feelings have been hurt by liberals who disagreed with his warmongering behavior. The pettiness he holds dear to his heart is being used to destroy any chance that working-class Americans will be getting meaningful health care reform. You can't go lower than that.

Again it boils down to leadership, and President Obama and Harry Reid have not led this fight well from the beginning. They knew they had to deal with Joe, so he was bowed down to. The problem is that he felt no repercussions after he threw his full support to John McCain in the 2008 election. "He's with us on everything except the war," was what Harry Reid said. How did that work out for ya, Harry? Joe is destined to destroy health-care reform altogether.

Digby writes:

People need to send the link to this to all the press and the villagers they can think of to show just how perfidious their favorite "man of integrity" is being on this. Thy won't care about the substance, but this helps expose Lieberman's pettiness which villagers always find uncomfortable. (The exposure, not the pettiness.)

The PCCC has set up another action against Lieberman:

Please sign this petition to progressive Senators Russ Feingold, Bernie Sanders, Roland Burris, and Sherrod Brown:

PETITION: "Don't let Joe Lieberman win! Americans need you to stand strong and block any 'compromise' without a strong public option. If necessary, demand that Sen. Harry Reid and President Obama support budget reconciliation and pass a bill with just 51 votes -- at which point, Joe Lieberman will be irrelevant and the public option can be made even stronger."

Key Democrats have said they won't support a bill without a strong public option:

Please sign on to it. The more we expose him as a fraud the better.
Joe's wife is also a major player in Lieberman's thinking process and part of his obstructionism that is responsible for Joe's switching of positions and trying to hold health care hostage.

Matt Yglesias writes:

That said, I agree with Chris Bowers that in a lot of ways the real story here is that the Senate leadership has, at every step of this process, underscored that a “reconciliation” path to a health care bill is off the table. That means Lieberman has unlimited control over what happens, and no incentive to compromise, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he’s being uncompromising. Can’t liberals be just as stiff-necked as Lieberman? Sure, they could. But liberals members do have an incentive to compromise—the tens of thousands of people who die every year for lack of health insurance. The leverage that Lieberman and other “centrists” have obtained on this issue (and on climate change) stems from a demonstrated willingness to embrace sociopathic indifference to the human cost of their actions.

Grist: Watergate redux: Break-ins reported at another top climate research center

The Nation: Is Erik Prince "graymailing" the US government?

Newsifact: Joe Lieberman: No one will connect the dots about my lucrative post-Senate career

darrel plant: Big Buck Twilight Peacekeeper

Mainstream Baptist: Stonehenge Reloaded

Stinque: Talibunny's parents held captive as props for book tour

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(JFK - Berlin - 1963 - Bringing the message to the worlds largest group of shut-ins)

With the Cuban Missile Crisis a fresh memory only eight months earlier, President Kennedy toured Europe in the summer of 1963 and stopped in Berlin on June 26, 1963 to address a crowd of over 150,000 against the ominous backdrop of the Wall that divided the two Berlins.

"Today the proudest boast is, Ich Bin ein Berliner"

The day before, Kennedy spoke at the Assembly Hall in Frankfurt and offered a similar message.

Kennedy: “For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.”

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All in all, JFK did much to bolster the confidence of the German people, in light of the increased Cold War posturing going back and forth in the divided city. Still, it wasn't until 26 years later that the Wall would finally come down.

his vorpal sword: Indiana racist email story expolodes

Andy Worthington: Three innocent men released from Gitmo

Shakesville: What's wrong with (not just young people) everybody now

naked capitalism: How well has the Federal Reserve performed for America?

Open Left: Post Office zip code change prompts Insurance industry to attempt jacking up rates

Respectful Insolence: Quackery at HuffPo

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(John L. Lewis - even at 80 he was still busy drilling)

John L. Lewis certainly looms large in the annals organized labor history. Going back to the early 1900's, Lewis was a staunch organizer, leader and outspoken critic. He had his fair share of run-ins with the government, not to mention Management. But he was always on the side of the worker, always fighting for safe conditions. He didn't endear himself to the press, as was evidenced by this Meet The Press appearance on May 31, 1959.

Clark Mollenhoff: “Mister Lewis, while you were before the committee a week or two ago, you said that, during all those years, those early years in labor ‘I occupied the proud position that Jimmy Hoffa occupies today’. Now, do you really think that’s a proud position in labor?”

John L. Lewis: “Have you any sense of humor, at all?”

He certainly didn't pull any punches and the show ended six minutes early.

But John L. Lewis was just like that.